The First Consonant Shift (Grimm’s Law) – 2 bc

Grimm’s law states correspondences between definite Indo-European (non-Germanic) and Germanic consonants

папа три Lat. noctem Lat. Labrum два иго Sanskr. bhratar madhu гость Lat. hostis (enemy)

IE G I p – f t – θ k – h II b – p d – t g – k III bh – b dh – d gh – g

father three Germ. naht lip two yoke brother OE medu guest

Indo-European voiceless stops (p, t, k) correspond to Germanic voiceless fricatives (f, θ h) Indo-European voiced stops (b, d, g) correspond to Germanic voiceless stops (p, t, k) Indo-European voiced aspirated stops (bh, dh, gh) correspond to Germanic voiced stops without aspiration ( b, d, g)

Verner’s Law

The idea of Verner’s Law is voicing of consonants.

According to Verner’s Law all the early PG voiceless fricatives which arose under Grimm’s Law became voiced if the preceding vowel was unstressed.

p – f – v – b t – þ – ð – d k – h – g – g s – z – r

Lat. sep'tem Lat. pa'ter Gr. de'kas (rotacism)

OE seofon OE faðar Goth. taihun Goth.laisian

NE seven– Germ. sieben O.Sw. fadar Goth. tigus OE lǣran – Germ. lehren

The Second Consonant Shift

The 2^nd Consonant Shift states correspondences between Common Germanic and High Germanic consonants.

Com. Germ. High Germ.	p pf f	b p	t ts s	d t	k kh h	g k	θ d
English German.	apple hope Apfel hoffen		ten eat zehn essen	do tun	make machen		three drei

Periods in the History of English

Periods	Chronological division		Linguistic division
	Dates	Historical events	Language situation	Linguistic changes
				phonetic division	morphological division
Old English 5c.–11c.	5 c. 7 c.	Germanic settlement of Britain beginning of writing	Early OE, pre-written E written English	full endings sunu	full grammatical forms wrītan–wrāt–writon–writen
Middle English 11c.–14c	1066 1475	Norman conquest introduction of printing	Early ME – dialectical divergence flourishing literary English (Chaucer)	leveled endings sune	weakened grammatical morphemes writen–wrot–writen–writen
New English 15c. – …	1475–1660 1660–1800 1880–1945 1945 –…		Early NE–literary Renaissance (Shakespeare) normalization period Late English –expansion of English Present day English	lost endings sun	lost grammatical morphemes write–wrote–written