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In linguistics, apophony is an alternation of vowel (quality) within a word that indicates grammar (often inflectional). It is also known as ablaut, ( vowel) gradation, ( vowel) mutation, alternation, internal modification, stem modification, stem alternation, replacive morphology, stem mutation, or internal inflection.
The difference in these vowels marks variously a difference in tense or aspect (e.g. sing/sang/sung), Transitive verb ( rise/raise), part of speech ( sing/song), or grammatical number ( goose/geese).
That these sound alternations function grammatically can be seen as they are often equivalent to grammatical Affix (an external modification). Compare the following:
| jump | jump |
| sng | sng |
| book | book |
| gse | gse |
The vowel alternation between i and a indicates a difference between present and past tense in the pair sing/sang. Here the past tense is indicated by the vowel a just as the past tense is indicated on the verb jump with the past tense suffix -ed. Likewise, the plural suffix -s on the word books has the same grammatical function as the presence of the vowel ee in the word geese (where ee alternates with oo in the pair goose/geese).
Consonants, too, can alternate in ways that are used grammatically. An example is the pattern in English of verb-noun pairs with related meanings but differing in voicing of a postvocalic consonant:
| advie | advie |
| beliee | belie |
| breae (phonetically: ) | brea (phonetically: ) |
| gie | git |
| houe (phonetically: ) | houe (phonetically: ) |
| lie | lie |
| rie | rit |
| ue (phonetically: ) | ue (phonetically: ) |
| weae | wet |
| wreae (phonetically: ) | wrea (phonetically: ) |
Most instances of apophony develop historically from changes due to phonological assimilation that are later grammaticalized (or morphologized) when the environment causing the assimilation is lost. Such is the case with English goose/geese and breath/breathe.
The sound alternations may be used or derivationally. The particular function of a given alternation will depend on the language.
| 'field/fields' | () | ||
| 'frame/frames' | () |
The vowel alternation may involve more than just a change in vowel quality. In Athabaskan languages, such as Navajo language, verbs have series of stems where the vowel alternates (sometimes with an added Affix) indicating a different tense-aspect. Navajo vowel ablaut, depending on the verb, may be a change in vowel, vowel length, nasalization, and/or tone. For example, the verb stem 'to handle an open container' has a total of 16 combinations of the 5 modes and 4 aspects, resulting in 7 different verb stem forms (i.e. , , , , , , ).
| ! Imperfective
! Perfective
! Progressive- future ! Usitative- iterative ! Optative |
Another verb stem | 'to cut' has a different set of alternations and mode-aspect combinations, resulting in 3 different forms (i.e. , , ):
| ! Imperfective
! Perfective
! Progressive- future ! Usitative- iterative ! Optative |
| đây 'here' | đấy 'there' | (ngang tone–sắc tone) |
| bây giờ 'now' | bấy giờ 'then' | (ngang tone–sắc tone) |
| kia 'there' | kìa 'yonder' | (ngang tone–huyền tone) |
| cứng 'hard' | cửng '(to) have an erection' | (sắc tone–hỏi tone) |
Albanian uses different vowel lengths to indicate number and grammatical gender on nouns:(Asher 1994:1719)
| "stone" | "stones" |
| "two (masculine)" | "two (feminine)" |
English has alternating stress patterns that indicate whether related words are nouns (first syllable stressed) or verbs (second syllable stressed). This tends to be the case with words in English that came from Latin:
| cóntrast | contrást |
| cónvict | convíct |
| ínsult | insúlt |
| óbject | objéct |
| pérmit | permít |
| pérvert | pervért |
| récord | recórd |
| súbject | subjéct |
Prosodic alternations are sometimes analyzed as not as a type of apophony but rather as prosodic , which are known, variously, as suprafixes, superfixes, or simulfixes.
| lu ba 'to be lost' | lu fya 'to cause to be lost' |
| ko ma 'to be deaf' | ko mya 'to cause to be deaf' |
| po na 'to fall' | po nya 'to cause to fall' |
| en da 'to walk' | ende sha 'to cause to walk' |
| lun ga 'to hunt' | lun sha 'to cause to hunt' |
| ku la 'to grow' | ku sha 'to cause to grow' |
Celtic languages are well known for their initial consonant mutations.
To cite a few other examples of Indo-European ablaut, English language has a certain class of English verbs, called strong verbs, in which the vowel changes to indicate a different grammatical tense-aspect.
| (i-a-u) phonetically: |
| (a-e-a) phonetically: |
| (i-o-i) phonetically: |
As the examples above show, a change in the vowel of the verb stem creates a different verb form. Some of the verbs also have a affix in the past participle form.
Germanic a-mutation is a process analogous to umlaut, but involving the influence of a low vowel such as causing a high vowel in the stem to lower.
From a diachronic (historical) perspective, the distinction between ablaut and umlaut is very important, particularly in the Germanic languages, as it indicates where and how a specific vowel alternation originates. It is also important when taking a synchronic (descriptive) perspective on old Germanic languages such as Old English, as umlaut was still a very regular and productive process at the time. When taking a synchronic perspective on modern languages, however, both processes appear very similar. For example, the alternations seen in sing/sang/sung and foot/feet both appear to be morphologically conditioned (e.g. the alternation appears in the plural or past tense, but not the singular or present tense) and phonologically unpredictable.
By analogy, descriptive linguists discussing synchronic grammars sometimes employ the terms ablaut and umlaut, using ablaut to refer to morphological vowel alternation generally (which is unpredictable phonologically) and umlaut to refer to any type of regressive vowel harmony (which is phonologically predictable). Ambiguity can be avoided by using alternative terms ( apophony, gradation, alternation, internal modification for ablaut; vowel harmony for umlaut) for the broader sense of the words.
| B üch er 'books' |
| H äus er 'houses' |
Here the singular/plural distinction is indicated through umlaut and additionally by a suffix -er in the plural form. English also displays similar forms with a -ren suffix in the plural and a -en suffix in the past participle forms along with the internal vowel alternation:
| ch ild ren (plural) |
| dr iv en (past participle) |
Chechen language features this as well:
| л аьм наш l ämn aš 'mountains' |
| м етт анаш m ettan aš 'languages' |
A more complicated example comes from Chickasaw where the positive/negative distinction in verbs displays vowel ablaut along with prefixation () and infixation ():
| 'I'm dancing' | 'I'm not dancing' |
| 'he wrote' | () | |
| 'it was written' | () | |
| 'he writes' | () | |
| 'it is written' | () | |
| 'writing (active participle); writer' | () | |
| 'writers' | () | |
| 'written' | () | |
| '(act of) writing' | () | |
| 'book' | () | |
| 'books' | () | |
| 'he corresponded with' | () | |
| 'he caused to write' | () | |
| 'he was caused to write' | () |
Other analyses of these languages consider the patterns not to be sound alternations, but rather discontinuous roots with discontinuous affixes, known as (sometimes considered or ). Some theoretical perspectives call up the notion of morphological templates or morpheme "skeletons".
It would also be possible to analyze English in this way as well, where the alternation of goose/geese could be explained as a basic discontinuous root g-se that is filled out with an infix -oo- "(singular)" or -ee- "(plural)". Many would consider this type of analysis for English to be less desirable as this type of infixal morphology is not very prevalent throughout English and the morphemes -oo- and -ee- would be exceedingly rare.
This usage of the term morpheme (which is actually describing a replacement process, and not a true morpheme), however, is more in keeping with Item-and-Process models of morphology instead of Item-and-Arrangement models.
The pattern of vowel alternation in English follows a front vowel to back vowel vowel order, which among means a subset of , as in:
In many Turkic languages the vowel pattern is low vowel to high vowel, as in Turkish (which follows the English patten) and (which contravenes it).Ido, Shinji. 2009. "Vowel alternation in disyllabic reduplicatives" Poster presented at the International Conference on Minority Languages XII. University of Tartu.Ido, Shinji. 2011. "Vowel alternation in disyllabic reduplicatives: An areal dimension" Eesti ja Soome-Ugri Keeleteaduse Ajakiri (Journal of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics). 2 (1): 185–193.Ido, Shinji. 2009. "Divanü Lügati't-Türk'teki Yansımalı Kelimelerde Ünlü Nöbetleşmesi" Akademik Araştırmalar Dergisi (Journal of Academic Studies). 10 (39): 263-272.
Examples from Japanese include:
Examples from Chinese include:
Some languages do not appear to have a preferred order, for example Mongolian with both p ay-p uy and p uy-p ay.
See also
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