Grimm's and Verner's Law: A Guide to Sound Changes in Germanic Languages

1. Grimm's Law

Jacob Grimm formulated a law in 1822 by which he accounted for an explanation about Indo-European and Germanic consonants and their corresponding development. In other words, he explained how certain consonant sounds changed and developed. According to him, the original Indo-European voiceless stops p/t/k were changed to the fricatives f/þ/h in the Germanic languages. Also, the aspirates bh/dh/gh became voiced fricatives β/đ/y, and then, the voiced stops b/d/g. The original voiced stops b/d/g changed later to voiceless stops in the Germanic languages so b/d/g turned into p/t/k (h). The Germanic Sound Shift is the most distinctive feature marking off the Germanic languages from the languages to which they are related.

2. Verner's Law

Karl Verner spotted a strange irregularity in Grimm’s Law. It was noted that the correspondence between c and h was according to the rule but not between t and d (in words such as centum>hundred). In other words, the d in hundred should have been the voiceless fricative þ. Therefore, Verner showed that when the Indo-European accent was not on the vowel immediately preceding, these voiceless fricatives became voiced in Germanic. Then, the voiceless fricatives f/θ/x/s should become respectively the Germanic voiced fricatives β/đ/y/z unless:

• Being the first sound in a word.
• Being next to another voiceless sound.
• Having the Indo-European stress on the immediately preceding vowel.

The effect of the position of stress on voicing can be observed in some Modern English words of foreign origin, such as exert (igzɘrt) and exist (igzíst).

3. The Strong Conjugation in the Old English Period

The inflection of the verb in the Germanic languages is much simpler than it was in Indo-European times. A peculiarity of the verb in the Old English period is the division of it into two great classes, the weak and the strong (in Modern English as regular and irregular). The strong verbs (sing, sang, and sung) have the power of indicating change of tense by a modification of their root vowel. Their irregularity is due to the fact that they are less numerous than weak verbs (in OE over 300). In OE, the vowel of the past tense often differs in the singular and the plural: the first and third person singular have one vowel while the second person singular and all persons of the plural have another. In Old English the strong verbs can be grouped in seven general classes according to some variations:

1. drīfan (drive)/drāf/drifon/(ge)drifen
2. cēosan (choose)cēas/curon/coren
3. helpan (help)/healp/hulpon/holpen
4. beran (bear)/bær/bæron/boren
5. sprecan (speak)spræc/spræcon/sprecen
6. faran (fare, go)fōr/fōron/faren
7. ēoll/fēollon/feallen

4. Grammatical Gender

The gender of Old English nouns is not dependent upon considerations of sex. Although nouns designating males are often masculine and those indicating females feminine, those indicating neuter objects are not necessarily neuter. Stān (stone) is masculine, mōna (moon) is masculine, but sunne (sun) is feminine, as in German. Often the gender of Old English nouns is quite illogical. Words like mœgden (girl), wīf (wife), bearn (child, son), and cild (child), which are expected to be feminine or masculine, are neuter, while wīfmann (woman) is masculine because the second element of the compound is masculine.