Nasal infix

A nasal infix is a nasal consonant, typically an ‹n›, inserted (infixed) into the stem of a word. It can serve inflectional purposes like forming a different tense or aspect, or derivational purposes like forming different parts of speech.

Proto-Indo-European

In the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE), the nasal infix *‹n(é)› is one of several means to form the athematic present tense. It is inserted immediately before the last consonant of the zero-grade root. The infix appeared as *‹né› in the forms where a full-grade stem would be expected, and as *‹n› in forms where zero-grade would be expected. For example, the PIE root *weik- "to win" would yield a nasal-infixed present stem *wi‹né›k- ~ *wi‹n›k-.^[1][2] These presents are called nasal infix presents or simply nasal presents and are typically active transitive verbs,^[3] often with durative aspect.^[1]

The effects of the nasal infix can be seen in Indo-European languages like Latin, Ancient Greek and Sanskrit. Latin has a number of verbs with an additional n in the present stem which is missing in the perfect stem: vīcit "has won" / vincit "wins" (from the PIE verb above), contudit "has crushed" / contundit "crushes", scidit "has cut" / scindit "cuts", among others.^[4] In Latin as well as other daughter languages, the *n was assimilated to m before labial consonants (b, p), and to ŋ, spelled n in Latin and γ in Ancient Greek, before velar consonants (g, k, qu). Latin rūpit "has broken" / rumpit "breaks", from *rup- / *ru‹n›p-, is an example of the first case.^[5][6]

English and the other Germanic languages show only vestiges of the nasal infix. However, it can still be seen in some pairs of Latin loanwords like erupt / erumpent (Latin e-rumpō), conviction / convince (Latin con-vincō) or rescission / rescind (Latin re-scindō).^{[7][8][9][10]}

Nasal infix vs. other present tense markers

Besides the nasal infix, PIE employs a number of affixes to mark the present: *-u-, *-neu-, *-neH-, *-sḱe-, *-de-, and others. All in all, PIE has at least 18 ways to form the present tense.^[11] For many verbs, several of these presents can be reconstructed simultaneously. For example, Scottish Gaelic loisg "to burn" goes back to *l̥h₂p-sḱé-, a sḱe-present of the root *leh₂p- which is also the source of Ancient Greek λάμπειν (lámpein) "to shine" via its nasal present *l̥h₂‹n›p-.^[12]

It is not clear why there were so many different types of present forms with no or little discernible differences in meaning. The authors of the Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben proposed that they were derived from a number of prior grammatical aspects with distinct (but lost) meanings.^[13]

Origins

Since the linguistic ancestor of PIE is not known, there can only be speculations about the origins of the nasal infix. It has been suggested that it arose from a suffix (also related to *-neH- and *-neu-) which underwent metathesis.^[14][1]

Further examples

This table shows some examples of PIE root aorists (without an infix), their infixed present forms and the reflexes (corresponding forms) in an attested daughter language.

^†The Latin reflexes of the PIE aorist came to be used as the perfect tense.^[20]

^‡It is uncertain whether *sleh₂gʷ- had a nasal infix already in PIE, since Greek λαμβάνω is only attested after Homer.

Khmer

Khmer, the official language of Cambodia, uses nasal infixes for derivational purposes:^[21]

• Nominalizing infix: kcəi "unripe" → k‹ɑm›cəi "something unripe"
• Causativizing/transitivizing infix: kɗau "warm, hot" → k‹ɑm›ɗau "to warm, reheat"
• Agentive infix: cam "to wait for" → c‹m›am "sentinel"

Quenya

J. R. R. Tolkien's constructed elvish language Quenya has a nasal infix to form the past tense of verbs ending in a consonant other than -m, -n, or -r. Thus, cen- "to see" has the past tense cen-në, but mat- "to eat" has not **mat-në but the metathesised ma‹n›t-ë.^[22]

Choctaw

Choctaw, a language spoken by a Native American people, nasalizes the penultimate vowel of a verb stem to mark an action as durative: Bashlih. "He cut it." → Bashlih. "He keeps cutting it." (The underlined a is nasalized.)^[23] This so-called n-grade arguably can also be seen as a nasal infix.

See also

• Affix

References