On Sun, 16 Dec 2001 20:58:34 +0100, "Giuseppe Pagliarulo"
<
g.pagliarulo@...> wrote:
>This is the classical formulation of the law and the one I've been taught myself. It implies that this voicing phenomenon took place after the operation of Grimm's law. However, I remember reading in P. Ramat's _Einfuehrung in das Germanische_ that there is a new theory proposing that Verner's law is an independent lenition process predating Grimm's law. This seems quite uneconomic to me, but then I think of Old Norse _ylgr_ "she-wolf" where the voicing of IE *kW seems to have taken place before the *kW > *p (> *f) shift. I'd like to know your opinion about it.
Some other considerations:
- "Grimm's law" need not have been a single event. In fact, it's
quite likely that we had a very ancient (dialectal PIE) Grimm-I (*t >
*th, *d > *t, *dh > *d), perhaps shared with Armenian and other, now
lost, languages, and a much more recent Grimm-II (*th > *þ, *d > *d ~
*ð) [followed by Grimm-III *t > *th, to fill the unvoiced aspirated
gap].
- "Verner's law" can be situated either before or after Grimm-I or
Grimm-II. Before Grimm-I is unlikely: the lenition of *t would result
in *d, not *dh. After Grimm-I, *th would get lenited to *d [the only
lenis in the system], so that's OK. After Grimm-II, *þ would be
lenited to *ð ~ *d [still the only lenis in the system], which is also
OK. But the fact that Verner occurred either before or as a result of
the Proto-Germanic accent retraction suggests an earlier rather than a
later date. On the other hand, the fact that Verner affects *s too,
suggests a law that applies to fricatives, not stops [unless it
applies to voiceless consonants in general].
- Which brings us to "why Verner's law?". On the face of it, the law
makes no sense: we have <mó:þar> vs. <fadár> > <fádar>, which is
counter-intuitive if we compare it to phenomena in English such as
<metal> ~ <metallic> (['metl] or ['medl] or ['meRl] vs. [m&'thælIk])
or <basil> ~ <basilic> (['bæzIl] vs. [b&'sIlIk] (or [b&'zIlIk])).
It seems strange that a consonant immediately before the stressed
vowel should have been lenited.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...