Crasis

Template:Short descriptionTemplate:Refimprove Crasis (Template:IPAc-en; from the Greek , Template:Lit) is a type of contraction in which two vowels or diphthongs merge into one new vowel or diphthong, making one word out of two (univerbation). Crasis occurs in many languages, including French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish; it was first described in Ancient Greek.

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 and a single phonological word, but the French examples involve a single phonological word and grammatical word.

Greek

In both Ancient and Modern Greek, crasis merges a small word and long word that are closely connected in meaning.Template:Refn

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 in Unicode. (For instance, uses the character Template:Unichar; 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: pyrrhos.

The article 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, the coronis is not written.

Italian

In Italian, crasis occurs between the prepositions , , , , , , and the singular masculine definite article or in fewer cases with the plural masculine definite articles and .

• →
• →
• →
• →
• →
• →
• →
• → (archaic)
• → (archaic)
• → (archaic)

French

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

• → , →
• → , →
• → (archaic)

In colloquial Québécois French, crasis extends to form further words.

• à + la → à
• sur + la → s'a
• sur + les → s'es
• il + est → yé

Portuguese

The most frequently-observed crasis is now the contraction of the preposition ("to" or "at") with the feminine singular definite article ("the"), indicated in writing with a grave accent or the masculine singular definite article (also "the"). For example, instead of ("I go to the beach"), one says ("I go to-the beach"). The contraction turns the clitic into the stressed word . Meanwhile, a person going to a bank, a supermarket or a marketplace would say respectively , or .

Crasis also occurs between the preposition and demonstrative such as when the preposition precedes , (meaning "that", "those", in different genders), which contract to , . The accent marks a secondary stress in Portuguese.

In addition, the crasis is pronounced lower as Template:IPAslink than the article or preposition , as Template:IPAslink, in the examples in standard European Portuguese, but the qualitative distinction is not made by most speakers in Brazilian Portuguese (some dialects, like Rio de Janeiro's , are exceptions and make the distinction).

Crasis is very important since it can change the meaning of a sentence:

• - The police is exposed
• - She is exposed to the police
• - Glória the queen (In this case, "Glória" is a proper noun).
• - Glory to the queen (It can be spoken in the imperative with a different intonation. Glory to the Queen can mean that people are "ordering" that "Glory", a proper noun, be the queen.)
• - Give the woman
• - Give to the woman

These rules determine whether crasis always applies or whether one may use the contraction (with an accent) instead of the preposition (without an accent):

Replace the preposition by another preposition, as ("in") or ("to"). If after replacement, the definite article ("the") is still possible, crasis applies:

• : with a grave accent because it equivalent to "Pedro traveled 'to the' Northeast Region". Here, could also be used.
• : 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 would not allow to be used instead. In European Portuguese, the rules are different, and it is , 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:

• , : with a grave accent because if the object is changed to a masculine noun ("Prestou relevantes serviços ao povo" ), "ao" ("to [masculine] the") is now used.
• "Chegarei daqui a uma hora" : without crasis because when the feminine noun is changed to a masculine noun ("Chegarei daqui a um minuto" ), 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 ("the"); city names that do not use a feminine article; the word ("house") if it has the meaning of one's own home; the word ("earth") when it has the meaning of soil; and indefinite, personal, relative or demonstrative pronouns (except the third person and or ); between identical nouns such as "day by day", "everyday", "daily life", "dropwise", "drip", and "face to face"; and after prepositions. Here are some exceptions:

• (It is necessary to declare war on war!)
• (It is necessary to give more life to life.)

Crasis also occurs between the prepositions , and and the definite articles.

• →
• →
• →
• →
• →
• →
• →
• →
• →
• →
• →
• →

Optional crasis

The grave accent is optional in the following cases:

• Before a female's first name

  (I am referring to Fernanda.)

• Before a feminine possessive pronoun

  (Go to your [own] farm.)

• After the preposition

  (Go by that door.)

  (I traveled to France by car.)

Spanish

In Spanish, crasis occurs between the prepositions or and the masculine definite article .

• →
• →

See also

• Assimilation (linguistics)
• Clitic
• Contraction (grammar)
• Elision
• Liaison (French)
• Sandhi
• Synalepha

External links

• Greek Grammar