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Apophony - Vowel alternation in Indo-European

Apophony - Vowel alternation in Indo-European: Encyclopedia II - Apophony - Vowel alternation in Indo-European

In Indo-European linguistics, ablaut is the vowel alternation that produces such related words as sing, sang, sung, and song. The difference in the vowels results from the alternation (in the Proto-Indo-European language) of the vowel e with the vowel o or with no vowel. For a more detailed explanation see Indo-European ablaut. To cite a few other examples of Indo-European ablaut, English has a certain class of verbs (i.e. strong verbs) in which the vowel changes to indicate a different ...

Apophony: Encyclopedia II - Apophony - Vowel alternation in Indo-European

Apophony - Vowel alternation in Indo-European

In Indo-European linguistics, ablaut is the vowel alternation that produces such related words as sing, sang, sung, and song. The difference in the vowels results from the alternation (in the Proto-Indo-European language) of the vowel e with the vowel o or with no vowel. For a more detailed explanation see Indo-European ablaut.

To cite a few other examples of Indo-European ablaut, English has a certain class of verbs (i.e. strong verbs) in which the vowel changes to indicate a different grammatical tense-aspect.

Infinitive	Preterite	Past Participle	vowel alternation
swim	swam	swum	(i-a-u) phonetically: [ɪ-æ-ʌ]
fall	fell	fallen	(a-e-a) phonetically: [ɔ-ɛ-ɔ]
drive	drove	driven	(i-o-i) phonetically: [aɪ-o-ɪ]

As the examples above show, a change in the vowel of the verb stem creates a different verb form. (Note that some of the verbs also have a suffix in the past participle form.) (See also English grammar: Irregular verbs.) For a more detailed explanation of how strong verbs are formed in English and related languages, see West Germanic strong verb.

In Indo-European linguistics, umlaut is the vowel alternation that produces such related words as foot and feet or tell and told. The difference in the vowels results from the influence (in Proto-Germanic or a later Germanic language) of an i or y (which has since been lost) on the vowel which (in these examples) becomes e. For a more detailed explanation see Germanic umlaut or I-mutation.

To cite another example of umlaut, some English weak verbs show umlaut in the present tense.

Infinitive	Preterite Past Participle	vowel alternation
bring	brought	(i-ou) phonetically: [ɪ-ɔ]

A-mutation and U-mutation are processes analogous to umlaut but involving the influence of an a (or other non-high vowel) or u respectively instead of an i.

Note that in Indo-European historical linguistics the terms ablaut and umlaut refer to different phenomena. They are not interchangeable. The same terms are also used in linguistics to generally refer to analogous processes as described in the ablaut vs. umlaut section below.

Other related archives

A-mutation, Afro-Asiatic languages, Albanian, Athabascan, Bemba, Broken plural, Celtic languages, Consonant mutation, Dinka, English, English grammar: Irregular verbs, English reduplication, Germanic umlaut, I-mutation, Indo-European, Indo-European ablaut, Linguistic morphology, Modern Standard Arabic, Morphology (linguistics), Navajo, Nonconcatenative morphology, Proto-Germanic, Proto-Indo-European language, U-mutation, Vietnamese, West Germanic strong verb, affixes, archaic plurals in Amharic, aspect, assimilation, causative, consonant mutation, consonants, derivationally, diachronic, gemination, grammatical gender, grammatical number, grammaticalized, infix, inflectional, inflectionally, linguistics, morpheme, morphological, nasality, nonconcatenative, onomatopoeia, palatalization, part of speech, past participle, phonological, prosodic, reduplication, references for ablaut, stress, strong verbs, suffix, suffixes, syllable length, synchronic, templates, tense, tone, transitivity, umlaut, verbs, vowel, vowel harmony, vowel length, vowels, weak verbs

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Vowel alternation in Indo-European", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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