Changes in the system of vowels in the Germanic languages

Consonants. Proto-Germanic consonant shift.

The consonants in Germanic look ‘shifted’ as compared with the consonants of non-Germanic languages. The changes of consonants in PG were first formulated in terms of a phonetic law by Jacob Grimm in the early 19th c. and are often called Grimm’s Law. It is also known as the First or Proto-Germanic consonant shift. Grimm’s Law had three acts:

1. The IE voiceless stops [p], [t], [k] became Germanic voiceless fricatives [f], [th], [x]

2. IE voiced stops [b], [d], [g] became Germanic voiceless stops [p], [t], [k]

3. PIE aspirated voice stops [bh], [dh], [gh] became PG voiced stops [b], [d], [g] without aspiration.

Another important series of consonant changes in PG was discovered in the late 19th c. by a Danish scholar, Carl Verner. They are known as Verner’s Law. Verner’s Law explains some correspondences of consonants which seemed to contradict Grimm’s Law and were for a long time regarded as exceptions. According to Verner’s Law all the early PG voiceless fricatives [f, th, x] which arose under Grimm’s Law, and also [s] inherited from PIE, became voiced between vowels if the preceding vowel was unstressed; in the absence of these conditions they remained voiceless. The voicing occurred in early PG at the time when the stress was not yet fixed on the root-morpheme. The sound ‘z’ was further affected in western and northern Germanic: z→r. This process is known as Rhotacism. As a result of voicing by Verner’s Law there arose an interchange of consonants in the grammatical forms of the word, termed grammatical interchange. Part of the forms retained a voiceless fricative, while other forms – with a different position of stress in Early PG – acquired a voiced fricative. Both consonants could undergo later changes in the OG languages, but the original difference between them goes back to the time of movable word stress and PG voicing.

Distinctive characteristics shared by the Germanic languages can be found in the system of vowels. In all IE languages there is a system of vowel change which is known as ablaut. The term is introduced by J. Grimm. “Ab” means reducing, “laut” – sound. Russian “воз” – “везу”, “брать” – “беру”. Ablaut can also be called vowel gradation. PIE had a general ablaut system that contrasted the following vowels in the same root. A short [e] could be replaced by a long [e:], a short [o] could be replaced by a long [o:], or it could be omitted. When a syllable had a short [e] it is said to be in the “e-grade” or “full-grade”. When it had no vowel it is said to be in the “zero-grade”. The phonological conditions which controlled ablaut have been partly but not entirely explained. A key factor was the position of the stress. Ablaut was inherited by Germanic from ancient IE. The principal gradation series used in the IE languages – [e~o] – can be shown in Russian examples: нести~ноша. This kind of ablaut is called qualitative, as the vowels differ only in quality. Alternation of short and long vowels, and also alternation with a “zero” (i.e. lack of vowel) represent quantitative ablaut. There maybe three grades of quantitative ablaut: full-grade (short vowel), lengthen grade (long vowel) and zero-grade (neutral vowel or loss of vowel).

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