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English Historical Linguistics: Change in structure and meaning
Edited by Bettelou Los, Claire Cowie, Patrick Honeybone and Graeme Trousdale
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 358] 2022
► pp. 15–40

Chapter 1
Grimm’s Law and Verner’s Law

Towards a unified phonetic account

ORCID logo | University of Oslo | Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences

This paper gives a unified account of Grimm’s and Verner’s Laws in light of findings from experimental phonetics. The Germanic stress shift and stress placement shift are separate phenomena, and I argue that Iverson & Salmons’ (2003) shift in ‘articulatory setting’ corresponds to the former, and that the shift in how prosodic emphasis was expressed, from high pitch to dynamic stress, set Grimm’s Law in motion, because a phonetic correlate of dynamic stress is higher subglottal pressure. Increased subglottal pressure induced aspiration, affrication and spirantisation in Proto-Indo-European (PIE) voiceless stops and devoicing in voiced stops. The voiced aspirates became fricatives, which were allophones of voiced stops; these fricative allophones later fell together with the main plosive allophones to produce Germanic voiced stops.

Keywords: Grimm’s Law, Verner’s Law, Germanic enhancement, aspiration, experimental phonetics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Problems with the traditional account
    • 2.1The original IE/Gmc obstruent inventory
    • 2.2Chronology and intermediate stages
    • 2.3A unified phonetic account
  • 3.Air-flow, pressure, voicing, aspiration and laryngeal specification
  • 4.‘Germanic enhancement’
  • 5.Remaining problems
    • 5.1The voiced aspirates and fricative stopping
    • 5.2Devoicing
    • 5.3A Gmc consonant shift cycle?
    • 5.4The prime mover
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 February 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.358.01ste
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