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