Unit 4 The Accent Shift and Verner’s Law

Another great defining change is the Accent Shift, leading to the development of what may be called the Germanic Stress Rule.

In Indo-European, accent was by and large ‘free’; it could occur on any syllable of the word, depending on morphological and other conditions. In Germanic, accent fell on the first syllable of the lexical root, ignoring (with certain exceptions) prefixes, regardless of word-length, syllable-structure, part of speech, etc.

Linguists do not know when the accent shift took place, but they are sure that it must have occurred after the Grimm’s Law change [p, t, k] > [f, θ, h].

A simple example: Grimm’s Law 1 says that IE voiceless stops become Germanic voiceless spirants. But there are cases where Grimm’s Law apparently ‘fails’, i.e. where instead of the expected voiceless spirants we get something different. We find this in simple words like OE fæder ‘father’ and mōdor ‘mother’. Judging by Lat. pater and māter, we would expect *fæþer and mōþor. Where does the OE [d] come from? The answer was supplied in a paper by the Danish linguist Karl Verner (1875), who pointed out that the ‘odd’ developments could in fact be predicted from the position of the IE accent [Lass 1997].

The explanation given by Karl Verner is that the sound quality depended upon the position of the accent in the IE word. After an unstressed vowel the voiceless spirants [f, θ, h] (< [p, t, k]) and [s] were voiced and became [Ђ, ð, γ ] and [z]; and, later on, [Ђ, ð, γ ] > [b, d, g].

spirant / .

/ cons. spirant

The voicing occurred in early Proto-Germanic (PG) at the time when the stress was not yet fixed on the root-morpheme. The process of voicing can be shown as a step in a succession of consonant changes:

IE *pater > Early PG *faar > *faðar > Late PG faðar

In late PG, the phonetic conditions that caused the voicing had disappeared: the stress had shifted to the first syllable [Rastorguyeva 1983].

E.g. Lat. caput Gth. haubiþ [Ђ], OE. hēafod [v]

The connection between the Germanic sounds and the position of the IE accent, discovered by Karl Verner, is usually called Verner’s law. It was of great importance for the study of the Germanic languages as it explained many seeming irregularities in the words and their grammatical forms and drew the attention of linguists to word-stress.

Rhotacism

Besides the voiceless spirants [f, θ, h], resulting from the first consonant shift, one more consonant is affected by Verner’s law: the counsonant [s]. If the preceding vowel is unstressed [s] in Germanic languages becomes voiced, i.e. changes into [z]. Eventually this [z] becomes [r] in West Germanic and North Germanic languages (but not in Gothic). This change ([z > r]) is termed ‘rhotacism’ (the Greek letter ‘rho’).

Lith. ausis, Gth. auso	OE. ēare	ModE. ear
Gth. maiza	OE. māra	ModE. more

Rhotacism occurs in other IE languages as well, e.g.

Lat.	flōs ‘flower’ (Nom., sg.)
	flōris (Gen., sg)	< *[f lo:zis]	< *[flo:sis].

Unit 5

Vowels

Germanic languages also have some peculiarities in the sphere of vowel sounds which distinguish them from other IE languages:

Short Vowels

IE	PG	Examples
ă ŏ	ă	Lat. ad Rus. ночь	Gth. at Gth. nahts
ŭ	ŭ ŏ	Skt. sŭnú- Lat. iugum	Gth. sŭnus OE. geoc (<*goc)
ĭ	ĭ	Lat. piscis	Gth. fisks OE. fisc
ĕ	ĕ ĭ	Lat. fero (несу) Lat. ventus	OHG. beran (нести) biru (несу) Gth. winds

Long Vowels

ā ō	ō	Lat. māter Lat. flōs	OE. mōdor blōma
ī	ī	Lat. su-īnus (belonging to a pig)	OE. swīn (swine)
ū	ū au	Lat. sūrus Lat. rūfus	OE. sūr Gth. rauþs (red)
ē	ē ǣ ā	Lat. sēmen	Gth. –sēþs OE. sǣd (seed) OHG. sāt

Thus, as a result of these changes, there was neither ŏ nor ā in Proto-Germanic. Later on these sounds appeared from different sources.