5. Voicing of fricatives in Proto-Germanic (Verner’s Law).

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

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 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.

IE > PG

p > f > v > b

t > Ө > ð > d

k > h > j > g

Rhotacism.

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

OE: wesan – wæs – wæron – weron

OE: ceas - ceosan – curon

This change is called Rhotacism and took place in North and West Germanic l-ges except Gothic.

6. The West Germanic lengthening of consonants or Germination

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.

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 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

But: Goth. domjan>OE deman

7. The second consonant-shifting (High German).

GERMANIC lan-ges and OHG are compared .

Essence: the type of articulation changes while the place remains unchanged, - similar to the First Consonant Shift

Time: V – VIII c. AD

The shift occurred in the dialects of Southern Germany and spread gradually from South to North. There were singled out 3 acts as well, but only P,T,K and B,D,G were shifted. The shift gave different results depending upon the sound distribution and dialects. Its specific feature was appearing of the affricates.

I ACT

PG OHG

p > ff Gt skip > OHG skif

t > zz

k > hh

(in the middle of the word, or at the end of the word after vowels) > f, z, h *

II ACT.

PG OHG

p > pf/ph E pepper > G Pfeffer, E apple > OHG aph

t > tz

k > kh/ch

(at the beginning of the word, in the middle after l, r, m. n. When p,t,k were doubled)

Exceptions: “S“+ p, t, k and “T” in tr, ht,ft remained unchanged. E stone > G Stein. E truth > G Treue

III ACT

PG OHG

b > p > b

d > t* > t E day > G Tag

g > k > g

(Alammanic, Bavarian dialects. Middle German dialects)