Interpretation of the Proto-Germanic consonant shift

The causes and mechanisms of the Proto-Germanic consonant shift have been a matter of discussion ever since the shift was discovered.

When Jacob Grimm first formulated the law of the shift he ascribed it to the allegedly daring spirit of the Germanic tribes which manifested itself both in their great migrations and in radical linguistic innovations. His theory has long been rejected as naïve and romantic.

Some philologists attributed the shift to the physiological peculiarities of the Teutons, namely the shape of their glottis: it differed from that of other Indo-European tribes, and the pronunciation of consonants was modified. Other scholars maintained that the consonant shift was caused by a more energetic articulation of sounds brought about by the specifically Germanic word stress. Another theory suggested that the articulation of consonants in Germanic was, on the contrary, marked by lack of energy and tension.

The theory of “linguistic substratum” which was popular with many 20^th c. linguists, attributes the Proto-Germanic consonant changes – as well as other Germanic innovations – to the influence of the speech habits of pre-Germanic population in the areas of Germanic settlement. The language of those unknown tribes served as a sort of substratum (‘under-layer’) for the would-be Germanic tongues; it intermixed with the language of the Teutons and left certain traces in Proto-Germanic. This hypothesis can be neither confirmed nor disproved, since we possess no information about the language of pre-Indo-European inhabitants of Western Europe.

According to recent theories the Proto-Germanic consonant shift could be caused by the internal requirements of the language system: the need for more precise phonemic distinction reliable in all phonetic conditions. According to J. Kurylowicz, before the shift the opposition of voiced and voiceless plosives was neutralized (that is, lost) in some positions, namely before the sound [s]; therefore new distinctive features arouse in place of or in addition to sonority. [p], [t], [k] changed into [f], [q], [x] and began to be contrasted to [b], [d], [g] not only through sonority but also through the manner of articulation as fricatives to plosives. This change led to further changes: since [f], [q], [x] were now opposed to [b], [d], [g] through their fricative character, sonority became irrelevant for phonemic distinction and [b], [d], [g] were devoiced: they changed into [p], [t], [k] respectively. That is how the initial step stimulated further changes and the entire system was shifted. It is essential that throughout the shift the original pattern of the consonant system was preserved: three rows of noise consonants were distinguished, though instead of opposition through sonority consonants were opposed as fricatives to plosives.

Another explanation based on the structural approach to language interprets the role of the language system from a different angle. Every subsystem in language tends to preserve a balanced, symmetrical arrangement: if the balance is broken, it will soon be restored by means of new changes. After the replacement of [p], [t], [k] by [f], [q], [x] the positions of the voiceless [p], [t], [k] in the consonant system were left vacant; to fill the vacuums and restore the equilibrium [b], [d], [g] were devoiced into [p], [t], [k]. In their turn the vacant positions of [b], [d], [g] were filled again in the succeeding set of changes, when [bh], [dh], [gh] lost their aspirated character. This theory, showing the shift as a chain of successive steps, fails to account for the initial push.

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