--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:
>
> I can't find the post where Torsten recently suggested
> that the Grimm shift has now been redated to the 1rst
> c. BCE (if I've understood him correctly). Who's the
> authority behind this, if the contention is as stated?
>
Collinge: The Laws of Indo-European(1985), p.69
"
(6) Can sense be talked on chronology?
'2LV' probably dates to AD 500-700. Absolute chronology for 1LV' has
ranged from about 500 BC (Fourquet) to even the ninth century after
Christ (Rosenfeld). An early date based on archaeology, in fact the
Negau helmet, is denied by Pisani (1959, quoting his work of 1953) by
recourse to onomastics. (Pisani holds that different dialectal forms
of Germanic names in the text of Tacitus (Annals 2. 11,62) indicate
incomplete reshifting of consonants by AD 16-19 as if proper nouns
were trustworthy in such matters.) Prokosch (1939: 56) is no doubt
wise to use the larger bracket of the whole Germanic migration period
ranging vaguely from 'several centuries BC to about AD 500.
Subtler are the essays on relative timing. Twaddell and Prokosch set
out the whole array of shifts in numbered stages; cf. Jung (1956).
Verner's law is merely a comparatively late chapter, usually set
inside '1LV' (cf.Voyles 1967.642ff.) Halle (1962) uses the theorems of
generative (rules) phonology to set Verner's edict after Grimm's; but
King (1969:186-87) challenges this conservative finding (as possibly
secondary and derived by rules-reordering). Chen (1976:211ff.)
hesitates between (a) regarding them as a single (composite) law, by
which forms are affected whenever they satisfy input requirements (cf.
Davidsen-Nielsen 1976 on '1LV' 'false input'); or (b) defining Grimm's
law as a short-lived historical event which happened within the longer
life-span of Verner's.
"
And that's a pretty old book.
As for the consensus, where I got the impression of its recent status,
I don't recall; the thing that convinced me was Kuhn's mention of
pre-Grimm forms in Latin writers:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/29016
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/27873
Torsten