In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut ( AB-lowt, from German Ablaut pronounced [ˈap.laʊt]) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb sing, sang, sung and its related noun song, a paradigm inherited directly from the Proto-Indo-European stage of the language. Traces of ablaut are found in all modern Indo-European languages, though its prevalence varies greatly.
History of the concept The linguistic phenomenon of ablaut was first recorded by Sanskrit grammarians in the later Vedic period (roughly 8th century BCE), and was codified by Pāṇini in his Aṣṭādhyāyī (4th century BCE), where the terms guṇa and vṛddhi were used to describe the phenomena now known respectively as the full grade and lengthened grade. In the context of European languages, the phenomenon was first described in the early 18th century by the Dutch linguist Lambert ten Kate, in his book Gemeenschap tussen de Gottische spraeke en de Nederduytsche ("Common aspects of the Gothic and Dutch languages", 1710). The term ablaut is borrowed from German, and derives from the noun Laut "sound", and the prefix ab-, which indicates movement downwards or away, or deviation from a norm; thus the literal meaning is "sound derivation". It was coined in this sense in 1819 by the German linguist Jacob Grimm in his Deutsche Grammatik, though the word had been used before him. In particular, the 17th-century grammarian Schottelius had used the word negatively to suggest that German verbs lacked the sophistication of the classics, but there is no hint of this disdain in Grimm or in modern scholarly usage. In English, the term became established through the 1845 translation of Bopp's Comparative Grammar.
Ablaut and vowel gradation
Vowel gradation is any vowel difference between two related words (such as photograph [ˈfoʊtəgrɑːf] and photography [fəˈtɒgrəfi]) or two forms of the same word (such as man and men). The difference does not need to be indicated in the spelling. There are many kinds of vowel gradation in English and other languages, which are discussed generally in the article apophony. Some involve a variation in vowel length (quantitative gradation: photograph / photography shows reduction of the first vowel to a schwa), others in vowel coloring (qualitative gradation: man / men) and others the complete disappearance of a vowel (reduction to zero: could not → couldn't). For the study of European languages, one of the most important instances of vowel gradation is the Indo-European ablaut, remnants of which can be seen in the English verbs ride, rode, ridden, or fly, flew, flown. For simply learning English grammar, it is enough to note that these verbs are irregular, but understanding why they have unusual forms that seem irregular (and indeed why they are actually perfectly regular within their own terms) requires an understanding of the grammar of the reconstructed proto-language. Ablaut is the oldest and most extensive single source of vowel gradation in the Indo-European languages and must be distinguished clearly from other forms of gradation, which developed later, such as Germanic umlaut (man / men, goose / geese, long / length) or the results of modern English word-stress patterns (man / woman, photograph / photography). Confusingly, in some contexts, the terms 'ablaut', 'vowel gradation', 'apophony' and 'vowel alternation' are used synonymously, especially in synchronic comparisons, but historical linguists prefer to keep 'ablaut' for the specific Indo-European phenomenon, which is the meaning intended by the linguists who first coined the word.
Ablaut grades In Proto-Indo-European the basic, inherent vowel of most syllables was a short e. Ablaut is the name of the process whereby this short e changed, becoming short o, long ē, long ō, or sometimes disappearing entirely to leave no vowel at all. Thus, ablaut results in the alternation of the following sounds:
If a syllable had a short e, it is said to be in the "e-grade" or "full grade". When it had no vowel, it is said to be in the "zero grade". Syllables with long vowels are said to be in "lengthened grade". (When the e-grade or the o-grade is referred to, the short vowel forms are meant.) A classic example of the five grades of ablaut in a single root is provided by the different case forms of two closely related Greek words. In the following table, an acute accent (´) marks the syllable carrying the word stress, a macron (¯) marks long vowels, and the syllable in bold is the one illustrating the different vowel gradations.
In this unusually neat example, the following can be seen:
A switch to the zero-grade when the word stress moves to the following syllable. A switch to the o-grade when the word stress moves to the preceding syllable. A lengthening of the vowel when the syllable is in word-final position before a sonorant. As with most reconstructions, however, scholars differ about the details of this example. One way to think of this system is to suppose that Proto-Indo-European originally had only one vowel, short e, and over time it changed according to phonetic context. Thus, the language started to develop a more complex vowel system. It has often been speculated that an original e-grade underwent two changes in some phonetic environments: under certain circumstances, it changed to o (the o-grade) and in others, it disappeared entirely (the zero-grade). However, that is not certain: the phonetic conditions that controlled ablaut have never been determined, and the position of the word stress may not have been a key factor at all. There are many counterexamples to the proposed rules: *deywós and its nominative plural *deywóes show pretonic and posttonic e-grade, respectively, and *wĺ̥kʷos has an accented zero grade.
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