Indo-European Accent and Ablaut

Book excerpt:

Ablaut, the grammatically conditioned vowel alternations found in e.g. English sing vs. sang vs. sung, is one of the most characteristic features of the Indo-European languages. The different ablaut grades seem to be related to the position of the accent in Proto-Indo-European. A good understanding of the relationship between accent and ablaut in Proto-Indo-European requires thorough analyses of the role played by the two phenomena in the Indo-European daughter languages.

The aim of the volume is to present the state of the art in current work on accent and ablaut in Proto-Indo-European and its daughter languages. The contributors analyze the interplay between accent and ablaut with attention both to theoretical aspects and to the specific linguistic material. Presenting up-to-date overviews of the models developed by various schools of thought, the contributors discuss a wide array of empirical as well as methodological problems, thus opening up vistas for further research.