Ablaut

Abstract

AbstractAblaut is a phenomenon which has been well‐studied and which is found in many languages, also outside of the Indo‐European and Semitic families. This article considers ablaut of quantity and ablaut of quality. Both descriptive and historical studies of Indo‐European languages, Gothic and Kartvelian languages are provided, with a brief excursus examining ablaut in Hua (Papuan). The text then looks at a recent proposal that ablaut of quality is driven by a function known as the apophonic path. The focus here is on Classical Arabic, Kabyle Berber and German. Finally, the article concludes with coverage of less widely studied instances of ablaut, examining onomatopoeic words in English, German, French and Japanese, as well as productive reduplication processes in Turkish and Malay.