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#122801 02/13/04 01:50 PM
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What do we know about the origin of the ablaut series as a tense marker in Germanic (or any other) languages?


#122802 02/13/04 01:56 PM
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a look at OneLook took me to the Wikipedia, which had this:

Ablaut

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

In linguistics, the process of ablaut (from German ab-: off + laut: sound) is a vowel change accompanying a change in grammatic function. For example, the vowel change in English from i to a to u in sing (present tense), sang (preterite), sung (past-participle) is referred to as an ablaut.

Verbs that display ablaut in English, and that do not form their preterites with a dental suffix like -ed or added -t or d, are called strong verbs. There used to be several regular classes of strong verbs in English, and many more of them; virtually all monosyllable verbs were strong verbs in Old English. Now, there are fewer of them; the force of analogy has remade many of them in the image of weak verbs, those verbs that form the preterite with a dental suffix. Sound changes like the Great Vowel Shift have also obscured some of the underlying regularity of the former classes of strong verbs. Now most of them are considered irregular verbs.

Ablaut is a common characteristic of many Indo-European languages and is also known as gradation. Latin displays ablaut in verbs such as ago (present tense), "I drive"; egi, (perfect tense), "I drove." Ablaut is a semi-regular phenomenon that affects whole classes of verbs in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit.

Indo-European had a characteristic general ablaut sequence that contrasted the vowel phonemes o/e/ə/Ø through the same root. Most philologists believe that the presence of laryngeals in the Indo-European roots, and their subsequent loss in most daughter languages, led to the development of several parallel ablaut sequences in Indo-European and its daughter languages.(e.a.) When ablaut is a regular feature of a language's grammar, it is often called vowel gradation.

The ablaut is distinguished from the phonetic influence of a succeeding vowel, called umlaut.

See also: reduplication; augment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ablaut



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#122803 02/13/04 01:58 PM
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here's Wikipedia on laryngeals:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laryngeal_theory
neat stuff. wish I had more time today to look it over...




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#122804 02/13/04 02:04 PM
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another interesting site, at least to me.
http://www.tundria.com/Linguistics/IEPhonol.htm





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#122805 02/13/04 02:26 PM
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It seems that the sound change came first and then the grammatical reanalysis. This is a process called grammaticalization and is much studied. Laryngeals are interestesting because they were posited by Saussure for the proto-language even though none of the daugther languages displayed them. Then along came Hittite, and it had an example of one laryngeal surviving. Though, Hittite may have been a sister language of PIE. Your mileage may vary.


#122806 02/13/04 02:32 PM
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Faldage Offline OP
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Thanks, cygne. I never think to look at wikipedia.

Thanks, Nuncle. You're saying that it's lost in the mists of time?


#122807 02/13/04 02:53 PM
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S'pose so. I've heard ablaut ascribed to a change in stress / tone in PIE words which why you have a bunch of e ~ o ~ null phonemes in some linguists' reconstructions of PIE phonology. OTOH, umlaut (a sibling process) is common enough in languages the world over, and (who knows) may be related to vowel harmony ...


#122808 02/13/04 03:03 PM
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vowel harmony

ooh, tell us more!



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#122809 02/14/04 01:06 AM
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Turkish and Finnish have it. The way it works in those languages is that there are X groups of vowels and endings have to match their vowel(s) with the vowels in the root / word they're attached to. Keeps things harmonious.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_harmony



#122810 02/15/04 01:01 AM
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thanks, jheem, I never knew anything like that existed. cool.



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