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Part of
The Form of Structure, the Structure of Form: Essays in honor of Jean Lowenstamm
Edited by Sabrina Bendjaballah, Noam Faust, Mohamed Lahrouchi and Nicola Lampitelli
[Language Faculty and Beyond 12] 2014
► pp. 67–82

Understanding what has happened 
with the ablaut

A chapter from linguistics

| LLL, Université d’Orléans
This article first examines the status of ablaut in comparative Indo-European linguistics, especially in Franz Bopp (Vocalismus, oder sprachvergleichende Kritiken), Jakob Grimm, Karl Brugmann, Ferdinand de Saussure (Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes) and Jan Baudouin de Courtenay (Versuch einer Theorie phonetischer Alternationen). The existence of affixation in this language family led to the denial of a morphology based on ablaut until 1870s. It is then shown that following the redefinition of the relationship between phonology and morphology in SPE, analyses of Afro-Asiatic languages (especially Jean Lowenstamm’s apophonic path) shed new light on the matter.
Published online: 17 December 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lfab.12.06ber
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