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 Alleged editor (talk · contribs) 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)