Crasis

Crasis (κρᾶσις) is the contraction of a vowel or diphthong at the end of a word with a vowel or diphthong at the start of the following word. Since it applies across word boundaries, crasis is a postlexical rule. Crasis occurs, for example, in Portuguese, Arabic, and Greek.

Portuguese

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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. 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 a into the stressed word à.

Crasis also occurs between the preposition a and demonstratives: for instance, when this preposition precedes aquele, aquela (meaning "that one", with different genders) or aqueles, aquelas (plural), they contract to àquele, àquela, àqueles, àquelas. In this case, the accent marks a secondary stress.

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.

Greek

In both Ancient Greek and Modern Greek, the articles τό and τά undergo a crasis with various words starting in a vowel. In polytonic orthography:

• τὰ ἐμά → τἀμά "my (affairs)"
• τὸ ἐναντίον → τοὐναντίον "on the contrary"
• τὸ αὐτό → ταὐτό "the same"
• τὰ αὐτά → ταὐτά

καί undergoes crasis with forms of the first-person singular pronoun (though not marked, the α from crasis is long):

• καὶ ἐγώ → κἀγώ "and I", "I too"
• καὶ ἐμοί → κἀμοί "and to me"

A coronis (κορωνίς korōnís "curved"; plural κορωνίδες korōnídes) — identical to the smooth breathing and written using the same polytonic characters — marks the vowel produced by crasis. The only other case of a breathing symbol in the middle of a word rather than at the beginning is doubled rho (ρ):

• διάῤῥοια diarrhoea

In monotonic orthography, coronis is omitted, as is the smooth breathing.

References

• Greek Grammar
• Crasis in Koine Greek at WikiChristian

See also

• Assimilation (linguistics)
• Contraction (grammar)
• Elision
• Liaison (linguistics)
• Sandhi
• Synaeresis