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Crasis (; from the Greek , "mixing", "blending"); cf. , "I mix" ''wine with water''; '' kratēr'' "mixing-bowl" is related. is a type of
contraction Contraction may refer to: Linguistics * Contraction (grammar), a shortened word * Poetic contraction, omission of letters for poetic reasons * Elision, omission of sounds ** Syncope (phonology), omission of sounds in a word * Synalepha, merged ...
in which two vowels or diphthongs merge into one new vowel or
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...
, making one word out of two ( univerbation). Crasis occurs in many languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, and
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
; it was first described in
Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...
. In some cases, as in the French examples, crasis involves the grammaticalization of two individual lexical items into one. However, in other cases, like in the Greek examples, crasis is the orthographic representation of the encliticization and the vowel reduction of one grammatical form with another. The difference between them is that the Greek examples involve two
grammatical words In linguistics, function words (also called functors) are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning and express grammatical relationships among other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker. ...
and a single
phonological word The phonological word or prosodic word (also called pword, PrWd; symbolised as ω) is a constituent in the phonological hierarchy higher than the syllable and the foot but lower than intonational phrase and the phonological phrase. It is largely ...
, but the French examples involve a single phonological word and grammatical word.


Greek

In both Ancient and
Modern Greek Modern Greek (, , or , ''Kiní Neoellinikí Glóssa''), generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek (, ), refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the ...
, crasis merges a small word and long word that are closely connected in meaning. In Ancient Greek, a coronis ( ''korōnís'' "curved"; plural ''korōnídes'') marks the vowel from crasis. In ancient times, it was an apostrophe placed after the vowel (), but it is now written over the vowel () and is identical to
smooth breathing The smooth breathing ( grc, ψιλὸν πνεῦμα, psilòn pneûma; ell, ψιλή ''psilí''; la, spīritus lēnis) is a diacritical mark used in polytonic orthography. In Ancient Greek, it marks the absence of the voiceless glottal fric ...
in
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
. (For instance, uses the character ; ''psili'' means smooth breathing.) Unlike a coronis, smooth breathing never occurs on a vowel in the middle of a word although it occurs in a doubled
rho Rho (uppercase Ρ, lowercase ρ or ; el, ρο or el, ρω, label=none) is the 17th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 100. It is derived from Phoenician letter res . Its uppercase form uses the sa ...
: ''pyrrhos''. The
article Article often refers to: * Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness * Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication Article may also refer to: ...
undergoes crasis with nouns and adjectives that start with a vowel: * "my (affairs)" * "on the contrary" * "the same" * (plural of the previous example) καί undergoes crasis with the first-person singular pronoun and produces a long vowel: * "and I", "I too" * "and to me" In the modern
monotonic orthography Greek orthography has used a variety of diacritics starting in the Hellenistic period. The more complex polytonic orthography ( el, πολυτονικό σύστημα γραφής, translit=polytonikó sýstīma grafī́s), which includes fiv ...
, the coronis is not written.


French

In French, the contractions of determiners are often the results of a vocalisation and a crasis: * ''de le'' → ''du'', ''de les'' → ''des'' * ''à le'' → ''au'', ''à les'' → ''aux'' * ''en les'' → ''ès'' (archaic)


Portuguese

The most frequently-observed crasis is now the contraction of the preposition ''a'' ("to" or "at") with the feminine singular definite article ''a'' ("the"), indicated in writing with a
grave accent The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian and many other western European languages, as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other languages usin ...
or the masculine singular definite article ''o'' (also "the"). For example, instead of ''*Vou a a praia'' ("I go to the beach"), one says ''Vou à praia'' ("I go to-the beach"). The contraction turns the
clitic In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a ...
''a'' into the stressed word ''à''. Meanwhile, a person going to a bank, a supermarket or a marketplace would say respectively ''Vou ao banco'', ''Vou ao supermercado'' or ''Vou à feira''. Crasis also occurs between the preposition ''a'' and
demonstrative Demonstratives ( abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular fram ...
such as when the preposition precedes ''aquele(s)'', ''aquela(s)'' (meaning "that", "those", in different genders), which contract to ''àquele(s)'', ''àquela(s)''. The accent marks a
secondary stress Secondary stress (or obsolete: secondary accent) is the weaker of two degrees of stress in the pronunciation of a word, the stronger degree of stress being called ''primary''. The International Phonetic Alphabet symbol for secondary stress is ...
in Portuguese. In addition, the crasis ''à'' is pronounced lower as than the article or preposition ''a'', as , in the examples in standard
European Portuguese European Portuguese ( pt, português europeu, ), also known as Portuguese of Portugal ( Portuguese: português de Portugal), Iberian Portuguese ( Portuguese: português ibérico), and Peninsular Portuguese ( Portuguese: português peninsular), re ...
, but the qualitative distinction is not made by most speakers in
Brazilian Portuguese Brazilian Portuguese (' ), also Portuguese of Brazil (', ) or South American Portuguese (') is the set of varieties of the Portuguese language native to Brazil and the most influential form of Portuguese worldwide. It is spoken by almost all of ...
(some dialects, like
Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...
's ''fluminense'', are exceptions and make the distinction). Crasis is very important since it can change the meaning of a sentence: * ''Exposta, a polícia'' - The police is exposed * ''Exposta à polícia'' - She is exposed to the police * ''Glória, a rainha'' - Glória the queen * ''Glória à rainha'' - Glory to the queen * ''Dê a mulher'' - Give the woman * ''Dê à mulher'' - Give to the woman These rules determine whether crasis always applies or whether one may use the contraction ''à'' (with an accent) instead of the preposition ''a'' (without an accent): Replace the preposition ''a'' by another preposition, as ''em'' ("in") or ''para'' ("to"). If after replacement, the definite article ''a'' ("the") is still possible, crasis applies: * ''Pedro viajou à Região Nordeste'': with a grave accent because it equivalent to "Pedro traveled 'to the' Northeast Region". Here, ''para a Região Nordeste'' could also be used. * ''O autor dedicou o livro a sua esposa'': without a grave accent in Brazilian Portuguese because it is equivalent to "The author dedicated the book 'to' his wife". A consistent use, according to the rules in
Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
would not allow ''para a sua esposa'' to be used instead. In European Portuguese, the rules are different, and it is ''O autor dedicou o livro à sua esposa'', but in English, both sentences have the same meaning. If the nominal complement is changed after "a" from a feminine noun to a masculine noun, and it is now necessary to use 'ao' as used naturally by native speakers, crasis applies: * ''Prestou relevantes serviços à comunidade'', ''He/she paid outstanding services to the community'': with a grave accent because if the object is changed to a masculine noun ("Prestou relevantes serviços ao povo" ''He/she paid outstanding services to the people''), "ao" ("to asculinethe") is now used. * "Chegarei daqui a uma hora" ''I will arrive in an hour'': without crasis because when the feminine noun is changed to a masculine noun ("Chegarei daqui a um minuto" ''I will arrive in a minute''), there is no "ao" (as "um/uma", indefinite articles, appear instead of "o/a"). The grave accent is never used before masculine words (nouns, pronouns, etc.); verbs; personal pronouns; numerals, plural nouns without the use of the feminine plural definite article ''as'' ("the"); city names that do not use a feminine article; the word ''casa'' ("house") if it has the meaning of one's own home; the word ''terra'' ("earth") when it has the meaning of soil; and indefinite, personal, relative or demonstrative pronouns (except the third person and ''aquele(s)'' or ''aquela(s)''); between identical nouns such as ''dia a dia'' "day by day", "everyday", "daily life", ''gota a gota'' "dropwise", "drip", and ''cara a cara'' "face to face"; and after prepositions. Here are exceptions: ''É preciso declarar guerra à guerra!'' (It is necessary to declare war on war!) ''É preciso dar mais vida à vida.'' (It is necessary to give more life to life.) Crasis also occurs between the preposition ''de'' and the definite articles. * ''de o'' → ''do'' * ''de a'' → ''da'' * ''de os'' → ''dos'' * ''de as'' → ''das''


Optional crasis

The grave accent is optional in the following cases: * Before a female's first name ''Refiro-me �/aFernanda.'' (I am referring to Fernanda.) * Before a feminine possessive pronoun ''Dirija-se �/asua fazenda.'' (Go to your wnfarm.) * After the preposition ''até'' ''Dirija-se até �/aporta.'' (Go by that door.) ''Eu fui até �/aFrança de carro.'' (I traveled to
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
by car.)


Spanish

In Spanish, crasis occurs between prepositions ending in a vowel and the masculine definite article ''el''. * ''a el'' → ''al'' * ''de el'' → ''del''


See also

*
Assimilation (linguistics) Assimilation is a sound change in which some phonemes (typically consonants or vowels) change to become more similar to other nearby sounds. A common type of phonological process across languages, assimilation can occur either within a wor ...
*
Clitic In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a ...
*
Contraction (grammar) A contraction is a shortened version of the spoken and written forms of a word, syllable, or word group, created by omission of internal letters and sounds. In linguistic analysis, contractions should not be confused with crasis, abbreviation ...
*
Elision In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run toget ...
*
Liaison (French) In French, liaison () is the pronunciation of a linking consonant between two words in an appropriate phonetic and syntactic context. For example, the word ''les'' ('the') is pronounced , the word ''amis'' ('friends') is pronounced , but the ...
*
Sandhi Sandhi ( sa, सन्धि ' , "joining") is a cover term for a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on near ...


Notes and references


Notes


References

{{reflist


External links


Greek Grammar
Phonology Greek language Portuguese language es:Crasis