Talk:Indo-European ablaut

Is ablaut still productive?
Are there any languages, spoken today, that still use ablaut productively in any systematic way? I know that Germanic languages sometimes create analogical "ablaut" forms, like snuck from sneak, but this is hardly systematic and mostly haphazard. Rua (mew) 21:46, 21 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Readers of Wikipedia in English will mostly be familiar with the English language. Ablaut is still evident here in the principal parts of the strong verbs. Forms like "snuck" (past tense from sneak) and "smole" (past tense of smile) are still created for humorous purposes, since we all know that the weak past tenses (sneaked and smiled) are the normal forms.


 * We can see the process of ablaut at work in compound words, where removal of stress leads to a diphthong being replaced by a simple vowel: e.g. "repair" but "irreparable"; "maintain" but "maintenance." "ai" appears to lead to "a" in the first case, but "e" in the second, however as unstressed vowels they would usually sound the same.


 * However this is not an invariable rule in English: i.e. it is not "systematic." NRPanikker (talk) 18:09, 18 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Ablaut is not productive in any modern language. There are many examples of isolated forms that look like ablaut being produced by analogy (levelling), such as random Germanic weak verbs becoming strong (not only for humourous effect), though overwhelmingly the movement is in the other direction, with ablaut forms disappearing, such as Germanic strong verbs becoming weak. But analogy is quite a different process from gradation patterns being inherited from the Indo-European vowel system. --Doric Loon (talk) 03:11, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Who invented the word "ablaut"?
The Online Etymology Dictionary claims the word is invented by J.P. Zweigel in 1568. Apparently the person in question was Johann Peter Zwengel; his 1568 book was this one. ''--- unsigned comment by on 17 November 2020.
 * Thank you, this is very helpful. I will work some of it into the article. --Doric Loon (talk) 17:08, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Which Greek in the "πα-τέρ-α" example?
It's presumably one of the Ancient Greek variants, but some indication of the timeline and maybe dialect would be nice, eg, Mycenian, Attic, Koine. I don't see references that would indicate which, and the "Articles containing Ancient Greek (to 1453)-language text" doesn't narrow it down any. The Crab Who Played With The Sea (talk) 03:35, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi, for comparative linguistics, Greek almost always means the Classical Greek of Plato et al., unless otherwise stated. Mycenaean is older, but poorly attested, so that it is harder to make definite claims about many details. Koine is later and there would normally be no advantage in citing it. --Doric Loon (talk) 14:55, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
 * So, Attic? The Crab Who Played With The Sea (talk) 00:29, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 16 June 2024

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. Retracted per existing longstanding consensus I wasn't aware of. Remsense 诉  17:17, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Indo-European ablaut → Ablaut – It's the natural WP:COMMONNAME in English, being adequately specific and more concise. Remsense 诉  20:08, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Note: WikiProject Linguistics has been notified of this discussion. Remsense  诉  20:09, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Oppose. The term "ablaut" is widely used outside of IE studies to refer to similar kinds of vowel apophony; there's also "consonantal ablaut" and even "tonal ablaut". E.g., ablaut is a typological hallmark of Penutian languages and "ablaut" has become the default term to describe it. Starting with Edward Sapir's Takelma grammar (or maybe even earlier), there is a long tradition of using the term for non-IE languages, such as Athabaskan, Uto-Aztecan, Oto-Manguean, Nilotic, Austronesian languages and many others. –Austronesier (talk) 20:53, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
 * In that case, would it be reasonable to point Ablaut somewhere else? Remsense  诉  12:29, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * @Remsense No. We had this discussion at length many years ago, though not on this page. Ablaut in its narrowest and original technical sense refers to Indo-European ablaut. Using it loosely as a synonym for apophony, and using umlaut, gradation, mutation, alternation, and replacive morphology as further synonyms, is not really terribly helpful. Then you just have a glut of terms and no distinctions. I get why linguists in other branches, who have very different concerns, might feel comfortable conflating this, and that's OK, but it is good to keep the primary use clear. The compromise we reached was that the head of this article points to apophony, several times actually, to make it easy for anyone who lands here by accident to find the more general use. If you think that's not enough, you are welcome to create a hatnote. Doric Loon (talk) 17:15, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you for explaining this to me, as I wasn't there at the time. I briefly checked to see if the page was moved before, but apparently the tool I used didn't say. Remsense  诉  17:16, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I vaguely remember that originally this article was called "Ablaut", and was moved here for precisely the reasons Austronesier mentions. Doric Loon (talk) 11:00, 17 June 2024 (UTC)