1.1. Germanic consonant system

1.1.1. The First Consonant Shift (Grimm’s Law)

Specific Germanic consonant system was formed as a result of several main phonetic processes that occurred in the course of the disintegration of Proto-Germanic out of Proto-Indo-European.

The first and the most important of these processes which separated the consonant system of Germanic language group from the rest of Indo-European languages was the First Consonant Shift.

The term shift is applied in historical linguistics to a series of parallel or similar changes taking place at approximately the same time in a language and affecting the whole pattern or system.

The 1^st Consonant Shift is also termed as Grimm’s Law as far as the regularities of consonant changes in all Germanic languages were systematically studied (though observed for the first by Rasmus Rask) and formulated as a law by Jacob Grimm.

Grimm’s Law affected the PIE obstuents according to the following scheme (in 3 acts):

1) PIE voiceless plosives p, t, k → PG voiceless fricatives f, Ө, х (e.g. Gk pod → OE fot);

2) PIE voiced plosives b, d, g → PG voiceless plosives p, t, k (Lat duo → Goth twai);

3) PIE vloiced aspirated plosives bh, dh, gh → PG voiceless non-aspirated plosives b, d, g (Skt bhratar → Goth brothar).

These changes explain the following correspondences of consonants in Indo-European and Germanic languages:

PIE	Germanic
p, t, k	f, Ө, x
b, d, g	p, t, k
bh, dh, gh	b, d, g

These transformations are in fact chain shift of the original PIE sounds that can be illustrated by the following diagram:

Grimm’s Law had some exceptions, to which belong:

1) after Gmc f, þ, x and s IE plosives underwent no change;

2) Gmc p, t, k did not change after a fricative (such as s) or other stops, so, sound clusters sp, st, sk remained unshifted;

3) in a cluster of two plosives, the preceding consonant turns into a fricative, while the following one remains a plosive;

4) Verner's law (shift stated by Karl Verner in 1875) is also one of the exceptions to Grimm's Law, in which a voiced fricative appears where Grimm's Law predicts a voiceless fricative. The law states that on Proto-Germanic voiceless fricatives f, θ, x and s are voiced when preceded by an unaccented syllable in intervocal position and are shifted respectively into v, đ, g and z (z was a new phoneme) (e.g. PIE *bhrátēr > PGmc. *brōþēr "brother", PIE *mātér > PGmc. *mōðēr "mother")

Thus, the comparison of the Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic consonant systems after the First Consonant Shift can be represented in the table:

Type of consonant	Proto-Indo-European	Proto-Germanic
Labial	p, t, k	b, p, f
Dental	dh, d, t	d, t, Ø
Velar	gh, g, k	g, k, h
Labio-Velar	gwh, gw, kw	gw, kw, hw

It is obvious, that Proto-Germanic consonant system was characterized by the increased quantity of fricatives accompanied by the loss of Proto-Indo-European aspirated plosives.