Indo-European ablaut: Encyclopedia II - Indo-European ablaut - Ablaut and grammatical function

Indo-European ablaut - Ablaut and grammatical function

In PIE, there were already ablaut differences within the paradigms of verbs and nouns. These were not the main markers of grammatical form, since the inflection system served this purpose, but they must have been significant secondary markers.

As an example of ablaut in the paradigm of the noun in PIE, we might take *pértus, from which we get the English words ford and (via Latin) port.

An example in a verb: *b^heid^honom "to wait" (cf. Scots "bide").

In the daughter languages, these came to be important markers of grammatical distinctions. The vowel change in the Germanic strong verb, for example, is the direct descendent of that which we saw in the Indo-European verb paradigm. Examples in modern English are:

It was in this context of Germanic verbs that ablaut was first described, and this is still what most people primarily associate with the phenomenon. A fuller description of ablaut operating in English, German and Dutch verbs and of the historical factors governing these can be found at the article West Germanic strong verb.

The same phenomenon is displayed in the verb tables of Latin, Ancient Greek and Sanskrit. Examples of ablaut as a grammatical marker in Latin are the vowel changes in the perfect stem of verbs.

Ablaut can often explain apparently random irregularities. For example, the verb "to be" in Latin has the forms est (he is) and sunt (they are). The equivalent forms in German are very similar: ist and sind. The difference between singular and plural in both languages is easily explained: the late PIE root is *es- (going back to an earlier h₁es- with subsequent loss of the laryngeal). In the singular, the stem is stressed, so it remains in the e-grade, and it takes the inflection -t. In the plural, the inflection -nt is stressed, causing the stem to reduce to the zero grade: s-. See main article: Indo-European copula.

Some of the morphological functions of the various grades are as follows:

e-grade:

• Present tense of thematic verbs; root stress.
• Present singular of athematic verbs; root stress.
• Accusative and vocative singular, nominative/accusative/vocative dual, nominative plural of nouns.

o-grade:

• Verbal nouns with ending stress.
• Present tense of causative verbs; stem (not root) stress.
• Perfect singular tense.

zero-grade:

• Present dual and plural tense of athematic verbs; ending stress.
• Perfect dual and plural tense; ending stress.
• Past participles; ending stress.
• Some verbs in the aorist tense (the Greek thematic "second aorist").
• Oblique singular/dual/plural, accusative plural of nouns.

lengthened grade:

• Nominative singular of many nouns.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Ablaut and grammatical function", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki