I like grammar.
Ablaut (noun)
A change of vowel in related words or forms, esp. in Indo-European languages, arising from differences of accent and stress in the parent language, e.g. in sing, sang, sung. [German]
4 Comments
Comments are closed.
Personal Fulfillment, Anti-hustle Productivity, Solopreneur Success
so, would petty / petit count? Or is petty just a corruption?
Great question, Liz! Until you mentioned this, I honestly never made the connection between petty and petit. That’s awesome that that’s where it came from.
I checked it in the dictionary and online, and there doesn’t seem to be much information for if it’s an ablaut. But I don’t think that it would be – “petty” is more of a VARIATION on the word “petit”, particularly because the tense doesn’t change.
…I THINK, anyways 🙂 But it might be. Hmm. Must find someone who has expertise in recognizing ablauts, methinks.
You could be right. I’ll have a look at it as well. I reckon it’s one of those words where the English version just got stuck on one narrow meaning of ‘petit’ while the French verion stayed full and flexible. It’s fascinating how language changes, though, isn’t it? I was reading some 19th century novel the other week where ‘nervous’ meant ‘full of nerve’, as in bold, or daring, so the sentence had come to mean the exact opposite of what the author intended.
Really? Cool! Language and the meaning of the phrases that we use adapt so much. It makes you really wonder if perhaps authors from a few centures ago meant something completely different than what we read into their work nowadays.