CRASIS

'Crasis' 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. It occurs, for example, in Portuguese, Arabic, and Greek.

Contents

Portuguese

References

See also

Portuguese

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 am going 'to the' beach"), one says ''Vou à praia'' ("I am going '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.

References

★ Greek Grammar

See also

★ Assimilation (linguistics)

★ Contraction (grammar)

★ Elision

★ Liaison (linguistics)

★ Sandhi

★ Synaeresis