Grimm's Law and Verner's Law

 

Grimm’s Law

Germanic, an important branch of the Indo-European is distinguished by its verbal system, the accent of its words and the series of sound changes which are called the First Sound Shifting. This sound shifting was originally discovered by a Danish philologist named Jacob Grimm. In 1822, following the suggestion of a contemporary, Rasmus Rask, Grimm formulated an explanation of certain changes which Proto-Indo-European plosive consonants underwent in Germanic. The law formulated by Grimm is known as the Grimm’s Law.

Indo-European voiced aspirated stops	Indo-European voiced un-aspirated stops	Indo-European voiceless stops	Indo-European voiceless open sounds
/bh/	/b/	/p/	/f/
/dh/	/d/	/t/	/Ѳ/ (th)
/gh/	/g/	/k/	/h/

 

The series of changes involving the Grimm’s law are:

A.     Indo-European voiced aspirated stop sounds bh, dh, gh became shifted in Germanic to the corresponding voiced un-aspirated stop consonants, b, d,g

1.       bh → b

bharata (Sanksrit)→brother

bharami (Sanskrit)→bear

2.       dh→d

Madhya (Sanskrit) →middle

Rudhira (Sanskrit) →red

3.       gh→g

ghostis (Latin) → guest

ghamsa (Sanskrit)→goose

 

B.      Indo-European voiced stops b, d, g changes in Germanic to the corresponding voiceless sounds p, t, k.

1.       b→p

cannabis (Latin)→hemp

kubja (Sanskrit)→hump

2.       d→t

decem (Latin)→ten

cordem(Latin)→heart

3.       g→k

genu (Latin)→knee

gelu (Latin)→cold

 

C.      Indo-European voiceless stops p, t, k changes in Germanic to the corresponding voiceless open sounds (fricatives) f, Ѳ, h

1.       p→f

piscis(Latin)→fish

pita(Sanskrit)→father

2.       t→ Ѳ

tres(Latin)→three

antara(Sansrit)→other

3.       k→h

canis(Latin)→hand

centum(Latin)→hundred

 

The causes of the sound shifting involved in Grimm’s Law are not clearly known. It may be because of the contacts which the Germanic people had with the non-Germanic tribes and the segregation of their dialect from the neighbouring dialects of the language.

Verner’s Law

After a comparative study of the Indo-European and the Germanic languages, Grimm formulated his famous theory, which explained the First Sound Shifting. Even though it explained many changes while Indo-European gradually developed into Germanic, it was found that there were certain exceptions to it.

In a pair of words like Latin ‘Centum’ and English ‘hundred’, there is correspondence between ‘k’ and ‘h’, which was according to the Grimm’s Law. But no such correspondence could be seen between ‘t’ of ‘centum’ and ‘d’ of hundred. Ideally ‘t’ should have changed into ‘th’(Ѳ). Grimm himself was puzzled with this lack of correspondence and later, in 1875, Karl Verner, his disciple, subsequently explained these exceptions. His discovery has been named after him as the Verner’s Law.

Verner discovered that although Grimm stated that Indo-European voiceless plosives (p,t,k) changed to Germanic fricatives (f, Ѳ, h) , in positions other than the initial, these sounds are sometimes seen to be voiced. This voicing, according to Verner, can be explained on the basis of the stress on the Indo-European word. According to him, when the Indo-European accent (stress) did not fall on the vowel immediately preceding the consonant in question, these voiceless stop sounds became voiced stop sounds in Germanic. That is, p, t, k changes into b, d, g and s changes into z.

This explains why the ‘t’ in Centum did not change into ‘th’. It is because the stress was in the last syllable. ‘t’ changed to ‘th’ only if the stress fell on the preceding syllable. Under this condition, ‘t’ in Centum changed to ‘d’ in hundred.