- •Contents
- •Unit 2: The Comparative Method ………………………..8 Unit 3: The First Consonant Shift, or Grimm’s Law ………………………10
- •Unit 1 The Indo-European Family
- •Centum and Satem Groups of ie Languages
- •Unit 2 The Comparative Method
- •Unit 3 The First Consonant Shift, or Grimm’s Law
- •Exceptions to Grimm’s law:
- •Unit 4 The Accent Shift and Verner’s Law
- •Rhotacism
- •The Palatal Mutation
- •Unit 6 The Early Germans
- •The Life and Social Organization of the Germans
- •The Great Migration
- •Unit 7 Ancient Germanic Tribes and Their Classification
- •The Proto-Germanic Language
- •Unit 8 The East Germanic Group The Goths
- •Ulfilas and the Gothic Bible
- •Unit 9 The North Germanic Group
- •Unit 10 Northern Mythology
- •The Joys of Valhalla
- •Thor and the Other Gods
- •The Death of Balder
- •Unit 11 The West Germanic Group
- •Unit 12 Old English
- •Three Periods of the History of English
- •Unit 13 Old English Alphabet and Pronunciation
- •Diphthongs
- •Consonants in Old English
- •Unit 14 Some Phonetic Changes of the Old English Period
- •Stressed Vowels
- •Oe Fracture, or Breaking
- •II. Unstressed Vowels
- •III. Consonants
- •Palatalization of Velar Consonants
- •Voicing and Unvoicing of Fricatives
- •Metathesis
- •IV. Word Stress
- •Unit 15 The Noun Grammatical Categories
- •Declensions
- •Unit 16 The Adjective
- •The Weak Declension
- •D. Other classes of pronouns
- •Unit 18 The Verb
- •Mutation or Umlaut
- •The Grammatical Forms and Categories of the Verb
- •Unit 19 Strong Verbs
- •Weak Verbs
- •To Class III belong only four verbs:
- •Preterite-Present Verbs
- •Irregular Verbs
- •Unit 20 The Middle English Period Early Middle English
- •Changes in the Orthographic System
- •Unit 21 Middle English Phonetic Changes
- •Consonants
- •Unstressed Vowels
- •Stressed Vowels
- •Quantitative Changes
- •Qualitative Changes
- •Monophthongs
- •New Diphthongs
- •Unit 22 Middle English Morphology Nouns
- •Articles
- •Pronouns
- •Adjectives
- •Unit 23 The Formation of the National English Language
- •The Great Vowel Shift (gvs)
- •Unit 25 The Mood
- •Conjugation of Strong Verbs
- •Conjugation of Weak Verbs
- •Unit 26 Development of the System of Verbids and Their Grammatical Categories
- •Unit 27 Syntactic Structure
- •Unit 28
- •Varieties of English
- •Unit 29 Etymological Composition of the English Vocabulary
- •Unit 30 The connection of the history of the English language with the history of the English people
Unit 3 The First Consonant Shift, or Grimm’s Law
The law of the first consonant shift was first formulated in the early 19th century by the German linguist Jacob Ludwig Grimm (1822). This shift is one of the most distinctive features marking off the Germanic languages from all the other IE languages.
As proved by Jacob Grimm, all the IE stops seem to have gradually changed in Proto-Germanic. Comparing words of Germanic languages with the corresponding words of other IE languages (Russian, Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, etc.), linguists find correspondences between them, which may be represented by the following chart:
IE voiceless stops changed to corresponding voiceless spirants.
-
IE p, t, k, kw
Germ. f, Ѳ (þ), h, hw
Latin
Gothic
OE
ModE
quod
hva
hwæt
what
cord-(<cor)
hairtō
heorte
heart
tū
þū
þū
thou
IE *pōd
fōtus
fōt
foot
The IE voiced stops [b, d, g] became the voiceless [p, t, k].
-
IE b, d, g, gw
Germ. p, t, k, kw/k
Rus.
слаб(ый
ModE.
sleep
бол(ото)
pool
вода
water
два
two
иго
yoke
Lat.
ego
Gth.
ik
OE
ic
IE
*gwet
qiþan
cweþan
*gwem
qiman
cuman
The IE aspirated voiced stops [bh, dh, gh] changed first to the voiced spirants [Ђ, ð, γ] and, later on, to the corresponding unaspirated stops [b, d, g].
IE bh, dh, gh |
Germ. Ђ, ð, γ > b, d, g |
|||||||
Skt |
bhrātā(r) |
Gth. |
brōþar |
OE |
broþor |
ModE. |
brother |
|
|
vidhávā |
|
widuwō |
|
widewe |
|
widow |
|
IE |
*ghwermos/ghwormos |
warms |
|
wearm |
|
warm
|
||
Exceptions to Grimm’s law:
The IE [p, t, k] remained unchanged after the sound [s]:
Lat. piscis
Gth. fisks
Only the first of a group of voiceless stops changed to a spirant:
-
Lat. octo
Gth. ahtau