Dental suffix

The term dental suffix occasionally in Linguistics ( Linguistics ago) and refers to a suffix (ie a word ending), the consonant a Dental is (an educated on the teeth consonant). (Compare for example the article irregular verb .)

Example from German

In German, the past tense ( preterita ) of weak verbs are dental suffixes ( dental preterite ). The past tense of “play” is in the 3rd person singular indicative: “played”. If you break this word down into its components ( morph ), you get: "spiel-te", where "-t-" is the dental suffix : [t] is sometimes defined as dental. The formation of the simple past of weak verbs with a dental suffix is ​​a novelty of the Germanic languages, which distinguishes them from the other Indo-European languages.

This designation is not entirely correct for German, since the consonant [t] in German is an alveolar , that is, it is formed on the dental dam and not directly on the teeth.

literature

• Helmut Glück (editor): Metzler Lexicon Language. 4th, updated and revised edition. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2010, ISBN 978-3-476-02335-3 , article: “Dentalsuffix”.

Web links

Wiktionary: Dental suffix  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hans Krahe: Germanic Linguistics II: Forms. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1967, page 124.