ABSTRACT
Syntactic construction in Latin for abbreviating subordinate clauses. The ablative absolute is not valence-bound (and is thus ‘absolute’) and consists of a noun in the ablative case as well as an attributive participle, noun or adjective which is dependent on it: Tarquinio regnante ‘when Tarquinius was king’ or ‘during the reign of Tarquinius’; trānquillo mari ‘during calm at sea.’ ( also case)
References
case
German term for a systematic morphophonemic alternation ( morphophonemics) of certain vowels in etymologically related words in Indo-European languages. The term has been used in this sense since Grimm (1819). Prior to that, it had been used pejoratively for any kind of vowel irregularity. (The Greek term ‘apophony,’ used in some languages, is a loan translation of Grimm’s term: apó ‘away from,’ ‘tone.’) Originally, ablaut was purely phonetic-phonological; it was later morphologized ( morphologization), especially in Germanic, where ablaut indicates tense differences in the inflection of strong verbs ( strong vs weak verb), e.g. sing-sang-sung or other processes of word formation, e.g. song. Depending on the type of vowel alternation, one can distinguish between the following: (a) Qualitative ablaut (also ‘Abtönung’), in which there is a change from e (in a few cases also from a) to o, cf. Greek phér-ō ‘I bear, carry’: phor-éō ‘I carry repeatedly’ ( iterative): am(phi)-phor-eús ‘vessel with two handles for carrying,’ which all go back to a common IE root *bher-‘to bear, carry.’ (b) Quantitative ablaut (also ‘Abstufung’), in which an alternation of the short vowels mentioned (full grade) with the respective long vowels (lengthened grade) or an elimination of the short vowels (zero grade) occurs; cf. Grk ‘thief,’ lit. ‘one who carries something off (lengthened grade), Sanskrit bhr-tí ‘bearing, carrying’ (zero grade). It is hypothesized that this system is the descendant of a previous system of different rules of stress2, in force at different times. It is assumed that qualitative ablaut results from a musical stress, quantitative ablaut from a dynamic stress.
