Lecture 5

Proto-Germanic Language: Grimms

and Verners Law
Compiled by Valentina Singhirei,
PhD.,Ass.prof.

Germanic Parent Language (GPL) is a term used

in historical linguistics to describe the chain of
reconstructed languages in the Germanic group
referred to as Pre-Germanic Indo-European
(PreGmc), Early Proto-Germanic (EPGmc), and
Late Proto-Germanic (LPGmc). It is intended to
cover the time of the 2nd and 1st millennia BCE.

Several historical linguists have pointed

towards the apparent material and social
continuity connecting the cultures of the Nordic
Bronze Age (1800500 BCE) and the Pre-Roman
Iron Age (500 BCE1 CE) as having implications
in regard to the stability and later development
of the Germanic language group. The emerging
consensus among scholars is that the First
Germanic Sound Shift (Grimm's law)long
considered to be the defining mark in the
development of Proto-Germanichappened as
late as 500 BCE.
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Phonology of Proto-Germanic Language

Transcription
The following conventions are used in this article for
transcribing Proto-Germanic forms:
Voiced obstruents appear as b, d, g; this does not imply
any particular analysis of the underlying phonemes as
plosives /b/, /d/, // or fricatives //, //, //. In other
literature, they may be written as graphemes with a bar to
produce , and .
Unvoiced fricatives appear as f, , h (perhaps //, //,
/x/). /x/ may have become /h/ in certain positions at a later
stage of Proto-Germanic itself. Similarly for /x/, which
later became /h/ or // in some environments.
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 Labiovelars appear as kw, hw, gw; this does not imply

any particular analysis as single sounds (e.g. /k/, /x/,
//) or clusters (e.g. /kw/, /xw/, /w/).
The "yod" sound appears as j /j/. Note that the
normal convention for representing this sound in ProtoIndo-European is y; the use of j does not imply any
actual change in the pronunciation of the sound.
Long vowels are denoted with a macron over the
letter, e.g. . When a distinction is necessary, // and
/e/ are transcribed as and respectively. is
sometimes transcribed as or instead, but this is not
followed here.
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 Overlong vowels appear with circumflexes, e.g. . In

other literature they are often denoted by a doubled
macron ( ).
Nasal vowels are written here with an ogonek, following
Don Ringe's usage, e.g. //. Most commonly in
literature, they are denoted simply by a following n.
However, this can cause confusion between a word-final
nasal vowel and a word-final regular vowel followed by
/n/; a distinction which was phonemic. Tildes (, , ...) are
also used in some sources.

Diphthongs appear as ai, au, eu, iu, i, u and

perhaps i, u. However, when immediately
followed by the corresponding semivowel,
they appear as ajj, aww, eww, iww. u is
written as w when between a vowel and j. This
convention is based on the usagein Ringe
2006.
Long vowels followed by a non-high vowel
were separate syllables and are written as
such here, except for , which is written ij in
that case.
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Consonants
The table below lists the consonantal
phonemes of Proto-Germanic classified by
reconstructed pronunciation. The slashes
around the phonemes are omitted for clarity. If
two phonemes appear in the same box, the
first of each pair is voiceless, the second is
voiced. Phones written in parentheses
represent allophones and are not independent
phonemes.

Notes:
1. *+ was an allophone of /n/ before velar obstruents.
2. [] was an allophone of /n/ before labial-velar
obstruents.
3. [+, *+ and *+ were allophones of /b/, /d/ and // in
certain positions (see below).
4. The phoneme written as f was certainly still realised as
a bilabial fricative (//) in Proto-Germanic. This can be
deduced from the fact that in Gothic, word-final b
devoices to f, and also from Old Norse spellings such
as aptr [tr], where the letter p rather than the more
usual f was used to denote the bilabial realisation
before /t/.
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Grimm's and Verner's law

Grimm's law (also known as the First Germanic Sound
Shift or the Rask's rule), named after Jacob Grimm, is a
set of statements describing the inherited Proto-IndoEuropean (PIE) stop consonants as they developed in
Proto-Germanic (the common ancestor of the
Germanic branch of the Indo-European family) in the
1st millennium BC. It establishes a set of regular
correspondences between early Germanic stops and
fricatives and the stop consonants of certain other
centum Indo-European languages (Grimm used mostly
Latin and Greek for illustration). Grimm's law consists of
three parts, which must be thought of as three
consecutive phases in the sense of a chain shift:[1]
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1. Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops

change into voiceless fricatives.
2. Proto-Indo-European voiced stops
become voiceless stops.
3. Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirated
stops become voiced stops or fricatives
(as allophones).

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The chain shift can be abstractly

represented as:
b b p
d d t
g g k x
g g k x

12

Here each sound moves one position to the right

to take on its new sound value. Notice that the
new sound value entails the loss of a feature at
each of the three steps. First the aspiration
feature is lost, then voice and finally stop leaving
a continuant.
The voiced aspirated stops may have first
become voiced fricatives before hardening to the
voiced unaspirated stops "b", "d", and "g" under
certain conditions; however, some linguists
dispute this. See Proto-Germanic phonology.
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Grimm's law was the first non-trivial systematic sound

change to be discovered in linguistics; its formulation
was a turning point in the development of linguistics,
enabling the introduction of a rigorous methodology to
historical linguistic research. The correspondences
between Latin p and Germanic f was first noted by
Friedrich von Schlegel in 1806. In 1818 Rasmus
Christian Rask elaborated the set of correspondences to
include other Indo-European languages such as Sanskrit
and Greek, and the full range of consonants involved. In
1822 Jacob Grimm, the elder of the Brothers Grimm, in
his book Deutsche Grammatik, formulated the law as a
general rule (and extended to include standard
German).
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Further changes following Grimm's law, as well as sound

changes in other Indo-European languages, can
sometimes obscure its effects. The most illustrative
examples are used here:
Non-Germanic
(unshifted) cognates

Change

Germanic (shifted)
examples

Ancient Greek:
(pos), Latin: ps,
pedis, Sanskrit: pda,
Russian: (pod)
"under; floor",
Lithuanian: pda,
Latvian pda

*pf *+

English: foot, West

Frisian: foet, German:
Fu, Gothic: ftus,
Icelandic, Faroese:
ftur, Danish: fod,
Norwegian, Swedish:
fot

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Non-Germanic
(unshifted) cognates

Change

Germanic (shifted)
examples

Ancient Greek:
(tritos), Latin: tertius,
Welsh: trydydd,
Sanskrit: treta,
Russian:
(tretij), Lithuanian:
treias, Albanian: tret

*t *+

English: third, Old

Frisian: thredda, Old
Saxon: thriddio,
Gothic: ridja,
Icelandic: riji,
Danish: tredje

Ancient Greek: (kn), Latin:

canis, Welsh: ci (pl. cwn)

*kh [x]

English: hound, Dutch:

hond, German: Hund,
Gothic: hunds,
Icelandic, Faroese:
hundur, Danish,
Norwegian, Swedish:
hund

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Non-Germanic
(unshifted) cognates

Change

Germanic (shifted)
examples

Latin: quod, Irish: cad,

Sanskrit: kd, Russian:
- (ko-), Lithuanian:
kas

*khw [x]

English: what, Gothic:

a ("hwa"), Icelandic:
hva, Faroese: hvat,
Danish: hvad,
Norwegian: hva

Latin: verber "rod",

Homeric Greek:
(rabdos) "rod,
wand", Lithuanian:
virbas

*bp [p]

English: warp, West

Frisian: werpe, Dutch:
werpen, Icelandic:
verpa, varpa, Faroese:
verpa, Gothic wairpan

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Non-Germanic
(unshifted) cognates

Change

Germanic (shifted)
examples

Latin: decem, Greek:

(dka), Irish:
deich, Sanskrit: daan,
Russian:
(desyat'), Lithuanian:
deimt
Latin: gel, Greek:

(gelandrs),
Lithuanian: gelmenis,
gelum

*dt [t]

English: ten, Dutch:

tien, Gothic: tahun,
Icelandic: tu, Faroese:
tggju, Danish,
Norwegian: ti,
Swedish: tio

*gk [k]

English: cold, West

Frisian: kld, Dutch:
koud, German: kalt,
Icelandic, Faroese:
kaldur, Danish: kold,
Norwegian: kald,
Swedish: kall

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Non-Germanic
(unshifted) cognates

Change

Germanic (shifted)
examples

Lithuanian: gyvas

*gkw [k]

English: quick, West

Frisian: kwik, kwyk,
Dutch: kwiek, Gothic:
qius, Icelandic,
Faroese: kvikur,
Danish: kvik, Swedish:
kvick, Norwegian kvikk

Sanskrit: bhrt

*bb *b+/*+

English: brother, West

Frisian, Dutch: broeder,
German: Bruder,
Gothic: broar,
Icelandic, Faroese:
brir, Danish,
Swedish, Norwegian:
broder
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Non-Germanic
(unshifted) cognates

Change

Germanic (shifted)
examples

Sanskrit: mdhu
'honey', Homeric
Greek: methu

*dd [d]/[]

English: mead, East

Frisian: meede, Dutch:
mede,
Danish/Norwegian:
mjd, Icelandic:
mjur , Swedish:
mjd

Ancient Greek:
(khn), Sanskrit:
hamsa (swan)

*gg *+/*+

English: goose, West

Frisian: goes, guos,
Dutch: gans, German:
Gans, Icelandic: gs,
Faroese: gs, Danish,
Norwegian, Swedish:
gs

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Non-Germanic
(unshifted) cognates

Change

Homeric Greek: *ggw []

(After n)
(ephth) "sang,
sounded",
(omph) "voice"

Germanic (shifted)
examples
English: sing, West
Frisian: sjonge, Dutch:
zingen, German:
singen, Gothic:
siggwan, Old Icelandic:
syngva, syngja,
Icelandic, Faroese:
syngja, Swedish:
sjunga, Danish:
synge/sjunge

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Non-Germanic
(unshifted) cognates

Change

Germanic (shifted)
examples

Sanskrit: gharm-,
Avestan: garm, Old
Prussian: gorme

*ggwb, g or w
(Otherwise merged
with existing g and w)

English: warm, West

Frisian: waarm, Dutch,
German: warm,
Swedish: varm,
Icelandic: varmur

This is strikingly regular. Each phase involves one single

change which applies equally to the labials (p, b, b, f) and
their equivalent dentals (t, d, d, ), velars (k, g, g, h) and
rounded velars (k, g, g, h). The first phase left the
phoneme repertoire of the language without voiceless
stops, the second phase filled this gap but created a new
one, and so on until the chain had run its course.
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Verner's law

Verner's law, stated by Karl Verner in 1875,

describes a historical sound change in the
Proto-Germanic language whereby voiceless
fricatives *f, *, *s, *h, *h, when immediately
following an unstressed syllable in the same
word, underwent voicing and became
respectively the fricatives *b, *d, *z, *g, *g.

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(In Proto-Germanic, voiced fricatives *[ +

were allophones of their corresponding voiced
plosives **b d + when they occurred between
vowels, semivowels and liquids, so we write
them here as *b, *d, *g. But the situations
where Verner's law applied resulted in
fricatives in these very circumstances, so we
understand these phonemes as fricatives in
this context.)

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The problem
When Grimm's law was discovered, a strange
irregularity was spotted in its operation. The
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) voiceless stops *p, *t
and *k should have changed into ProtoGermanic (PGmc) *f (bilabial fricative *+), *
(dental fricative []) and *h (velar fricative [x]),
according to Grimm's Law.

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Indeed, that was known to be the usual

development. However, there appeared to be
a large set of words in which the agreement
of Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Baltic, Slavic etc.
guaranteed PIE *p, *t or *k, and yet the
Germanic reflex was voiced (*b, *d or *g).

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At first, irregularities did not cause concern

for scholars since there were many examples of
the regular outcome. Increasingly, however, it
became the ambition of linguists to formulate
general and exceptionless rules of sound change
that would account for all the data (or as close
to all the data as possible), not merely for a wellbehaved subset of it (see Neogrammarians).

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One classic example of PIE *t PGmc *d is the

word for 'father'. PIE *ph2tr (here, the macron marks
vowel length) PGmc *fadr (instead of expected
*far). The structurally similar family term *brtr
'brother' did indeed develop as predicted by Grimm's
Law (Gmc. *brr). Even more curiously, we often
find both * and *d as reflexes of PIE *t in different
forms of one and the same root, e.g. *weranan 'to
turn', preterite singular *war 'he turned', but
preterite plural and past participle *wurd- (plus
appropriate inflections).

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The solution
Karl Verner was the first scholar to note the factor
governing the distribution of the two outcomes. He
observed that the apparently unexpected voicing of
voiceless stops occurred if they were non-word-initial
and if the vowel preceding them carried no stress in
PIE. The original location of stress was often retained
in Greek and early Sanskrit, though in Germanic
stress eventually became fixed on the initial (root)
syllable of all words. The crucial difference between
*patr and *brtr was therefore one of secondsyllable versus first-syllable stress (cf. Sanskrit pit
versus bhrt).
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The *wer- : *wurd- contrast is likewise

explained as due to stress on the root versus
stress on the inflectional suffix (leaving the
first syllable unstressed). There are also
other Vernerian alternations, as illustrated
by German ziehen 'to draw, pull' : zogen 'to
tug, drag' PGmc. *teuhanan : *tugjanan
PIE *duke/o : *duk-H- 'lead'.

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There is a spinoff from Verner's Law: the rule

accounts also for PGmc *z as the development of
PIE *s in some words. Since this *z changed to *r
in the Scandinavian languages and in West
Germanic (German, Dutch, English, Frisian),
Verner's Law resulted in alternation of *s and *r in
some inflectional paradigms, known as
grammatischer Wechsel.

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For example, the Old English verb ceosan

'choose' had the past plural form curon and the
past participle (ge)coren *keusanan : *kuzn ~
*kuznaz *usonom : *us-ot ~ *usnos
'taste, try'. We would have chorn for chosen in
Modern English if the consonantal shell of choose
and chose had not been morphologically levelled
(cf. obs. German kiesen 'to choose' : gekoren
'chosen').

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On the other hand, Vernerian *r has not

been levelled out in En were PGmc *wzn,
related to En was. Similarly, En lose, though it
has the weak form lost, also has the archaic
form lorn (now seen in the compound forlorn)
(cf. Dutch verliezen : verloren); in German, on
the other hand, the *s has been levelled out
both in war 'was' (pl. waren 'were') and
verlieren 'lose' (part. verloren 'lost').

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The following table illustrates the sound changes according to

Verner. In the bottom row, for each pair, the sound on the right
represents the sound changed according to Verner's Law.

PIE

*p

*t

*k

*k

Grimm

*x

*x

Verner

*x

*x

*s

*s

*z

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Conclusion on Verners Law

Alterations according to Verners law are summarized in

the following table, where o denotes any preceding vowel,

but a is used for the following one, for example:

PIE op
PIE ot

PGmc of
PGmc o

o
o

ba
a

PIE ok

PGmc oh

og

ga

PIE os

PGmc os

oz

za

West
Germanic da

ra

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The Dutch linguist Karl Verner paid attention that as a

result of the first consonant shift the PGmc fricatives
remained voiceless or became voiced in the dependence
with the fact what syllable was stressed in the PIE. The
consonants became voiced if the vowel in the preceding
syllable was unstressed, and it did not happen if the stress
was in another position. The established tendency allowed
to draw the conclusion that in the period of the first
consonant shift the position of stress was free in PGmc.

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Dating the change described by Verner's law

It is worth noting that the change in the pronunciation of
the consonant, described by Verner's Law, must have
occurred before the shift of stress to the first syllable. The
voicing of the new consonant in Proto-Germanic is
conditioned by which syllable is stressed in Proto-IndoEuropean, yet this syllabic stress has disappeared in
Proto-Germanic, so the change in the consonant must
have occurred at a time when the syllabic stress in earlier
Proto-Germanic still conformed to the Indo-European
pattern.

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However, the syllabic stress shift erased the

conditioning environment, and made the variation
between voiceless fricatives and their voiced
alternants look mysteriously haphazard
([,hphzd]-.1) Syn: random , accidental
, casual 2) ).
Until recently it was assumed that Verner's law was
productive after Grimm's Law. Now it has been pointed
out (Vennemann 1984:21, Kortlandt 1988:5-6) that,
even if the sequence is reversed, the result can be just
the same in the given certain conditions. Noske (2012)
argues that Grimm's Law and Verner's Law must have
been part of a single bifurcating *bafket]
( ) chain shift.
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