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    340 views6 pages

    Ablaut & Umlaut: Vowel Sound Change

    Uploaded by

    narayananakhila

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    of 6

    Ablaut & Umlaut

    Vowel Sound Change


    Ablaut or vowel gradation
    • It refers to the change (gradation) in the vowel sound, especially in the root (basic
    form) of a word when the word is modified to give it a new grammatical function.
    • So for instance we have in modern English
    • Drink – drank
    • Run – ran

    • In the above examples the vowel sound undergoes a change.


    • The change in vowel also depended on whether they appeared in stressed or
    unstressed syllable in strong verbs
    • Strong verbs are those verbs where change in vowel indicates the change in tense
    form, like in the above case. Weak forms are those formed by adding suffix –ed, --d
    etc.
    • This was observed in PIE and PG languages and was mainly due to fee
    accentuation i.e the stress could fall on any syllable.
    • There two ways in which the change manifested—
    • Qualitative- one vowel changes to another– drink- drank
    • Quantitative– the vowel might change from long to short or short to long

    • The text shows six ablaut series


    Umlaut- i/j mutation
    • From German– ‘Laut’- means sound, ‘um’- moving around, or making something
    different, move from one place to the other
    • IN this case it means to make a sound different
    • It referred to the change in vowels in accented syllables due to the influence of
    nearby vowel
    • There are several such mutations but the one we need to look at is Front Mutation
    or Palatal Umlaut or i/j mutation which took place in OE. (i/j are front vowels)
    • Front mutation refers to the fronting of the back vowel due to the presence of i/j
    in the following syllable. This i/j is either eventually dropped or changed to /e/.
    This can happen also in diphthongs if one of the element of the two us a back
    vowel and is followed by i/j later
    • For example when it came to plural form in Germanic it was formed
    by adding –iz
    • Mann + iz –> manniz > men(now here /a/ is a back vowel and /i/ is a front
    vowel so in the course of time the back vowel moved to front and became /e/
    and /i/ was dropped.
    • Mus + iz  musiz > mice

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