Re: [tied] Grimm and Verner

On Mon, 17 Dec 2001 21:10:27 +0100, "Piotr Gasiorowski"
<gpiotr@...> wrote:

>The internal periodisation of Grimm's Law is somewhat uncertain, and my favoured (but, needless to say, tentative) is different from yours. I do not think it is profitable to attempt to connect Grimm's Law with the Armenian consonant shift.

So any connection with Celtic (see my other message) would not be
profitable either, I suppose.

>They are superficially similar parallel developments. My opinion is that the core part of Grimm's Law is the replacement of a glottal configuration contrast (most likely [-/+ constricted], if PIE *d was laryngealised, e.g. creaky-voiced) with a manner-of-articulation one ([+/- continuant]). The precursor of Grimm's Law may have been the tendency to spirantise *dH (as in Italic), with the obligatory spirantisation of both [- constr] series (*dH, *t > *ð, *þ) at a later date. Verner's Law took place either then (applying to all voiceless _fricatives_, including *s), or later.
>
>The change *d > *t, completing Grimm's Law, was a consequence of [+ constr] being reencoded a [- cont]. As there was only one stop series left, its phonation type evolved from marked to maximally unmarked.

But for a while then, PGmc would have had a consonantal system:

/f/ /B/ -
/T/ /D/ /d/
/x/ /G/ /g/

I don't think that's very realistic. And neither (though slightly
better) is:

/f/ /B/ -
/T/ /D/ /t/
/x/ /G/ /k/

If there is a voice contrast, it's more likely to be in the stops
alone than in the fricatives alone (speaking as an Hispano-Hollandish
person, but I believe it tends to be true in general).

More on Verner:

>For the other positions (word final, third-syllable), we can imagine
>that Proto-Germanic perhaps utilized a rising tone to mark word
>boundaries (as is the case in e.g. Bambara) [i.e. contours:
>*\ma:\te:r/, *\pa/te:r/]

I was just making it up as I went along, but having checked now, I
find that the Scandinavian tonal system *is* indeed Bambara-style.
Monosyllables generally have Swedish acute and Danish stød (hús,
hu?s), while polysyllables tend to show Swedish grave and no stød in
Danish (k`öpá, købe), consistent with a high tone to mark the end of
the word. Presumably, the tonal distinction between (static/
proterodynamic) \mo:\thar/ and (hysterodynamic) \fa/thar/ was
cancelled by Verner's law (\mo:\þar/, \fa\ðar/), producing a single
polysyllabic type, which survives as Swedish \mo(de)r/, \fa(de)r/,
Danish mor, far (no stød); as opposed to the monosyllabic type,
\hu:s/, where Swe. has substituted simple acute (rising) tone, and
Danish expresses the final rise (which has no second syllable to go
to) as a glottal stop.


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...