Methods of comparative linguistics
19th Century and Historical Linguistics
By the end of the 18th century the scientific progress in all spheres of life accumulated
such enormous quantities of new data that some kind of categorisation had to be
made, the process that culminated in the theory of evolution formulated by Charles
Darwin (1859), which explained the transmutation of species through natural
selection in the struggle for survival.
Linguistics was not unaffected by these movements and trends in natural sciences.
The entire 19th century was dedicated to the reconstruction of the evolution of
languages from their ancestor language, and to the discovery of rules and patterns of
changes that made this evolution possible.
There are different sources of similarity among languages. The first source is chance.
Although they sound similar, the Greek theós and Latin deus are not related. The
similarity is accidental. Latin deus is cognate with the Greek Zeus (genitive Dios).
Another example of chance similarity is Greek mati ‘eye’ , Malay mata ‘eye’, English
bad and Persian bad etc.
The second source of similarity between two languages is borrowing. The English
igloo is similar to Inuit iglu because English borrowed this word along with the
concept of the house made of snow. The Iranian word baga ‘god’ was borrowed from
the Slavic neighbours.
The third source of similarity is language universals. Onomatopoeic words (cuckoo,
Kuckuck, kuku), baby-talk words for kinship terms typically containing syllables ma,
ba, pa, da, ta...)
But sometimes the similarities among languages go beyond chance, borrowing or
linguistic universals.
The idea that languages might be related to each other through descent from a
common ancestor was in Europe proposed already by Dante. The similarities among
Romance languages were so overwhelming, that, given the common historical
background, it was not difficult to determine Latin as their ultimate source.
Spanish
Italian
French
Portuguese Latin
1
uno
uno
un
um
ūnus
2
dos
due
deux
dois
duo
3
tres
tre
trios
três
trēs
10
diez
dieci
dix
dez
decem
am
soy
sono
suis
sou
sum
are
eres
sei
es
és
estis
is
es
è
est
é...
est
fish
pez
pesce
poisson
peixe
piscis
cuore
coeur
coraçaõ
cor
heart corazón
Attempts to make longer-range comparisons were less successful. In Europe, it was
believed that all languages were ultimately descended from Hebrew, in India from
Sanskrit. But at the end of the 18th century, an important discovery was made by Sir
William Jones, a British judge, philologist and scholar in Calcutta. He became
fascinated by Sanskrit, the classical Indian language, and its similarities with Latin
and Greek. He concluded that these languages had evolved from the same parent
language, and that Celtic and Germanic languages could be added to the family.
Jones sent his findings to Europe, where they attracted the attention of Franz Bopp,
Wilhelm von Humboldt, Jacob Grimm, Rasmus Rask and Friedrich Schlegel, who
dedicated their work to establishing the genealogical tree of Indo-European
languages and reconstruction of their parent language. They applied the so-called
Comparative method
The proof of genetic relatedness is that similarities are systematic and recurrent:
English
German
a) p : f
Pound
Pfund
Penny
Pfennig
Ape
Affe
b) k : x
Make
machen
Cook
Koche
According to most linguists, the ultimate proof of the relatedness of languages lies in
the reconstruction of their ancestor or PROTO language, from which the attested
forms can be derived by plausible linguistic changes.
The ancestor forms can be reconstructed from the extent attested forms:
Spanish diente
Italian dente
French dent
Portuguese dente
All words begin with d-, which means that their ancestor must have begun with d-. All
words have the cluster –nt- (pronounced in older French). The ancestral word must
have had d.....nt....
Italian, French and Portuguese have -e-, Spanish has –ie-. Three languages have the
vowel –e at the end of the word, one none. Based on that, it is relatively safe to
assume that the ancestor form was *dente (classical Latin dēns, stem dent-)
If that be true, than one must find other examples of the same correspondences
Spanish
Italian
French
Portuguese
Latin
viento
vento
vent
vento
ventos
Groups of words which we compare are called correspondence sets, and individual
words in the sets are cognate words. When sounds correspond across a number of
correspondence sets, we speak about the regularity of sound correspondences. An
ancestral language is called a proto-language and its descendents are daughter
languages.
We also have to find a plausible explanation for proto-Romance *e to have changed
to ie in Spanish. The fact that Latin language developed into more languages is due
to language change. When the sounds of a language change, one speaks of sound
changes. Sound changes are regular and exceptionless. This view is called the
Neogrammarian Hypothesis. It is crucial for determining the pronunciation of earlier,
proto stages of languages.
In doing so, one must consider all facts available: contemporary description,
descendant languages, orthographic practices, including misspellings, borrowings in
other languages etc.
A more complex example (Indo-European vowels):
Gothic ita
(it)
<
IE *i
Latin idem
Sanskrit idam
Gothic ist
(is)
< IE *e
Latin est
Greek esti
Sankrit asti
Gothic
juk
(yoke)
Latin iugum
Greek zugón
< IE *u
Sanskrit yugam
ON aka (drive)
Latin agō
Greek ágō
< IE *a
Sanskrit aǰati
Gothic ahtau (eight)
Latin octō
Greek oktō
< IE *o
Sanskrit aṣṭau
Gothic fadar
Latin pater
(father)
< IE *ə
Sanskrit pitar
In reconstructing proto-sounds, several principles have to be observed:
a) Reconstructed items (sounds) should be natural.
b) The phonetic value should be attached to a reconstructed sound.
c) The reconstruction must not violate the Ockham Razor (cannot presume *
instead of *i.
During the 1950’s, and all through the 1970’s, a different method promised to make
the establishment of genetic relations among languages easier than the traditional
comparative method. This GLOTTOCHRONOLOGICAL or the LEXICOSTATISTICAL
method was proposed by Morris Swadesh. Just as the comparative method, this
approach was also modelled on the method applied in natural sciences, the so-called
Radio-Carbon method, which operates with a constant rate of change (the half-life of
different carbon isotopes in a carbon-based material. Glottochronology is based on
the assumption that the core of the basic every-day vocabulary of a language is
replaced at a constant rate. It was first tested against the lexical loss in languages
with a long series of texts, like Romance languages. The final conclusion was that
80-85 percent of core vocabulary is replaced over a thousand years. According to
this method, Modern English has preserved 80% of the basic vocabulary in the year
1000. The method seemed promising because it required only the collection of basic
vocabulary items. But the enthusiasm soon came to an end.
PROTO-INDOEUROPEAN LANGUAGE AND INDOEUROPEAN LANGUAGES
Despite the shortcomings of the comparative method, it played a decisive role in the
reconstruction of the common ancestor of languages which are commonly referred to
Indo-European languages. The reconstruction had been practically completed by the
end of the 19th century, although some languages, like Anatolian languages and
Tocharian were discovered as late as the 20th century.
As to the time and location of the Proto-Indo-European language, the most widely
accepted estimates are 3700 BC and the Pontic-Caspian steppes of Russia. The
vocabulary common to Indo-European languages suggests that their ancestral
society was patriarchal, stratified, cattle raising and possibly agrarian.
For a long time it was believed that IE relatively soon split into two dialects which
later evolved into two branches of languages: the satem (or eastern) and the centum
(or western) group respectively.
The division is based on the development of Indo-European velar consonants.
PIE had the following inventory of stops: labial, dental, palatal, velar and labio-velar,
all of them voiceless, voiced and aspirated voiced.
Labial
dental
palatal
velar
labio-velar
Voiceless
p
t
k̂
k
kw
Voiced
b
d
ĝ
g
gw
dh
ĝh
gh
gwh
Voiced asp bh
The three series of velar stops collapsed into two groups in all IE languages.
In eastern languages, the labio-velar and the velar stops coalesced, in the western
group the palatal and the velar stops coalesced into plain velar stops.
PIE *k̂m̻tom- > Skt. śatám Av. satəm, OCS sŭto
Lith. šim̃tas
 Gk. Hekatón Lat. Centum, OIr. Cēt Goth. hund
Eastern group (Satem languages):
Indo-Iranian (Aryan) languages
Aryan < ārya ‘noble'
Indo-Aryan (Indic):
Indic tribes entered India in the second millennium BC, from the Iranian
plateau into Punjab. The Indus river valley had already been the site of urban
civilization, possibly Dravidian, flourishing in the latter part of the 3 rd
millennium.
The oldest Indic language is Vedic Sanskrit. This is the language of the sacred
books of Brahmanism, Vedas (véda ‘knowledge’). The oldest one of them,
Rig Veda, contains over 1000 hymns in 10 books. It was completed by the end
of the 2nd millennium BC – difficult to decode, in intentionally obscured
language.
In the 5th century BC Pāṇini made a highly precise description of Sanskrit, in a
manner resembling modern generative grammar. This grammar fossilized the
written language, Classical Sanskrit, which survives in Mahābhārata and
Rāmāyaṇa.
Sanskrit kept voiced aspirated stops and developed retroflex dentals (including the
nasal).
Middle Indic or Prakrit evolved into mdern indic languages Pali, Hindi-Urdu,
Bengali, Punjabi, Sinhalese, Romany, Gujarati, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Sinhalese...
Iranian branch of Indo-Iranian languages:
Avestan (7th BC), the language of Avesta, a collection of sacred texts of the
Zoroastrian religion (Mazdaism).
Zoroaster or Zaraθuštra lived in late 2nd millennium BC. His teachings introduced
cosmic dualism with two deities: Ahura Mazda (wise lord) and Ahriman (destructive,
evil spirit)
Old Persian – inscriptions about Darius I and Xerxes I (1st millennium) were written in
a cuneiform script (trilingual – Akkadian, Elamite).
Middle Iranian or Pahlavi evolved into modern Iranian or Farsi, which came under
Arabic influence when Iranians accepted Islam.
Other Iranian languages are Kurdish, Pashto, Ossetic, Tajiki, Baluchi,
Albanian
Albanian speakers believe that they are descendents of Illyrians, an Indo-European
people who settled the western Balkans in the 2nd millennium BC. Three main
varieties are spoken today, Gheg in Kosovo, Tosk in southern parts of Albania and
Arbëresh, the dialect of Albanian minority in Italy. Albanian shares several linguistic
features with the neighbouring languages, which form the so-called Balkan
Sprachbund e.g. postpositioned article, the loss of infinitive after modal verbs etc.
Armenian
In the past, Armenian was listed among Iranian languages, but this theory was
disproved in 1877. Armenians were converted to Christianity around 300 AD. Mesrop
(360-440), a charismatic priest and linguist, devised a special Armenian script, based
on Greek alphabet. This gave rise to Armenian literature, the translation of the Holy
Scriptures in 411 and the consolidation of the national Armenian Church as the
backbone of Armenian identity. The classical Armenian Grabar remained the literary
standard until 19th c.
Balto-Slavic languages
Baltic and Slavic languages probably share a common ancestor, Balto-Slavic.
Slavic languages were first mentioned in Byzantine records in 6th c. AD.
They
are
divided into three groups, East Slavic, West Slavic and South Slavic languages.
The literacy of East Slavic languages began with the Christianisation of Rus’ in 988
by the pupils of Constantine and Methodius in a language close to Old Church
Slavonic (> Russian Church Slavonic). This language is still used in the Orthodox
liturgy, as a literary standard it survived until the 17th century. East Slavic languages
are Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian.
West Slavic languages are Polish, Czech, Slovak ad Sorbian. Polish stands out with
its nasal vowels, Czech and Slovak had the same literary standard until the 19th
century. Sorbian is spoken by 155.000 people along the river Spree near Dresden.
South Slavic languages are Slovene, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian and Bulgarian.
Old Church Slavonic, spoken by Constantine and Methodius and their disciples, was
also based on south Slavic dialects from around Thessaloniki. The old Bulgarian
language was similar to Chuvash, and it belonged to the Turkic language family.
Baltic languages are the extinct Old Prussian, Lithuanian and Latvian. Old Prussian
is preserved in translations from 17th century; it was spoken until the 18th century on
the territory of eastern Prussia. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, Prussians were
converted to Christianity by the Teutonic Knights, a religious and military medieval
order. Christianization was combined with intense Germanization. Of the two
surviving Baltic languages, Lithuanian is the one which has kept most of IndoEuropean features, like tone accent and all case endings except the ablative.
Western group (Centum languages):
Greek (Hellenic) language(s)
Not much known about the possible substratum languages, spoken in Greece before
the arrival of Hellenic tribes. On Crete, traces were found of Minoan civilization
(Minos, legendary king of Crete) in the (yet to be deciphered) script Linear A. This
script was probably the basis for the Linear B, a script which was found in the Room
of the Chariot Tablets in Knossos, dating from 1450-1350 BC, in Mycenaean Greek.
Linear B was deciphered in 1957. Most inscriptions were found on the islands Crete
and Cyprus, but some also in the southern parts of the Peloponnese. The demise of
Mycenaean civilization – 1100 BC – was caused by Doric invasion. During the
subsequent Greek Dark Ages both literacy and the population dropped drastically.
Greek reappears in the alphabetic script in the 8th c. BC. It is called Archaic Greek.
Iliad, Odyssey and Homeric hymns to gods belong to this era. They were written in
the Ionic dialect (coast of Asia Minor, the islands of the Aegean Sea). Poetry was
composed in a mixture of ionic and Aeolic (Lesbos, Thessaly, Boeotia - Thebes)
dialects.
Classical Greek, from 480 BC on; Attic, the dialect of Athens (Attic-Ionic dialect), was
the language of Sophocles, Euripides, Plato, Aristotle, Pindar and Sappho wrote in
Doric.
Around the 5th century, Attic was accepted as the official language of the Macedon
court. It became the official language over an enormous area in the eastern
Mediterranean – from Italy, to Egypt, to Tajikistan and Afghanistan.
Its simplified variety is called Hellenic Greek – Koine.
hē koinē diálektos ‘the common language’
In contrast to classical Greek, Koine shows a reduction of vowels, e. g. ei, ē, i > [i]; ai,
e > [ɛ], oi, u [y]; aspirated stops ph, th, kh became [f, θ, x], voiced stops became
fricatives b, d, g [v, ð, ɤ]; dual, optative mood lost, distinction between perfect and
aorist lost.
Purist reaction – Byzantine Greek, artificially archaized classical Greek.
Modern Greek is descended from Koine. In 1828 it got its ‘purified’ standard
Katharevusa, the spoken standard is Demotic. In 1976 Demotic replaced
Katharevusa as the written standard.
Italic languages
Italic tribes had settled the Apennine peninsula probably by 1000 BC. Of all their
languages, divided into Latino-Falascian and Osco-Umbrian (Sabellic) groups, only
Latin survived.
The first inscriptions in Archaic Latin date from 7th BC – mid 2nd BC.
Classical Latin – golden and silver ages (150 BC – AD 180 – death of Ovid AD 17,
death of Marcus Aurelius 180)
Vulgar Latin was the spoken variety of Latin, the one which underwent many
changes especially when used in the faraway provinces of the Roman Empire.
Unstressed vowels were syncopated, vowels coalesced, velars were palatalized
before front vowels, the number of cases was reduced (ad regem instead of regī),
periphrastic verbal constructions replaced synthetic tenses – compound perfect
tenses with habēre: ego habeō cantātum, compound future cantāre habeō
It was from Vulgar Latin that Romance languages evolved: Portuguese, Spanish,
Catalan, Ladino, French, Occitan (Provencal), Italian, Romanian, Rhaeto-Romance
(Ladin, Friulian, Romansch)
Celtic languages:
Celtic culture in Europe is associated with the Hallstatt culture (late Bronze, early Iron
Age). Between 1200 and 500 BC their territory stretched from central Europe to
British Isles, to Asia Minor.
Celtic languages preserved almost all Indo-European grammatical features, but had
V-S-O word. They are traditionally divided into Continental Celtic and Insular Celtic.
Linguists, however, distinguish between the Q-Celtic and P-Celtic languages,
according to the respective development of IE labiovelars.
Little is known about continental Celtic languages, except for the relatively modest
traces of Gaulish in French.
Insular Celtic languages were all affected by the initial consonant mutation. Both
groups are respresented:
Gaelic, Goidelic (Q-celtic – labiovelars into velars): Irish, Scottish, Manx
Brythonic (P-celtic, labio-velars into labials): Welsh, Cornish, Pictish, Breton
Germanic languages:
Name probably after a tribe called Germānī in Latin. The older term Teutonī,
Teutonēs, came from another tribal name. Common Germanic or Proto Germanic
was probably spoken in the north of Europe, in southern Scandinavia, along the
coasts of the North and the Baltic seas, in the first half of the first millennium BC. The
Roman historian Tacitus wrote a monograph on Germanic people and their culture
(AD 98). Germanic tribes must have had contacts with Balto-Slavic and Finnic
people, which is manifested in loanwords and certain common linguistic features.
Traditionally, Germanic languages are divided into three groups: East Germanic,
North Germanic and West Germanic languages.
East Germanic:
East Germanic languages are all extinct. They evolved from dialects spoken along
the rivers Vistula and Oder. The most important East Germanic language is Gothic.
Goths must have lived in the Vistula area until the 3 rd century and then they migrated
towards the Black Sea. A century later, they are already divided into two
communities. The eastern branch – Ostrogoths lived east of the river Dniester,
Visigoths (“good” Goths, western Goths) between the Dniester and the Danube.
When Huns started to attack from the east, Ostrogoths succumbed and many joined
Attila in his raids in Gaulle. When Huns got defeated, Ostrogoths reclaimed their
independence and were granted permission to settle in Pannonia. In 488 their king
Theodoric conquered Italy and effectively ruled over the entire Western Roman
Empire, even though he never claimed the title of the emperor. Ostrogoths got
assimilated with the local population. Their rule was broken by Byzantium in 555.
Visigoths found sanctuary against the Huns in Byzantium, south of the river Danube.
They had a pact with emperor Theodosius to serve as soldiers in his army. After the
death of Theodosius in 395, Visigoths rebelled, attacked Greece under Alaric I and in
410 even ransacked Rome. Alaric’s successor Ataulf led them to the west. Their
kingdom in Spain survived until 711, when they were defeated by Arabs.
Goths were converted to Christianity early on. Bishop Wulfila, Ulfila ‘little wolf’ (311382) devised a special alphabet based on Greek uncials, and translated the Bible
into Gothic. Copies of the Bible from the 6th century have been preserved and they
provide the best insight into the structure and nature of the early Germanic
language(s). Gothic itself survived longest in the Crimean area (Crimean Gothic), but
became extinct in the 18th century.
Other East Germanic languages – Vandalic, Burgundian, Rugian, Gepidian – had
become extinct by the 10th century.
North Germanic:
North Germanic languages evolved from Germanic dialects which were spoken on
the territory of Scandinavia. They were first recorded as runic inscriptions in a
language called Old Norse, from the 3rd century. Around the year 800, Nordic was
already divided into eastern and western Norse. Easter Norse evolved into Old
Swedish and Old Danish, western into Old Norwegian. Between the 9 th and the 11th
c., Vikings took their Norwegian dialects to Faroese islands and to Iceland, where
they eventually evolved into Faroese and Icelandic.
Norway came under the Danish rule towards the end of the 14 th century and Danish
became the official language in Norway. Southern Norwegian dialects were strongly
affected by Danish, and together they gave rise to a language called Dansk-Norsk or
Riksmål. This language survives in modern Bokmål, one of the two official languages
in Norway. When Norway became independent in 1814, Ivar Aasen tried to boost the
national identity by creating a new, language on the basis of Danish-free northern
and western dialects. This new official language is called Nynorsk. It is spoken by
about 20% of the population.
Literary tradition of North Germanic languages is best represented in Icelandic.
Sagas and the two Eddas recount the exploits of legendary Norse heroes and king.
They were written down mostly between the 12th and 14th centuries.
West Germanic languages evolved from dialects that were spoken by Germanic
tribes along the rivers Elbe, Rhine, Vesser, and on the coasts of the North Sea.
The North Sea dialects evolved into Ingvaeonic languages: Old Frisian, Old English
and Old Saxon. Old Frisian is the languages closest to Old English and many believe
in their common Anglo-Frisian ancestor. Old English evolved from the dialects of
Saxons, Angles and Jutes, who settled in England in the 5 th century. Saxony was an
independent duchy from the 8th century until the end of the Middle Ages and Saxon
had a rich literary production during 800-1000 and 1200-1300. Today it survives as a
special Low German dialect, Plattdeutsch.
Germanic tribes by the Elbe spoke Langobardic, Bavarian and Alemannic dialects.
Langobardic became extinct; Bavarian is preserved in modern Bavarian and Austrian
dialects, Alemannic as Swiss German. Bavarian and Alemannic are known as Upper
German (Oberdeutsch). Together with Lower Franconian they evolved into Old High
German, the direct predecessor of modern standard German.
Franks, who lived by the rivers Rhine and Weser, spoke Frankish. One group of
Frankish dialects, High Franconian, was affected, along with the Upper German, by
the Second or High German consonant shift. Low Franconian evolved into Dutch with
Afrikaans and Flemish. Frankish dialects are preserved also in Luxembourgish.
Yiddish evolved from a Middle High German dialect, spoken by Jews in Germany in
the 9th and 10th centuries. It is a creolized variety of German, written in an adapted
Hebrew script. It has many Hebrew words, as well as Slavic, which it adopted after
Jews had moved to eastern Europe.
LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF GERMANIC LANGUAGES
Germanic languages belong to the Centum group of Indo-European languages. In
phonology, they are distinguished from other IE languages by the effects of

Grimm’s Law

Verner’s Law

development of *u before syllabic sonorants

coalescence of IE short *a, *schwa and *o into *a, and long *ā and *ō into *ō

fixation of word accent on the first syllable.
GRIMM’S LAW
Grimm’s Law or the First Proto-Germanic Consonant shift is a series of sound
changes which Johann Jacob Grimm described in his Deutsche Grammatik in 1822.
These changes affected Indo-European stops (plosives) in the following manner:
1) Indo-European voiceless stops became fricatives in Proto-Germanic;
2) Indo-European voiced stops became voiceless stops in Proto-Germanic;
3) Indo-European voices aspirated stops became voiced fricatives in ProtoGermanic, and subsequently voiced stops in many positions.
Examples:
(1)
PIE *p > Germ *ɸ > f
PIE *penkwe > Germ. *ɸemɸe > OE fīf > five; OHG finf, ON fimm; Slov. pet
Also: foot – pied, pedal; field – polje; free – prijati; friend – prijatelj; foam – pena;
father- pater.
PIE *t > Germ *þ
PIE *tr̥n- > Germ. *þurn- > OE þorn > thorn; HG. Dorn; Slov. trn
Also: thin – tanek, toča-thunder, tri-three, terra (dry land) – thirst
PIE *k̑ > Germ. *x
PIE * k̑erd- > *xert- > OE heorte > heart; HG Herz, Slov. (sr(d)ce, sredina,
Also: (h)loud – slovo, sto-hundred, haulm - slama
PIE *k > Germ. *x
PIE *kroṷos > Germ. *xraṷas > OE hrēaw > raw; Slov. krvav
Also: hew – kovati, Srb. Kosa – ang. Hards (coarse fibers of flax and hemp)
PIE *kw > Germ. Xw
PIE *kwo-, > Germ. *xwaz- > who; HG (h)wer, L. quid, quod, Slov. kdo
Also: while - po-koj (while related to quiet)
(2)
PIE *b > Germ *p
PIE *slēb-, *slōb- > Germ.*slē1p- > OE slǣpan > sleep; Slov. slab
Also: pool – blato, lip – labia, deep – dubok
PIE *d > Germ. *t
PIE *deru-, *doru- > Germ. *treṷ- OE trēo > tree: Slov. drevo, drva
Also: two – dva, duo, ten – deset, timber –dom; ped- foot
PIE *ĝ > Ger. *k
PIE *ĝr̥n- > Germ. *kurn- > OE. corn > corn; L. granum, Slov. zrno
Also knee - L. genū, know – Gr. Gnōtós, znati
PIE *g > Germ. *k
PIE *gel-; *gol- > Germ. *kald-az > OE cold > cold; Slov. hlad, L. gelu ‘frost’
Also: yoke – igo, joga; carve – Gr. Gráphein
PIE *gw > Germ. *kw
PIE *gwen- > OE cwēn > queen; Slov. žena ; Gr. Gunē;
Aslo: quick – živ
(3)
PIE *bh > Germ. * β > *b (by the end of Germ. Period, initially and after nasals)
PIE *bhrāter > Germ. *brōþar > brother; Slov. brat
Also: bear – brati, be – biti
PIE *dh > Germ. *ð > *d
PIE *dhur- ; dhṷer- > Germ. *dur- > OE duru > door, Slov. duri, dver
Also: do – deti, mead – med, rdeč – red;
PIE *ĝh > Germ. * γ > * g
PIE *ṷeĝh- > Germ. * weǥ- > OE weg > way; Slov. voz
PIE *gh > Germ * γ > g
PIE *mogh-, megh > germ *maǥ- OE mæg > may; Slov. mogel
Also: lay – legel, gos - goose
PIE *gwh > germ. *ǥw
PIE *gwher- > Germ. Warm- > OE wearm > warm; Slov. goreti
Also: snow - sneg
Exceptions:

Voiceless stops did not change to fricatives after s (stand).

In cluster of 2 stops – only the first one affected (oktou > aht).
VERNER’S LAW
-
Described in 1876 by the Danish linguist Karl Verner, Verner' Law explains the
“exceptions” to Grimm’s Law, i. e. the emergence of voiced fricatives where
one would expect voiceless ones. This change must have happened later than
Grimm’s Law, since all voiceless fricatives were affected, the IE *s, as well as
those that emerged as the consequence of Grimm’s Law.
Germanic voiceless fricatives *s, *f, *þ, *x, *xw became voiced medially if not
preceded by an accented syllable.
IE *upéri > Germ. *uferi > *uβeri > NE. over
IE *kasón > Germ. *xason > xazon > NE. hare (in West Germanic languages)
SYLLABIC RESONANTS
Indo-European syllabic resonant developed * u before them in Proto-Germanic:
IE. *l, *r, *m, *n > Germ. *ul, *ur, *um, *un
PIE *ghlt̥om > Ger. *ǥulþam > NE. gold (zlato)
PIE *tr̥n- Germ. þurn- > NE. thorn ; trn; murder-mrtev
VOWELS
The following groups of Indo-European vowels have been reconstructed:
a) short monophthongs: *a, *e, *i, o*, *u, *ə (schwa)
b) long monophthongs: *ā, *ē, *ī, *ō, *ū
c) short diphthongs: *ai, *ei, *oi, *au, *eu, *ou,
d) long diphthongs: * āi, *ēi, *ōi, *āu, *ēu, *ōu
Proto-Germanic development:
a) IE short *a, short *o and *ə (schwa) merged into Germ. *a
b) IE long *ā and *ō merged into Germ. *ō
c) IE long *ē remained in Proto Germanic, but is notated as *ē1. A new long *ē2
appeared of uncertain origin, which was higher than *ē1.
d) In many positions, especially before nasals, IE short *e changed to *i.
e) IE diphthong *ei changed to Germ. long *ī
f) IE *ai and *oi merged into Germ. *ai
g) IE *au and *ou merged into Germ. *au
Examples:
IE *a, *o, *ə > Germ. *a
IE *o k̑tōu > Germ.* axtōu (osem)
IE *ō, *ā > Germ. *ō
IE *bhrātēr > Germ. *brōþer
IE *e > *i (especially before nasals)
IE *wento- > Germ. *windaz
WEST GERMANIC
Three West Germanic languages were attested before 1000: Old English, Old Saxon
and Old High German. The first two must have been mutually intelligible.
The following changes are shared by all West Germanic languages:
1) Final *z was lost, otherwise rhoticized to r:
IE *was-, *wēs-‘ > Germ. *was, *wē1z-‘ > OE wæs, wǣron
2) All consonants except r were geminated if followed by *j and preceded by a short
vowel: Germ. *bidjan > OE biddan
3) Germanic voiced dental fricative *ð (from IE *dh) became a stop in all positions.
IE *pətḕr > Germ. *faþèr > *faðer > OE fæder
Vowels:
Germanic *ē1 became ā, but in Old English and Frisian it was later fronted to ǣ or
even ē.
All West Germanic languages were affected by mutations.
Palatal mutation, i-Umlaut
All vowels except e under the influence of i or j in the next syllable. The vowel thus
became more similar to i. So, for example, in Old English we find instead of
*a > æ, or even e before nasals
*o > e
*u > i
*eo > ie
*ea > ie.
The effects of this i-mutation are preserved in the conjugation of verbs (cf. 2 nd, 3rd
person singular in some German verbs), in the mutation plural of some nouns in
English (because of the Germanic plural suffix *iz), in some comparative/superlative
forms of adjectives (because of the suffixes *iza and *ista), and in some derivatives
(cf. English full and fill, long and length etc.)
Germ. *mūs, pl. *mūs-iz > OE mūs, pl. mȳs ‘mouse, mice’
Cf. also: old – elder, full – fill etc.
Back mutation, a-Umlaut
*i or *u were lowered under the influence of *a to *e or *o. It happened in late
Proto Germanic, common in OHG, rare in other Germanic languages.
Germ. *wiraz > OE wer
Germ. *gulþam (< IE*ghltom) > OE gold
(prevented by nasal: hund)
In INGVAEONIC1 languages (Old English, Old Saxon, Old Frisian) *n disappeared
before a fricative and that process resulted in the lengthening of the preceding vowel:
Vowel + nasal + fricative > long vowel + fricative
1
Ingvaeonic – the name comes from the tribal group Ingvaeones who lived by the North Sea.
Cf. German uns and OE ūs (unser, our); gans – goose; fimf – five
OLD ENGLISH and OLD FRISIAN (ANGLO-FRISIAN?) had two major changes in
common: the so-called “brightening” of long *ā (from *ē1) and of short *a, and the
smoothing of the Germanic diphthong *ai to long *ā.
In pre-literary time, Old English got new diphthongs. This was the result of
either BREAKING – FRACTURE (harmonic breaking) or the so-called backUmlaut.
1) Breaking:
pre-OE *e > eo
pre-OE *æ > ea before {r+C, l+C, h+C, h*#}
heorte, feallan,
2) Back-Umlaut
Short i, e, sometimes a > diphthong eo, io, ea when a back vowel occurred
in the next syllable, but only before one consonant (in WS labial f, b, w or
liquid r, l)
Seofon, heofon...
Old English velar consonants had been palatalized in palatal environment and
voiceless fricatives became voiced in voiced environment.
OE cinn [ʧin], scip [ʃip] (vs. cann, scōl)
OE giefan [jevan], gē [je:] (vs. gān, frogga)
The Lord’s Prayer in some Germanic languages
Gothic:
Atta unsar, þu in himinam,
weihnai namo þein,
qimai þiudinassus þeins,
wairþai wilja þeins,
swe in himina jah ana airþai.
Hlaif unsarana þana sinteinan gif uns himma daga,
jah aflet uns þatei skulans sijaima,
swaswe jah weis afletam þaim skulam unsaraim,
jah ni briggais uns in fraistubnjai,
ak lausei uns af þamma ubilin;
[unte þeina ist þiudangardi
jah mahts jah wulþus in aiwins.]
Swedish:
Vår fader, du som är i himlen.
Låt ditt namn bli helgat.
Låt ditt rike komma.
Låt din vilja ske,
på jorden så som i himlen.
Ge oss i dag vårt bröd för dagen som kommer.
Och förlåt oss våra skulder,
liksom vi har förlåtit dem som står i skuld till oss.
Och utsätt oss inte för prövning,
utan rädda oss från det onda.
German:
Vater Unser im Himmel,
Geheiligt werde Dein Name,
Dein Reich komme,
Dein Wille geschehe,
wie im Himmel so auf Erden.
Unser tägliches Brot gib uns heute.
Und vergib uns unsere Schuld,
wie auch wir vergeben
unseren Schuldigern.
Und führe uns nicht in Versuchung,
sondern erlöse uns von dem Bösen.
Denn Dein ist das Reich und die Kraftund die Herrlichkeit in Ewigkeit.
Dutch:
Onze Vader in de hemel,
uw naam worde geheiligd,
uw koninkrijk kome,
uw wil geschiede,
op aarde zoals in de hemel.
Geef ons heden ons dagelijks brood
en vergeef ons onze schulden
zoals ook wij anderen hun schulden hebben vergeven,
en stel ons niet op de proef
maar verlos ons van de duivel.
Old English:
Fæder ūre, þū þe eart on heofonum;
Sīe þīn nama gehālgod,
tō becume þīn rīce,
gewurþe þīn willa,
on eorðan swā swā on heofonum.
Urne gedæghwamlican hlāf sele ūs tōdæg,
and forgif ūs ūre gyltas,
swā swā wē forgifaþ ūrum gyltendum,
and ne gelǣd þū ūs on costnunge,
ac āls ūs of yfele, sōþlīce.
Modern English:
Our Father,
who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us;
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
Tok Pisin
Papa bilong mipela
Yu stap long heven.
Nem bilong yu i mas i stap holi.
Kingdom bilong yu i mas i kam.
Strongim mipela long bihainim laik bilong yu long graun,
olsem ol i bihainim long heven.
Givim mipela kaikai inap long tude.
Pogivim rong bilong mipela,
olsem mipela i pogivim ol arapela i mekim rong long mipela.
Sambai long mipela long taim bilong traim.
Na rausim olgeta samting nogut long mipela.
Kingdom na strong na glori, em i bilong yu tasol oltaim oltaim.
Tru.
father
IE *pətēr
IE *p > Ger. *f – Grimm’s law, all voiceless plosives > fricatives
IE *ə > Ger. *a , IE ə, o, a > germ, a (independent change)
IE *t > Germ. *þ (Grimm’s law) > ð (Verner’s law – unaccented vowel precedes)
Germ. ð > d in all WG languages
Germ. a > OE æ (brightening of a and ā in Anglo-Frisian)
OE æ > ME a > NE [ɑ:] before voiceless fricatives and [ð]
ME <d> > <th> in 16th century.
goose
IE *ghans- > Germ. *gans- > OE gōs > NE [gu:s] goose
IE *gh > Germ. * [γ] > g (Grimm's Law)
Germ *-ans > Ingv. *ōs : In Ingvaeonic languages the nasal disappeared before
voiceless fricatives and the vowel preceding it became long. (Germ. long * ā became
*ō)
stone
IE *stoino- Germ *stain- > OE stān > NE [stəʊn] stone
IE *oi > Germ. *ai
Germ. *ai > OE, OFries. ā (smoothing of *ai)
cow
IE *g