Re: And how's about "periphony"? (was: Apophony?)

At 2:30 am -0500 29/4/99, Tom Wier wrote:
>"Raymond A. Brown" wrote:
>
>> But if the German word is being discarded for an 'internationally'
>> Greek-formed calque, has the same happened to that other vowel modification
>> 'umlaut'?
>> The Greek prefix which is closest in meaning to German um- is 'peri'.  So
>> has the good ol' familiar 'umlaut' also become "periphony"?
>
>Well, I've never even heard of either...
..and I've discovered why - the Greek term this time is not an exact calque
of the German, but uses a rather more meaningful prefix.  I've been told by
a privare email that it's "metaphony".

That IMO is a sensible term since not only does meta- imply change but it
is derived from the ancient Greek 'meta' = "after".  And umlaut, of course,
is a change of vowel caused by a (usually) lost vowel that came in the
syllable _after_ the affected vowel.

Ray.