Indo-European ablaut: Encyclopedia II - Indo-European ablaut - Subsequent development of ablaut

Indo-European ablaut - Subsequent development of ablaut

Although PIE only had this one, basically regular ablaut sequence, the development in the daughter languages is frequently far more complicated, and few reflect the original system as neatly as Greek. Various factors such as vowel harmony, assimilation with nasals, or the effect of the presence of laryngeals in the Indo-European roots and their subsequent loss in most daughter languages, mean that a language may have several different vowels representing a single vowel in the parent language. Thus while ablaut survives in some form in all Indo-European languages, it becomes progressively less systematic over time. In Germanic, for example, there are several parallel (but still regular) ablaut sequences but in modern English the vowel alterations appear to be entirely irregular.

Ablaut explains vowel differences between related words of the same language. For example:

• English fetch and foot both come from the same IE root *ped-, the common idea being "going". The former comes from the e-grade, the latter from the lengthened o-grade.
• German Berg (hill) and Burg (castle) both come from the root *b^herg^h-, which presumably meant "high". The former comes from the e-grade, the latter from the zero-grade. (Zero-grade followed by r becomes ur in Germanic.)

Ablaut also explains vowel differences between cognates in different languages.

• English tooth comes from Germanic *tanþ-uz, which is obviously related to Latin dens, dentis and Greek ὀδούς, ὀδόντος (same meaning), which we know in the English words dentist and orthodontic. The reconstructed IE root is identical to the Latin: *dent-. The consonant differences can be explained by regular sound shifts in primitive Germanic, but not the vowel differences: by the regular laws of sound changes, Germanic a goes back to PIE o. The explanation is that the Germanic and Greek words developed from the o-grade, the Latin word from the e-grade.
• English foot, as we have seen, comes from the lengthened o-grade of *ped-. Greek πούς, ποδός and Latin pes, pedis (cf. English octopus and pedestrian), come from the (short) o-grade and the e-grade respectively.

For the Engish-speaking non-specialist, the best reference work for quick information on IE roots, including the difference of ablaut grade behind related lexemes, is Calvert Watkins, The American Heritage dictionary of Indo-European Roots, 2nd edition, Boston & New York 2000.

(Note that in discussions of lexis, we normally cite IE roots in the e-grade and without any inflections.)

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Subsequent development of ablaut", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki