De Wahl's rule

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De Wahl's rule is a rule of word formation, developed by Baltic German naval officer and teacher Edgar de Wahl and applied in the constructed language Interlingue, which was also his creation.

Contents

The rule served for the formation of certain changed grammatical forms, like adjectives and nouns, from verb infinitive.

Edgar de Wahl observed existing patterns of sound changes that occurred in natural languages (d to s, r to t, etc.). The purpose of his rule was to distill these patterns into a regular and logical system that is reproducible yet also natural in appearance.

Rule

De Wahl's Rule.png

Verb infinitives in Interlingue end in -ar, -ir or -er. The root is obtained by the following way:

  1. If, after the removal of -r or -er of the infinitive, the root ends in a vowel, the final -t is added: crea/r, crea/t-, crea/t/or; peti/r, peti/t-, peti/t/ion.
  2. If the root ends in consonants d or r, they are changed into s: decid/er, deci/s-, deci/s/ion; adher/er, adhe/s, adhe/sion; elid/er, eli/s-, eli/s/ion.
  3. In all other cases, with six exceptions, the removal of the ending gives the exact root: duct/er, duct-, duct/ion; emiss/er, emiss-, emiss/ion. [1] [2]

These six exceptions are

  1. ced/er, cess-
  2. sed/er, sess-
  3. mov/er, mot-
  4. ten/er, tent-
  5. vert/er, vers-
  6. veni/r, vent-

and the verbs formed out of them using prefixes.

Because the rule is actually made of three parts, it also known as the "three rules of de Wahl".

The nouns and adjectives are created by removing the ending and thus obtaining the root. After adding -r or -er, one obtains the infinitive in the majority of cases: decora/t/ion, decora/t-, decora/r.

Application

This rule is used in the constructed languages Interlingue and Sambahsa.

History of proposed alternatives

Creux's Rule

The rule was published by Edgar de Wahl in 1922. In its classic version, it is very restrictive. It does not allow the formation of words such as facte (= fact), factor, from far (= to do); scriptura, inscription from scrir (= to write), or actor, action from *ager (= to act). For this reason, numerous proposals have been made to generalize it. As early as 1922, Abbé Creux proposed a version that in many cases much better reflected the actual phonological processes. In his version, after subtracting -er or -r:

  1. c, g, h were changed to ct,
  2. ig, ic were replaced with ect,
  3. b was changed to pt,
  4. m was replaced with mpt,
  5. t remained unchanged,
  6. t was added after the remaining letters.

Creux's rule was in many respects a significant improvement over de Wah's rule. It allowed for much more natural word formation. For example:

Despite this, de Wahl did not approve of the rule. He criticized it as complicated and not very useful:

I think that the ingenious rule of the esteemed Mr. Creux is too difficult for an international language intended not only for educated people but also for those of lower education. And the rule given by Mr. C. is very complicated, and its result is not as valuable as Mr. C. thinks, because the infinitives of the current Occidental are only less Latin, but no less natural [3] .

The rule generally had no exceptions and therefore produced many unnatural forms. In his response, de Wahl drew attention to forms such as:

Homolka's Rule

In 1958, several years after the publication of Interlingua, Cosmoglotta No. 203 published an article entitled "The Problem of de Wahl's Rule" (Li problema del regul de Wahl), presenting a modification of de Wahl's rule by an author using the pseudonym Interlinguisticus . According to Andreas Künzli, author of the book Universalaj lingvoj en Svislando, this was the pseudonym of Hans Homolka, an Austrian Occidentalist. In the article, Homolka proposed a set of rules for acquiring the second verb root that significantly approximated Occidental to Interlingua. The proposed rule was very complex. It consisted of seven parts (items a to g) describing individual types of alternations occurring in Interlingua, along with exceptions.

According to Homolka's rule:

a) If after removing -er or -r the root ends in a vowel, we add t.

b) If it ends with c or g, we change it to ct.

c) If the root ends with d or r, we change it to s.

d) The fourth rule described changes to the root in a few cases where it ended in m or n:

e) The fifth rule described cases in which the stem ends with v or rb:

f) Rule six described further exceptions:

g) In other cases, removing the ending gives the desired root.

Points a) - c) had many exceptions such as:

Reeve's Rule

The Cosmoglotta's article from issue 203 mentions a rule proposed by Reeve:

The latest manifestation of this new interest is the article "De Wahl's Reformed Rule", published by our colleague W. Reeve in International Language Review No. 3. It is more complete than Creux's proposal, and its explanation shows that it is the fruit of serious study. It is true that it does not exhaust all the possibilities of "naturalization", but its author deliberately renounced this, fully aware that absolutely complete regularization would overcomplicate the structure of the language for only small real benefits [4] .

According to the article, Reeve's rule was very similar to Homolka's rule, but it did not contain exceptions and restored roots from Latin that do not occur in modern Western European languages [5] .

Present day

Contemporary attempts are also being made to generalize de Wahl's rule. One of these is Stief's rule. According to it:

  1. You need to remove -er or -r from the infinitive.
  2. If the remaining core ends in...
    1. -s , -t , -x - nothing changes.
    2. -d - we replace -d with s.
    3. In other cases we add -t . -b /-g becomes devoiced to -p /-c.

There are 13 exceptions to the rule:

  1. ceder → cess
  2. currer → curs
  3. graver → grav
  4. herer → hes
  5. morir → mort
  6. mover → mot
  7. nocer → night
  8. opiner → opine
  9. rebel → rebel
  10. Seder → sess
  11. sentir → sens
  12. venir → vent
  13. verter → vers

This rule is very similar to Creux's rule. It allows for much more natural word formation than de Wahl's rule. Examples:

References

  1. ↑ Haas, F. (1956). "Grammatica de Interlingue in Interlingue". Archived from the original on 2009-11-13.
  2. ↑ "Cosmoglotta A, 1946, p. 54".
  3. ↑ de Wahl, Edgar (1922). "Ex epistol de Sr. Creux - Rue - Suisse". Kosmoglott (4). Mi pensa que li regul ingeniosi del estimat paroc Creux es tro desfacil por un lingue international, destinat ad usa ne solmen de instructet homes ma anc per personas de bass instruction. E li regules dat de Sr. C. es tre complicat, e li resultate ne es tam valoros quam Sr. C. pensa, nam li infinitives de Occidental actual es solmen minu latin, ma ne minu natural.
  4. ↑ "Li Problema de Regul de Wahl". Cosmoglotta (203). 1958. Li max recent manifestation de ti nov interesse es li articul <<Un reformat Regul De Wahl>>, publicat de nor coidealist W. Reeve in nro. 3 del <<International Language Review>>. It es plu complet quam li proposition Creux e su exposition monstra que it es li fructe de un seriosi studie. It advere ne exhauste omni possibilitas de <<naturalisation>>, ma li autor renunciat a it intentionalmen in plen conossentie del facet que un regularisation absolutmen complet vell tro mult complicar li structura del lingue por solmen poc real avantages.
  5. ↑ "Li problema de Regul de Wahl". Cosmoglotta (203). 1958. Li exposite de ti interlinguist pri un nov Regul De Wahl amplificat contene in nucleo li proposition Reeve, ma it devia de it per li extension del cadre de regulation, per un sistematic exposition del casus particulari (ne egardat in li proposition Reeve), per li elimination del restant <<defigurationes>> e per li decidet oposition al reviventation de mort radicas latin, con particulari egard al besones del <<lingues specialistic>> (unification del terminologies)
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