Crasis - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Crasis is a type of contraction

Synalepha

A synalepha or synaloepha is the merging of two syllables into one, especially when it causes two words to be pronounced as one.The original meaning in Greek is more general than modern usage, and also includes coalescence of vowels within a word...

in which two vowels or diphthongs merge into one new vowel or diphthong — making one word out of two. Crasis occurs in Portuguese

Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

and Arabic

Arabic language

Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

as well as in Ancient Greek, where it was first described.

French

In French, the contractions of determiners are often the results of a vocalisation

Speech production

Speech production is the process by which spoken words are selected to be produced, have their phonetics formulated and then finally are articulated by the motor system in the vocal apparatus...

and a crasis.

For example :

de le → du ;
de les → des ;
à le → au ;
en les → ès.

Greek

In both Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

and Modern Greek

Modern Greek

Modern Greek refers to the varieties of the Greek language spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic...

, crasis merges a small word and long word that are closely connected in meaning.

A coronis (κορωνίς korōnís "curved"; plural κορωνίδες korōnídes) marks the vowel from crasis. In ancient times this was an apostrophe placed after the vowel (i.e., τα᾿μά), but today it is written over the vowel and is identical to the smooth breathing (τἀμά). Unlike a coronis, a smooth breathing never occurs on a vowel in the middle of a word (although it occurs on doubled

Gemination

In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant. Gemination is distinct from stress and may appear independently of it....

rho

Rho (letter)

Rho is the 17th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 100. It is derived from Semitic resh "head"...

: διάῤῥοια diarrhoea).

The article undergoes crasis with various nouns and adjectives starting in a vowel: "my (affairs)" "on the contrary" "the same" (plural)

καί undergoes crasis with forms of the first-person singular pronoun, producing a long ᾱ (here not written, since it occurs with a coronis): "and I", "I too" "and to me"

In modern monotonic orthography, the coronis is not written.

Greek contraction

Crasis in English usually refers to merging of words, but in Greek it was more general, and referred to most changes called "contraction" in Greek grammar. (But a contraction in which vowels do not change is synaeresis

Synaeresis

In linguistics, synaeresis or syneresis is a sound change by which two vowels are pronounced together rather than separately...

.)

In Greek contraction, two vowels merge to form a long version of one of the two vowels (e + a → ā), a diphthong with a different main vowel (a + ei → āi), or a new vowel intermediate between the originals (a + o → ō).

In general, the accent after contraction copies the accent before contraction. Often this means circumflex accent. But for nouns, accent follows the nominative singular. Sometimes this means a different accent from the uncontracted form — i.e., whenever the ending has a long vowel.

Contraction in Greek occurs throughout the present and imperfect of contracted verbs and in the future of other verbs. There are three categories based on the vowel of contraction: a, e, or o.

a-contract:
"honor"

τιμάω	→	τιμῶ
τιμάεις	→	τιμᾷς
τιμάει	→	τιμᾷ
τιμάομεν	→	τιμῶμεν
τιμάετε	→	τιμᾶτε
τιμάουσι	→	τιμῶσι

e-contract:
"love"

φιλέω	→	φιλῶ
φιλέεις	→	φιλεῖς
φιλέει	→	φιλεῖ
φιλέομεν	→	φιλοῦμεν
φιλέετε	→	φιλεῖτε
φιλέουσι	→	φιλοῦσι

o-contract:
"think right"

ἀξιόω	→	ἀξιῶ
ἀξιόεις	→	αξιοῖς
ἀξιόει	→	ἀξιοῖ
ἀξιόομεν	→	ἀξιοῦμεν
ἀξιόετε	→	ἀξιοῦτε
ἀξιόουσι	→	ἀξιοῦσι

Contraction also occurs in nouns, including the contracted second declension.

"bone"

singular

ὀστέον	→	ὀστοῦν
ὀστέου	→	ὀστοῦ
ὀστέῳ	→	ὀστῷ

plural

ὀστέα	→	ὀστᾶ
ὀστέων	→	ὀστῶν
ὀστέοις	→	ὀστοῖς

S-stem nouns undergo contraction with vowel endings.

-es stem

-os stem

		no contraction
	→
	→	(synaeresis)
	→
	→
		no contraction

		no contraction
	→
	→
	→

Some compound

Compound (linguistics)

In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme that consists of more than one stem. Compounding or composition is the word formation that creates compound lexemes...

nouns show contraction:

λειτο-εργίᾱ → λειτουργίᾱ "liturgy
Liturgy
Liturgy is either the customary public worship done by a specific religious group, according to its particular traditions or a more precise term that distinguishes between those religious groups who believe their ritual requires the "people" to do the "work" of responding to the priest, and those...

"

Portuguese

In Portuguese, the most frequent crasis is the contraction of the preposition a ("to" or "at") with the feminine singular definite article a ("the"), indicated in writing with a grave accent

Grave accent

The grave accent is a diacritical mark used in written Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Dutch, French, Greek , Italian, Mohawk, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic, Vietnamese, Welsh, Romansh, and other languages.-Greek:The grave accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient...

. For example, instead of *Vou a a praia ("I go to the beach"), one says Vou à praia ("I go to-the beach"). This contraction turns the clitic

Clitic

In morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...

a into the stressed word à.

Crasis also occurs between the preposition a and demonstrative

Demonstrative

In linguistics, demonstratives are deictic words that indicate which entities a speaker refers to and distinguishes those entities from others...

s: for instance, when this preposition precedes aquele(s), aquela(s) (meaning "that", "those", in different genders), they contract to àquele(s), àquela(s). In this case, the accent marks a secondary stress

Secondary stress

Secondary stress is the weaker of two degrees of stress in the pronunciation of a word; the stronger degree of stress is called 'primary'. The International Phonetic Alphabet symbol for secondary stress is a short vertical line preceding and at the foot of the stressed syllable: the nun in ...

.

In addition, the vowel à is pronounced lower than the vowel a in these examples in standard European Portuguese, though this qualitative distinction is generally not made in Brazilian Portuguese

Brazilian Portuguese

Brazilian Portuguese is a group of Portuguese dialects written and spoken by most of the 190 million inhabitants of Brazil and by a few million Brazilian emigrants, mainly in the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Canada, Japan and Paraguay....

.

The crasis is very important and can completely change the meaning of a sentence, for example:

Exposta a polícia - The police is exposed
Exposta à polícia - She is exposed to the police

Glória a rainha - Gloria, the queen
Gloria à rainha - Hail the queen!

Dê a mulher - Give the woman (to someone)
Dê à mulher - Give the woman (something)

French

Greek

Greek contraction

Portuguese

See also