Tuesday, May 04, 2021

Defining Ablaut/Compensatory Lengthening

After reading books on ablaut and compensatory lengthening for a couple of days, I know why I decided not to become a linguist. My head is now spinning, but for your information, compensatory lengthening has been defined in the following ways:


https://www.yourdictionary.com/compensatory-lengthening:

"compensatory-lengthening. (linguistics) The lengthening of a vowel sound which occurs when a following consonant is lost, an extreme form of fusion exhibited for example by many non-rhotic British dialects of English, which drop the /ɹ/ from /ɑɹt/ but compensatorily lengthen the /ɑ/, resulting in /ɑːt/ ('art')."

https://www.laits.utexas.edu/phonology/turkish/turk_compens_length.html:

"In cases of compensatory lengthening, a vowel is lengthened following the deletion of a consonant or vowel that was present in the underlying representation. Compensatory lengthening (CL) is often recorded as a sound change from one stage of a language to another."

Dictionary.com:

"noun Grammar.

(in Indo-European languages) regular alternation in the internal phonological structure of a word element, especially alternation of a vowel, that is coordinated with a change in grammatical function or combination, as in English sing, sang, sung, song; apophony."

On the subject of Bill Mounce and ablaut, see https://jktauber.com/2019/11/21/mounce-on-ablaut-or-not/

Mounce defines ablaut as vowel length change, whether the change is quantitative or qualitative: his definition chiefly applies to ancient Greek.

2 comments:

Roman said...

This is just barely relevant to the post, the only connection is linguistics, I don't know really anything about linugistics, but I am aware of Noam Chomsky's theories of universal grammar, and the idea that language is primarily for thought, abstract and conceptual thought, rather than communication. I've heard some people also claim (though he would deny it) that his theories on language are a major problem for evolution; he says language does not evolve, you either have the entire linguistic ability, or none of it.

Edgar Foster said...

I studied Chomsky about a decade ago and taught some of his pieces in a human nature class. He is famous for postulating the LAD (language acquisition device) and universal grammar and Chomskyan transformational grammar was revolutionary. But I think you're correct, that Chomsky accepts evolution, including the evolution of language. See https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763416305796?casa_token=G5s2w-fE9skAAAAA:_TS4l-xQeTbjL6-jhpQ4xoO1XbBkQfCwmJr0V4KDS9i49d3p47IFrUA8MhMMeMNSgdheMpZGcg