30. Verner’s Law

Important series of consonant changes in Proto Ger was discovered in the 19^th by a Danish scholar,Carl Verner. They are known as Verner’s Law. Varner’s Law explains some correspondences of consonants which seemed to contradict Grimm’s Law & were for a long time regarded as exceptions. According to VL all the early PG voiceless fricatives (f, x) which arose under Grimm’s Law & also (s) inherited from PIE, became voiced b/n vowels if the preceding vowel was unstressed: in the absence of these conditions they remained voiceless. The voicing occurred in early PG at the time when the stress was not yet fixed on the root-morpheme. Varner’s Law accounts for the appearance of voiced fricative or later modifications (d) in the place of the voiceless (3) which ought to be expected under Grimm’s Law. In later PG, the phonetic condition that caused the voicing had disappeared: the stress had shifted to the 1^st syllable.

As a result of voicing by Varner’s Law these arose an interchange of consonants in gram-l forms of the word. Part of the forms retained a voiceless fricative, while others acquired a voiced fricative.(in early PG) both consonants could undergo later changes in the OG lan-es, but the original dif-ce b/n them goes back to the time of movable word stress and PG voicing. The interchanges can be sent in the principal forms of some OG verbs, though most of the interchanges were leveled out by analogy.

31. Reduction of unstressed inflections and its impact on the grammatical structure of e.

Extensive changes of vowels are one of the most remarkable features of English linguistic history. In OE the number of vowels in unstressed position reduced. In unaccented syllables long vowels were shortened & the opposition of long-short was neutralized. In ME & NE the direct of the evolution was the same as before. The tendency towards phonetic reduction operated in all the periods of history. In OE 5 short vowels were distinguished in unstressed position e/I, a. o/u. LME had only 2 vowels in unaccented syllables: ə, i, This means that phonemic contrasts were had been practically lost. The vowels ə and i is an important mark of the ME period which distinguished from OE with its great variety of unstressed vowels and from the NE when the [ə] was dropped. The loss of the final ə started in the North, spread to the Midlands and reached the Southern areas by the 15^thc. In the London dialect of Chaucer’s time it was very unstable and could be easily missed out before a following initial vowel or when required by rhythm. The [e] was understood as a means of showing the length of the vowel in the preceding syllable and was added to words that didn’t have it before-^OEstan-^MEstoon-^NEstone; ^OErad-^MErode-^NErode. While the OE unstressed vowels were thus reduced & lost, new unstressed appeared in borrowed words or developed from stressed ones, as a result of various changes: the shifting of word stress, vocalisation of [r] in the endings as writer, actor, where er and or became [ə]. Some of the new unstressed vowels were reduced to the neutral [ə] or dropped, while others retained certain qualitative & quantitative differences.