Grimm’s Law. (1822 was first published in “Deutch Grammar”)

I act	IE voiceless plosives >Germanic voiceless fricatives p > f t > Ө k > h k^w> h^w	L pater > E father R три > E three R кепка > E hat L quod > Gt ha
II act	IE voiced plosives > G. voiceless plosives b > p d > t g > k g^w> k^w	R болото> E pool R два > E two R иго > E yoke Gr gune > OE cwene
III act	IE voiced aspirated plosives > G. voiced plosives bh > b dh > d gh > g g^wh > g^w	Skr bhratar > E brother Skr madhu > OE medu Skr *gh > Gt gast, L hostis IE seŋg^wh > Gt siggwan

 

Exepcions:

1. The shifting didn’t take place after fricatives(f, Ө,h) & s:

L stare – Gt standan

2. The second of the consonants didn’t undergo shifting:

L o ct o Gt a ht au 1 k > h

12 12 2 t = t

Voicing of fricatives in PG (Vern’s L.) 1877

V.L. explains some correspondences of consonants which seemed to contradict G.L and were regarded as exceptions for a long time. According to V.L., all the early Proto Germanic voiceless fricatives f, Ө, h which arose under G.L. and also s inherited from PIE, became voiced between vowels, if the preceding vowel was unstressed. In the absence of these conditions, they remain voiceless. The voicing occurred in early PG at the time when the stress was not yet fixed on the root morpheme. The process of voicing can be shown as a step in a succession of consonant changes in pre-historical reconstructed forms.

PIE > early PG > late PG > Gothic > OE

pater > faӨar > faðar > faðar > fadar > fæder

 

IE > PG

p > f > v > b

t > Ө > ð > d

k > h > j > g

G.L V.L: (voicening) V.L.:(hardening)

Changes by V.L. appear regularly in the strong conjugation of verbs of the 2, 3, 5 Classes:

2 Class. OE: ceosan – ceas – curon – coren

3 Class weorðan – wearþ – wurdon – worden

5 Class: cweðan – cwæþ – cwædon – cweden

wesan – wæs – wæron – weron.

One more consonant(voiceless fricative) is affected by V.L. If the preceding vowel is unstressed, “s” in Germanic l-ges becomes voiced and changes into “z”, and “z” changer into “r”.

s > z > r

This change is called Rhotacism and took place in North and West Germanic l-ges except Gothic.

Goth: hausjan

OE: hieran

Goth: kiusan – kaus – kusum – kusans

OE: ceosan – ceas – curon – coren

The consonant “s” became “r” in past plural form and in past participle because in early PG they had a stressed suffix, while the infinitive and past singular had always stresses on the root.

The West Germanic lengthening of consonants.

Every consonant except “r” is lengthened if it is preceded by a short vowel and followed by the sonorant “j”(i) or by the sonorants “w”, ”l”, ‘r’, “n”, “m”. Before “j” the process of lengthening was the strongest, before “m”- the weakest. There appeared long consonants as a result of the doubling and an opposition based on the quantity between short and long consonants. If voiced fricatives were doubled, they became voiced plosives: a long “f” later develops into long “b”, denoted by “bb”, “ʒ”- “cʒ”, “ð” – “dd”…

The essence of this process appears to be assimilation. The consonant is assimilated to the preceding sound after producing palatal mutation (i-umlaut) in the root.

The lengthening might have been connected with changes in division of words into syllables:

Goth.: b|idjan> b|idjan>biddan

Consonants were not lengthened after a long vowel

OIcel sitja>OE sittan>OHG sizzen

Goth.: bidjan>OE biddan>OHG bitten

Goth.: saljan>OE sellan

But: Goth. d om jan>OE d em an (because after a long vowel)

The second consonant-shifting.

I ACT. PG p, t, k > OHG ff, zz, hh (in the middle of the word, or at the end of the word after vowels) > f, z, h

E.g.: p > ff, f: Goth. ski p, OE. sci p, PDE shi p, OHG. sci f; Goth sle p an, PDE slee p, OHG sla f an, ModG schla f en.

f > zz, z: Goth. wa t o, PDE wa t er, OHG wa zz ar, ModG Wa ss er;

k > hh, h: Goth bri k an, PDE brea k, OHG bre hh an, ModG bre ch en

II ACT. p, t, k > OHG pf, tz, kh (at the beginning of the word, in the middle after l, r, m. n)

p > pf: OS a pp ul, PDE a pp le, OHG a ph ul, ModG A pf el;

t > tz: Goth t aihun, OHG z ehan, ModG Z ehn; Goth t uggo, PDE t ongue, OHG z unga, ModG Z unge;

k > kh: Goth. drig k an, PDE drin k, South G trin ch an.

III ACT b, d, g > OHG p, t, k (Alammanic, Bavarian)

b > p: Goth. b airan, PDE b ear, South G p eran, ModG ge b ären;

d > t: Goth d ags, OE d æg, PDE d ay, OHG t ac, ModG T ag;

g > k: Goth. gasts, PDE guest, South G kast, Mod G Gast.

NB: In all the West Germanic languages almost any consonant could be geminated (doubled) before or following j, and before other consonant as well. Thus in addition to the simple consonants we also have to reckon with the doubles pp, tt, kk. This distinction is important, as the geminates were affected quite differently by the consonant shift the singles were.

9. The ablaut in the Indo –European l-ges & Germanic l-ges.

Ablaut is an independent vowel intergange unconnected with any phonetic condition; different vowels appear in the same environment,surrounded by the same sound.

The rise of ablaut is partly connected with the movement of z stress: In PIE the accent was free, in Germanic it was retracted to the initial syllable.

· Vowel graduation did not reflect any phonetic changes but was used as a special independent device to differentiate between words & grammatical forms built from the same root.

The principal gradation series used in the IE l-ges was e/o/zero. In Germanic l-ges it was i/a/zero. Each members of such a series is called a grade (stupin).

There are 2 types of ablaut:

1. quantitative (altenation of short & long vowels).

IE e>zero, o>zero, short e> long e, short o> long o.

Gr. pater- patros(gen.)

Lat. sedo – s e di

Germ. e>zero, a > zero, short e > long e, short a > long o

OE ber – b e ron

2. qualitative (the vowels differ in quality- change of front vowels into back)

IE e>o

везу-возити; нести-ноша.

Germ. i/e > a, i>u

Got. drigkan- dragk

OE þencan- þank

Merowingi – Nibelungi

Qualitative – qualitative

IE e> o> zero.

Рус. беру- сбор-брать

Germ. i/e > a, a >long o

OHG beran – barn- giburt

OE faran – f o r – f o ron – f a ren

There are 5 classes of ablaut:

I: i: - ia – i – i

II: iu – au –u – u

III: i – a – u – u

IV: i – a – ē – u

V: i - a – ē – i.

Ablaut is used in strong verbs in Gothic l-ges.

I class: reisan “вставати” – rais – risum – risans

II class: kiusan “вибирати” – kaus – kusum – kusans

III class: bindan “зв”язувати”– band – bundum – bundans

IV class: stilan “красти” - stal – stēlum – stulans

V class: giban “давати” – gaf – gēbum – gibans

 

 

The vowels played an important part in the grammar of Proto-Indo-European, because of the way they alternated in related forms (as in Modern English sing, sang, sung, and this system descended to Proto-Germanic. There were several series of vowels that alternated in this way. Each member of such a series is called a grade (ступінь), and the whole phenomenon is known as gradation or ablaut. One such series in PIE, for example was ĕ, ŏ and zero. This series was used in some of the strong verbs: the e-grade appeared in the present tense, the o-grade in the past singular, and the zero-grade in the past plural and the past participle (in which the accent was originally on the ending). This is the series that was used in sing, sang, sung, though it was blurred by the vowel changes, which took place in Proto-Germanic. PIE ŏ regularly changed to PG ă, as it has been shown before.

The vowels.

1. The basic vowel symbols are a, e, i, o, u. They could be both short and long. The set of vowels in Proto-Germanic can be represented in the following way:

back vowels: ā, ō, ū; front vowels: ī, ē.

 

Note: According to Zhluktenko, originally there were only four long vowels in PG: æ, ī, ū, ō. Later in West Germanic languages æ > ā. Apart from ē, that developed from PIE ē through æ, in Old Germanic languages there appeared one more ē that resulted from diphthong ai in unstressed syllable (Goth. haihait).

 

In tracing vowel changes in Old Germanic languages we have to distinguish between stressed and unstressed syllables, since these give different results.

There was a strict difference between short and long vowels. There were 8 monophthongs and 3 diphthongs in PG.

PG Vowels

Front Back

Short i, e a, u

Long i, eo, u

Diphthongs: /ai/, /eu/, /au/.

IE short /a/ and /o/ merged in PG short /a/.

IE short /i/, /e/, /u/ could correspond to PG /e/, /i/, /o/.

IE long vowels were unchanged. /i/>/i/, /u/>/u/. IE long /a/ and /o/ merged in PG long /o/.

In Early PG there were 4 long vowels: /i/, /u/, /o/ /e/. Then appeared /a/.

 

High підняття

I u

Front e Mid o Back

a

Low

 

11. Umlaut – is a case of regressive assimilation, when the vowel is changed under the influence of the following vowel.

1) i-umlaut (Front Mutation)

2) u-umlaut (Back Mutation)

I-Umlaut /a/, /o/, /u/ change into /e/, if the following vowel is /i/, /i/ or /j/.

Later i, i and j disappeared or changed to e. (dailjan – delan)

I-Umlaut in OE took place in prewritten period on the territory of the British Isles.

*a> æ> e

*a> æ

*o> e

* o > oe> e

* u > y:

*u> y

I-Umlaut in OHG

In OHG Mutation took place starting from the 8^th century.

a> a(e)

a > æ

o> ö

o > oe

u> ü

U-Umlaut (Back Mutation)

OE: 7-8 centuries

The short frot vowels æ, e, I were diphthongized when the back vowels u, o, a were present in the following syllable.

i> io OE sifon> siofon

e> eo OE efor> eofor

æ> ea OE saro> searu

This process differs from I-Umlaut in 3 respects:

· it effected almost exclusively short vowels

· it effected only front vowels

· its results are less unifor m

Palatal mutation before ‘h’

e> eo> ie> i

OE cneht> cneoht> cnieht> cniht

 

Inflectional system of PG.

Simplification of the inflectional system

It is often asserted that Germanic languages have a highly reduced system of inflections as compared with Greek, Latin, or Sanskrit. Although this is true to some extent, it is probably due more to the late time of attestation of Germanic than to any inherent "simplicity" of the Germanic languages. It is in fact debatable whether Germanic inflections are reduced at all. Other Indo-European languages attested much earlier than the Germanic languages, such as Hittite, also have a reduced inventory of noun cases. Germanic and Hittite might have lost them, or maybe they never shared in their acquisition.

Inflections were certainly the principal formbuilding means used:

- they were found in all parts of speech that could change their forms

- they were usually used alone, but could also occur in combinations with other means

In PG there are 5 parts of speech which can be declined – noun, adjective, pronoun, numeral, verb.

Noun had such categories:

- gender (masc, fem, neut)

- number (singular, plural)

- case (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, instrumental)

- declension (strong, weak, minor, root)

Verb had such categories:

- voice (active, passive)

- mood: indicative (denotes a statement), imperative (commands, was used only in present of active voice), subjunctive (2 functions – grammatical & semantic)

- tense (present, preterite)

- number (singular, plural, dual)

- person (1, 2, 3)

Adjective

- declension (weak, strong)

- degrees of comparison (positive, comparative, superlative)

Pronoun

- number (sg, pl, dual)

- person (only personal pronouns)

- case (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental)

- gender (only in demonstrative pronouns)

Numerals from 1 to 4 had case.