Re: Apophony?

At 10:20 PM 4/27/99 +0100, Raymond A. Brown wrote:
>
>It also explains why I've not found the word (so far) in any linguistics
>book I've tried.
>---------------------------------------------------------
>
>At 4:27 pm -0400 27/4/99, Josh Roth wrote:
>[.....]
>>Well, I did some searching on the WWW and it seems to be just another word
>>for ablaut.
>
>Yeah - I sort of got the idea that it might be a fancy term for good ol'
>ablaut. Come to think of - why didn't I notice it before!!! - Isn't it just
>a 'Graecizing' of the German word?
>
>Ab- I suppose is 'translated' apo- . Both prefixes can mean 'away (from)'
>and both are derived from a common PIE ancestor.
>And -laut is rendered as '-phony'!
>
>Should've forgotten ancient Greek - the word is modern (thinks: "I wonder
>if 'apofonia' is modern Greek for 'ablaut'?")
>
>I guess what these guys mean when they use 'apophony' in connexion with
>Semitic broken plurals and postulated vowel gradations in "ProtoNostratic"
>(or any other Proto- ) is "vowel gradation similar to IE ablaut".
>
>Ray.
>
I just found "apophony" in _The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics_ by
P.H. Matthews (Oxford University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-19-280008-6) (which I
just bought; this is the first time I've actually used it).  It gives a
one-word definition: " = ablaut".

- Tim (another amateur)

-------------------------------------------------
Tim Smith
timsmith@global2000.net

Get your facts first and then you can distort them as you please.
- Mark Twain