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Grimms Law

Grimm's law describes how Proto-Indo-European stop consonants developed in Proto-Germanic. It establishes regular correspondences between early Germanic stops and fricatives and stop consonants of other Indo-European languages. Grimm's law operated in three phases: voiceless PIE stops became voiceless fricatives, voiced PIE stops became voiceless stops, and voiced aspirated PIE stops became voiced stops or fricatives. Karl Verner later noticed Grimm's law was valid when the Sanskrit accent fell on the root syllable, but when the accent fell elsewhere, the Germanic equivalents became voiced stops.

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1K views3 pages

Grimms Law

Grimm's law describes how Proto-Indo-European stop consonants developed in Proto-Germanic. It establishes regular correspondences between early Germanic stops and fricatives and stop consonants of other Indo-European languages. Grimm's law operated in three phases: voiceless PIE stops became voiceless fricatives, voiced PIE stops became voiceless stops, and voiced aspirated PIE stops became voiced stops or fricatives. Karl Verner later noticed Grimm's law was valid when the Sanskrit accent fell on the root syllable, but when the accent fell elsewhere, the Germanic equivalents became voiced stops.

Uploaded by

Aimee Thomas
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Grimm's Law

Grimm's law (also known as the First Germanic Sound


Shift) is a set of sound laws describing the Proto-Indo-
European (PIE) stop consonants as they developed
in Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC. First
systematically put forward by Jacob Grimm but
previously remarked upon by Rasmus Rask, it
establishes a set of regular correspondences between
early Germanic stops and fricatives and stop
consonants of certain other centum Indo-European
languages. Discovered by the Danish scholar Rasmus
Rask (1818) and formulated by Jacob Grimm (1819),
Grimm’s law is useful in the systematic study and
categorization of consonant shifts that occurred
between PIE and Proto-Germanic and eventually in
English.
Grimm's law operates in three parts forming
consecutive phases in the sense of a chain shift. The
phases are usually described as follows:
 Proto-Indo-European(PIE) voiceless stops mutate
into voiceless fricatives.
 Proto-Indo-European(PIE) voiced stops mutate
into voiceless stops.
 Proto-Indo-European(PIE) voiced aspirated stops
mutate into voiced stops or fricatives (as
allophones).
More specifically, a chain of consonant shifts can
be schematically represented as:

Aspirated Voiced Voiceless Voiceless


voiced stops stops fricatives
stops
bh  b  p  f
dh  d  t  θ[þ]
gh  g  k  h[x]

Grimm’s law stated that the Indo-European p, t, and k


sounds changed into f, th or d, and h in the Germanic
languages. Neogrammarian linguist Karl Verner
noticed that Grimm’s law was valid whenever the
accent fell on the root syllable of the Sanskrit cognate,
but, when the accent fell on another syllable, the
Germanic equivalents became b, d, and g. This was
also the case with s and r. Technically, this rule states
that in the Germanic branch of Indo-European, all
non-initial voiceless fricatives (spirants) became voiced
between voiced sounds if they followed an unaccented
syllable in Indo-European or Sanskrit. For example,
Sanskrit bhrātar, with the accent on the root syllable,
corresponds to Gothic brōþar, but Sanskrit pitā,
accented on the final syllable, corresponds to Gothic
fadar.
More examples:

ΩΩΩ

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