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In linguistics, apophony (also known as ablaut, (vowel) gradation, (vowel) mutation, alternation, internal modification, stem modification, stem alternation, replacive morphology, stem mutation, or internal inflection) is an alternation of vowel (quality) within a word that indicates grammatical information (often inflectional).
In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut (/ ˈ æ b l aʊ t / AB-lowt, from German Ablaut pronounced) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb s i ng, s a ng, s u ng and its related noun s o ng , a paradigm inherited directly from the Proto ...
Reduplication can convey emphasis or repetition, for example mate "die", matemate "die in numbers"; and de-emphasis, for example wera "hot" and werawera "warm". Reduplication can also extend the meaning of a word; for instance paki "pat" becomes papaki "slap or clap once" and pakipaki "applaud"; kimo "blink" becomes kikimo "close eyes firmly"
The word-medial sequence *-mn-is simplified after long vowels and diphthongs or after a short vowel if the sequence was tautosyllabic and preceded by a consonant. The *n was deleted if the vocalic sequence following the cluster was accented, as in Ancient Greek θερμός (thermós 'warm') from Proto-Indo-European *gʷʰermnós ('warm'); otherwise, the *m was deleted, as in Sanskrit ...
This specific form of nonconcatenative morphology is known as base modification or ablaut, a form in which part of the root undergoes a phonological change without necessarily adding new phonological material. In traditional Indo-Europeanist usage, these changes are termed ablaut only when they result from vowel gradations in Proto-Indo-European.
In some cases, ablaut would be expected based on the form (given numerous other examples of ablauting nouns of the same form), but a single ablaut variant is found throughout the paradigm. In such cases, it is often assumed that the noun had showed ablaut in early PIE but was generalized to a single form by late PIE or shortly afterwards.
In reduplication, which forms the perfect tense in both Greek and Sanskrit, if the initial consonant is aspirated, the prepended consonant is unaspirated by Grassmann's law. For instance / pʰ y-ɔː/ φύω 'I grow' : / p e- pʰ yː-ka/ πέφυκα 'I have grown'.
One formation that was relatively productive for forming imperfective verbs, but especially stative verbs, was reduplication, in which the initial consonants of the root were duplicated. Another notable way of forming imperfective verbs was the nasal infix , which was inserted within the root itself rather than affixed to it.