Linguaphile wrote:Thanks!
By the way, how do you make the tables? I would have done it with the ones I posted too, but I couldn't figure out how.
I think I figured out how. Giving it a try with Estonian (I know this thread started out as Saami gradation, but since it's a Uralic forum now and the title of the thread just says "full gradation", I'm going to add Estonian here too.)
Estonian has three grades of quantity. The full set of three is only distinguished in writing for the following:
For all others the spelling of Q III is identical to Q II (i.e., written as a double letter) and Q I is written as a single letter.
For grammatical purposes, it is useful to think of gradation in terms of "strong" and "weak" rather than the above three quantities. This is because a Q II consonant can be either strong or weak grade depending on the word, for example:
Q III | Q II | Q I | meaning |
sepp (strong) | sepa (weak) | - | smith |
- | karp (strong) | karbi (weak) | box |
Estonian gradation:
Group 1.1: quantitative gradation only (Q III to Q II)
strong (QIII) | weak (QII) |
kk | k |
pp | p |
tt | t |
ss | s |
Group 1.2: quantitative gradation only (Q II to Q I)
strong (QII) | weak (QI) |
k | g |
p | b |
t | d |
Group 1.3: quantitative gradation (Q II to Q I and Q III to Q II) for which the difference between QIII and QII is not reflected in orthography:
Q III | Q II | Q I |
hh | hh | h |
h* | h* | h |
ll | ll | l |
mm | mm | m |
nn | nn | n |
rr | rr | r |
ss | ss | s |
*after long or overlong vowels/diphthongs.The same with vowels:
Q III | Q II | Q I |
aa | aa | a |
ee | ee | e |
ii | ii | i |
oo | oo | o |
uu | uu | u |
õõ | õõ | õ |
ää | ää | ä |
öö | öö | ö |
üü | üü | ü |
The same gradation can also happen with diphthongs as well but in that case there is no difference in orthography at all, so, I am not going to list all of the possible diphthongs here.
Group 1.4: quantitative gradation only (Q III to Q II)
strong (QIII) | weak (QII) |
ff | f |
šš | š |
Group 1.5: quantitative gradation only (Q III to Q I)
strong (QIII) | weak (QI) |
jj | j |
vv | v |
Group 2: qualitative gradation (voiceless to voiced)
strong (QI) | weak (QI) |
b | v |
d | j |
b | j |
Group 3.1a: qualitative gradation (omission of consonant)
strong | weak |
b | ∅ |
d | ∅ |
g | ∅ |
lg | l |
rg | r |
sk | s |
hk | h |
ht | h |
Group 3.1b: qualitative gradation (omission or change of consonant along with a vowel change). This is just a subset of the above, and if we are only focusing on consonants it probably shouldn't be listed here at all (since the consonant changes are identical to those in 3.1a) but it is useful to know.
strong | weak |
ida | ea |
idu | ei |
iga | ea |
igu | eo |
uba | oa |
uge | oe |
ugu | oo |
üde | öe |
üga | öa |
Group 3.1c: qualitative + quantitative gradation (omission of consonant from a cluster, remaining consonant is lengthened)
strong | weak |
mb | mm |
ld | ll |
nd | nn |
rd | rr |
Group 3.2a: qualitative gradation (omission or change of consonant) with a second strong form (for example, the first strong form is used for the nominative, the weak form for the genitive, and the second strong form for the partitive)
strong | weak | strong |
s | ∅ | tt |
rs | rr | rt |
ks | h | ht |
Group 3.2b: qualitative gradation (omission of consonant along with a vowel change) with a second strong form. Again. this is just a subset of 3.2a with vowel changes that occur due to the gradation process.
Note that many of these changes can occur in either direction, i.e. strong to weak or weak to strong, so where I have written (for example) "Q II to Q I" above the change can also be in the other direction (Q I to Q II) and so on. Grammar rules generally require that a word that starts out as strong will change to the weak grade in certain forms and vice versa.
for comparison