Stem vowel

In linguistics, stem vowels are understood to mean two different concepts:

• the vowel of a word root or a word stem , which changes with umlaut or ablaut ; Examples:

Umlaut for nouns: shot - shot; Throw - Throws or ablaut in strong verbs:

fall fell fallen; see - saw - seen .

• a vowel (also vowel , characteristic vowel , subject vowel ) attached to the root word is appended and together with this the stem forms; it characterizes the end of the word stem of strong (vocal) declination classes, which is why one speaks of "a-declination", "i-declination" etc.

The a-declension in Germanic includes, for example, the Gothic word dags 'the day'; the stem vowel appears in the inflectional ending -ans of the accusative plural dagans 'die Tage'. (The term "a-declination" is based on the sound level of Germanic, not that of the later Germanic languages.)

literature

• Helmut Glück (Ed.), With the collaboration of Friederike Schmöe : Metzler Lexikon Sprache. 3rd, revised edition. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2005, ISBN 3-476-02056-8 .
• Hans Krahe : Germanic Linguistics II: Form theory . de Gruyter, Berlin 1967, p. 8ff.

Web links

Wiktionary: stem vowel  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations