Basic features of GLs in phonetics

The 1st Consonant Shift, or Grimm’s Law

An essential feature of GLs separating them from other IE languages is their consonantal system,

which developed from the original IE system. These regular correspondences between the

consonants of GLs and IELs were discovered and systemized by Jacob Grimm. He found three

groups of correspondences and since his time they are referred to as three acts of Grimm’s Law

(or the 1st Consonant Shift). He discovered that in IE basis the voiceless plosives became

voiceless fricatives in all GLs (p – f: penta – five). According to the second act a voiced plosive

became voiceless (b – p: slabare – sleep). According to the third act aspirated voiced plosives

lost their aspiration (bh – b: bhrata – brother).

IE G Examples

/ p / / f / Lat plěnus – Eng full

/ t / / þ / Gr tres – Eng three

/ k / / h / Lat noctem – Goth nahts

/ b / / p / Rus болото – Eng pool

/ d / / t / Lat duo – Goth twan

/ g / / k / Lat ego – OE ic

/ bh / / b / Sans bhratar – Eng brother

/ dh / / d / Sans madhu – OE medu

/ gh / / g / Lat hostis - Rus гость – Germ gast

There are several theories explaining the origin of the consonant shift. One of the most

current is the influence of the so-called substratum (or underlayer) of a language of a different

type. There is another theory according to which the reasons for the shift should be found in the

peculiarities of the language itself.

Verner’s Law

Even after Grimm’s explanation there were several cases when Grimm‘s Law didn’t

work or there was some change which couldn’t be explained through Grimm’s Law. For

instance, in the position where according to Grimm’s Law the voiceless sound [Þ] was expected

the voiced [ð] appeared (Pater – Father). Instead of an expected voiceless stop a voiced stop

would appear in some words. These was explained by Сarl Verner.

Verner’s Law: unstressed vowel + voiceless stop  voiceless fricative  voiced fricative 

voiced stop: /t/  /þ/  /ð/  /d/

Example: in the Gr word patěr the voiceless stop /t/ was preceded by an unstressed root vowel.

Under these conditions the voiceless fricative /þ/ which had developed from it in accordance

with the 1st consonant shift became a voiced fricative /ð/ and finally it developed into the voiced

stop /d/, i.e. Gr patěr  OE fæder.

According to Verner’s Law voiceless fricatives /f/, /þ/, /h/ 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 consonant pairs

involved in grammatical alternation were f/b, þ/d, h/g, hw/w, s/r.

The voicing occurred in 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: /s/→/z/→/r/. This process

is known as rhotacism. As a result of voicing by Verner’s Law an interchange of consonants in

the grammatical forms of the word appeared. Part of the forms retained a voiceless fricative,

while other forms – with a different position of stress in Early PG – acquired a voiced fricative.

Examples: wesan (быть) – wæs (был) – wæron (были); weorþan (становиться) – wearþ (стал)

– wurdon (стали) – worden (превращенный).

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.

Vowels of GLs

GLs also had some specific features in the system of vowels.

IE short /ŏ/ and /ǎ/ correspond to GLs short /ǎ/: Gr octō – Goth ahtau, Rus ночь – Germ nacht

IE long /ō/ and long / ā / correspond to GLs long /ō/: Lat frāter – Goth brōþar (брат), Lat flōs –

OE blōma (цветок).

Short /ŏ/ & long /ā/ appeared in GLs from inner sources.

Germanic fracture

In GLs the quality of a stressed vowel in some cases depended on the type of the sound that

followed it. This dependence is reflected in the notion of fracture. The fracture concerns two

pairs of vowels: /e/ & /i/, /u/ & /o/.

In the root syllable IE /e/ = GL /i/, if it was followed by 1) /i/ 2) /j/ 3) nasal+consonant, else IE

/e/ = G /e/.

Examples: Lat med i us – OE middle (середина), Lat ve nt us – OE wind (ветер) but Lat edere –

OE etan (есть).

IE /u/ = GL /u/ if followed by 1) /u/ 2) nasal+consonant, else IE /u/ = G /o/.

Example: Lat sunus – OE sunu (сын)

Vowel gradation, or Ablaut

Vowel gradation, or ablaut (“ab” means reducing, “laut” – sound) was inherited by GLs from

ancient IE languages. There are two kinds of vowel gradation: qualitative and quantitative.

Qualitative gradation:

Different vowels appear alternatively in various forms of one and the same word: in IE /e/ and

/o/, in GL /i/ and /a/.

Examples: везу – воз, беру – сбор, Goth hilpan – halp (preterit sg).

Quantitative gradation:

is represented by the alternation of a short vowel with the corresponding long one and also

alternation of a short vowel with the zero of the vowel.

Examples: беру – брать, OE findan  P2 fnden  fundan

The origin of gradation has been a matter of discussion for more than 100 years. The prevailing

theory is that it might be caused by different stressed conditions:

- the full stress brings the high degree /o/;

- the weakened stress causes the medium degree /e/;

- the unstressed position results in the zero of a vowel.

In GLs vowel gradation was used most constantly in deriving grammatical forms of strong verbs.

The stress system in GLs

In IELs there were two types of stress: musical pitch and force (dynamic) stress. Besides,

in IE the word stress was free. In the GLs it is fixed. It was discovered that in the course of the

Common Germanic Period word stress came to be fixed on the first meaningful part of the word

(root-syllable). This fixed stress couldn’t but result in weakening of unstressed positions which

in its turn resulted in neutralization of certain vowels, dropping, change of their quality and

quantity. Verner’s Law, however, shows that the root vowel in GLs might be unstressed and this

lead to the conclusion that originally GLs had a free stress system.

Basic grammatical features of GLs

5.1 The structure of the word. In IE the words were three-morphemic, i.e. they consisted of a

root, a stem suffix and a flexion (ending). This kind of a substantive structure can be seen most

clearly in Gothic: daʓ-a-m. In the GLs words came to be two-morphemic. Many notional words,

mostly nouns, lost their suffixes, so they had only a root and an ending.

5.2 The grammatical system. Like many old IELs the old GLs had a well-developed system of

grammatical affixes. Thus, the old GLs had a number of noun declensions, verb conjugations and

so on. However, there are some grammatical features which are typical only for old GLs: the

weak declension of the adjectives which has always been marked by the suffix -n-; the weak

declension marked the definitiveness of the nouns; the weak conjugation of the verbs.

Substantive

1. vocalic stems a, o, i, u formed strong declension;

2. n-stem formed the paradigm of weak declension;

3. s/r –stems;

4. root-stem nouns which had never had any stem suffix, the root and the stem in these

words always coinsice.

In OE, as well as in other GLs, except Gothic, the substantives had two essential parts,

because of the stem-suffix having lost its own meaning and united with the case inflexion and

could be no longer identified.

Adjective

In GLs adjective declension is represented by

1. strong declension which is a combination of substantival and pronominal endings;

2. weak declenstion which reflected the declension of n-stem substantives.

Adjective declension in all GLs has no parallel with other IE languages.

Verb

The system of verbs of all GLs consisted of 3 types:

1. strong verbs,

2. weak verbs,

3. united preterit-present verbs.

Strong verbs used vowel gradation to derive their preterit and P2. Examples: OE bindan

(inf) - bånd (pret sg) – bundum (pret pl) – bundans (P2) (ModE bind – связывать).

Weak verbs derived the same forms with the help of a dental suffix –d-. It’s phonetic

variants were /t/, /d/, /Ɵ/. Examples: OE styrian – styrede – styredon – styred (ModE stir –

шевелить).

Preterit-present verbs used vowel gradation to derive the forms of the present tense while

their form of the preterit was build with the help of the dental suffix. Examples: OE wītan (inf) -

wāt (pres sg) – wĭton (pres pl) – wiste (pret sg) – wiston (pret pl) - ʓewiten (P2) (знать).

Word order

In IE as it was a highly inflected language word order was free. In the GLs word order gradually

became fixed. In some languages like English it resulted in the fixation of the position of each

member of the sentence. Sometimes it also resulted in the frame constructions and inversions.