1. Ie voiceless stops were shifted into voiceless fricatives in Gmc

   p - f	пять – five, Lat. pater – father, полный – full
   t – θ	три – three, ты – thou, тысяча – thousand
   k - h	колода – holt, Lat. canis – hund, кардио- – heart

2. Ie voiced stops were shifted to voiceless stops in Gmc

   b - p	слабый – sleep, болото – pool
   d - t–	два – two, дерево – tree
   g - k	иго – yoke, Lat. genus – kin, горе – care

3. Ie aspirated voiced stops were shifted to non-aspirated voiced stops

Aspirated voiced stops are not preserved in any living IE language, but they are found in Sanskrit, a dead IE language.
b^h - b	Snskr. bhrātar – brother, Snskr. bharami – bear
d^h- d–	Snskr. madhu – mead, Snskr. vidhava – widow
g^h - g	Snskr. *songha – G. singan

c) Another important series of sound changes peculiar to the Gmc languages are described by Verner’s Law. This change may have taken place in the 1st c. AD. According to the law, voiceless fricatives including those that resulted from Grimm’s Law [f, θ, x and s], when immediately following an unstressed syllable, became voiced [v, ð, g and z] respectively. In addition to becoming voiced, the hardening of [ð] into [d] occurred in West Gmc languages as well as rhotacism, when [z] changed into [r], took place in the North and West Gmc languages

.

p - f - v	Gk. hepta – seven
t - θ - ð - d	третий – third, Gk. pater – father, OE fæder
k - x - g	cвекровь – G. Schwager
s - z - r	Snsk. wesan – OE wæron, NE were

Verner's Law is especially evident in the forms of strong verbs (was – were) and in related words (death –dead, raise – rear).

d) Another distinctive characteristic shared by the Germanic languages is the Umlaut or mutation, a tendency of phonetic assimilation of the root vowel to the vowel of the ending. There were several types of mutations, but i-umlaut or palatal mutation played an important role in the history of the Germanic languages. It involves fronting of back vowels if the following syllable contained an [i] or [j]. Often such cases of umlaut are no longer transparent because the suffix with the triggering vowel subsequently was lost. It can be demonstrated in the pairs: foot – feet, G. Bruder – Brüder.

This process must have taken place in all Germanic languages except Gothic in the 5-6^th cc.

3.2. Grammar.

Germanic languages have close grammatical structure with the other IE languages, together with certain peculiar developments of their own.

a) All the Germanic languages have two major types of verbs: strong and weak; that is, they form the past tense and past participle either by changing the root vowel in the case of strong verbs (as in Eng. lie, lay, lain or ring, rang, rung; G. ringen, rang, gerungen) or by adding an ending -d (or -t ) or -ed as in the case of weak verbs (as in Eng. care, cared, cared or look, looked, looked; G. fragen, fragte, gefragt).

b) A second striking innovation in the Germanic languages is the development of two new adjective declensions called strong and weak. The type of declension expressed the idea of determinateness: the weak form of an adjective conveys definiteness, while the strong form – indefiniteness. The form of the adjective depends on the context and the presence of a premodifier. These declensions are no longer found in modern Eng., but compare these examples from modern G. pairs such as ein gut-er Mann (strong) versus der gut-e Mann (weak).

c) Moreover, the comparison of adjectives in Germanic languages follows a parallel pattern of affixes, as in

Eng. rich – richer – richest

G. reich – reicher – reichst

Sw. rik – rikare – rikast

d) Also typically Germanic is the formation of the genitive singular by the addition of -s or -es. For example, Eng. man's; Sw. hunds; G. Lehrers or Mannes.

e) Another characteristic of Germanic languages is verb second word order when the second constituent of declarative main clauses is always a verb. This feature is shared by all Germanic languages except English, which has a Subject-Verb-Object word order. For instance in German:

Ich las dieses Buch gestern ‘I read this book yesterday’.

Gestern las ich dieses Buch ‘Yesterday read I this book’.