- •3. The pg phonology. The consonants.
- •4.Grimm’s Law. (1822 was first published in “Deutch Grammar”)
- •5. Voicing of fricatives in pg (Vern’s l.) 1877
- •6. The West Germanic lengthening of consonants.
- •7.The second consonant-shifting.
- •8. The ablaut in the Indo –European l-ges & Germanic l-ges.
- •9.The vowels.
5. 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.
6. 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. domjan>OE deman (because after a long vowel)