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ACT III

ACT II

ACT I

C) Consonants.

The specific peculiarities of consonants constitute the most re­markable distinctive feature of the Germanic linguistic group. In compa­rison with other languages within the IE family reveals regular cor­respondences between Germanic and non-Germanic consonants. We regularly find [f] in Germanic where other IE languages have [p]; e.g., E full, Fr plein; wherever Germanic has [p], cognate words in non-Germanic languages have [b] (E pool, R болоmo)..

The consonants in Germanic look 'shifted' as compared with the consonants of non-Germanic languages. The alterations of the con­sonants took place in PG, and the resulting sounds were inherited by the languages of the Germanic group.

The changes of consonants in PG were first formulated as 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 Shift of Consonants.

Grimm's Law

Jacob Grimm classified all the correspondences of the consonants in PG with those of other languages of PIE languages into three groups, which he called Acts. Many scientists believe that the consonant shift took place as a series of successive steps; it took, most probably, on some part of Germanic territory and gradually spread over the whole area.

Voiceless plosives of PIE languages developed in PG into voiceless fricatives:

PIE > PG

p > f(Lpes > Gt fōtus; NE foot)

t > θ (Ltres, Rтри> NEtree)

k > х (Lcor,Rсердце> OEheort)

IE voiced plosives shifted to voiceless plosives in PG:

PIE > PG

b > p (Rболото> OEpōl, NEpool)

d > t (Ldecem, Frdix, Rдесять > NEten)

g > k (Lager> Gtakrs, NEacre)

IE voiced aspirated plosives were reflected in PG either as voiced fricatives or as pure voiced plosives:

PIE > PG

bh> b/v (O Ind bhratā, Rбрат >OEbrōðor, NEbrother)

dh > d/ đ (O Ind rudhira, R рдеть, U рудий > OE rēad, NEred)

gh > g/ Υ (L hostis, R гость > Gt gasts, OE giest, NE guest)

c) Verner's Law.

Some correspondences of consonants seemed to contradict Grimm's Law and were for a long time regarded as exceptions from the Law. But in the late 19th c. a Danish scholar, Carl Verner, explained those consonant changes in PG, which J. Grimm didn’t manage to do. It was another important discovery, which is known in linguistics as Verner's Law.

According to Verner's Law all the early PG voiceless fricatives [f, θ, 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 process of voicing can be shown as a step in a succession of consonant changes in prehistoric reconstructed forms:

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