Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A vowel change, characteristic of Indo-European languages, that accompanies a change in grammatical function; for example, i, a, u in sing, sang, sung.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In philology, a substitution of one vowel for another in the body of the root of a word, accompanying a modification of use or meaning: as, bind, band, bound, bond, German bund; more especially, the change of a vowel to indicate tense-change in strong verbs, instead of the addition of a syllable (-ed), as in weak verbs: as, get, gat, got; sink, sank, sunk.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Philol.) The substitution of one root vowel for another, thus indicating a corresponding modification of use or meaning; vowel permutation; as,
get ,gat ,got ;sing ,song ;hang ,hung .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a vowel whose quality or length is changed to indicate linguistic distinctions (such as sing sang sung song)
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
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Examples
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They exhibit perfectly the features of quantitative ablaut, which is the older form.
Diachrony of PIE 2008
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They exhibit perfectly the features of quantitative ablaut, which is the older form.
Diachrony of PIE 2008
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'Some words of this root in some languages have zero grade so it must be from the Genitive with ablaut.'
Missing honey 2010
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No ablaut in a Greek noun can not be used as evidence that it isn't Indo-European.
Missing honey 2010
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While the word is still clearly of foreign origin it is no surprised that we have no ablaut in the root.
Missing honey 2010
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And ablaut in the root of consonant stems is unheard of in any form of Greek.
Missing honey 2010
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Hittite and Greek do show words with ablaut. βλιττω is difficult to explain any differently.
Missing honey 2010
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I'm sure this wasn't the implication of what you were trying to say, as you must be aware that root-ablaut in Greek is non-existent in Greek.
Missing honey 2010
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I doubt ablaut was still a productive system at the time that one could speak of 'Greek'.
Missing honey 2010
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"Hittite and Greek do show words with ablaut. βλιττω is difficult to explain any differently."
Missing honey 2010
reesetee commented on the word ablaut
A vowel change, characteristic of Indo-European languages, that accompanies a change in grammatical function: for example, the i, a, and u in sing, sang, sung.
August 24, 2007
colleen commented on the word ablaut
fantastic word, and it reminded me to add bliaut, which is not at all similiar.
August 25, 2007
reesetee commented on the word ablaut
Oooh! Nice word too! Thanks, colleen.
August 27, 2007
heypacksees commented on the word ablaut
Ablaut (aka apophony) occurs across Indo-European, and is the reason behind English sing / sang / sung / song. While umlaut (aka regressive metaphony) occurs in Germanic, and is the reason behind English foot / feet.
August 21, 2020