The Proto-Indo-European Resonants in Germanic

Abstract

1. In grammars of Germanic the reflexes of the PIE resonants, /y w r 1m n/, are presented either inadequately or unsystematically. Prokosch devotes but a few pages to them, in contrast with his thirty-odd pages on the reflexes of the obstruents.1 Streitberg deals with them somewhat more fully, at various places in his treatment of Germanic phonology, but his chief interest is in the assimilatory and dissimilatory changes in which they are involved.2 The relative neglect of the resonants is understandable, for until Edgerton described in detail the allophonic distribution of the PIE resonants,' it seemed completely adequate to cite an example or two of the correspondences between PIE [y w r 1 m n] and PGmc. [y w r 1 m n], or PIE [i u] and PGmc. [i u], and then to state with examples that a [u] developed in the neighborhood of PIE syllabic [r Irp n]. If however we accept Sievers' law in Edgerton's formulation, we cannot pass over the Gmc. developments of the PIE resonants so lightly. Since we now expect grammars to present full and systematic statements of the general lines of development of a language, future treatments of PGmc. will have to describe in some detail the developments of the resonants into Germanic. In this paper the general outlines will be sketched, especially those environments which have been inadequately treated in the past. According to Sievers' law, the PIE resonants were phonemes with three allophones, e.g. of /w/: consonantal [w], vocalic [u], vocalic plus consonantal [uw]. In the various Gmc. dialects we cannot classify [u] and [w] as members of one phoneme, to say nothing of [uw]; the IE allophones have become separate phonemes or combinations of phonemes. Between PIE and the Gmc. dialects, a thoroughgoing shift in this section of the phonological system must have taken place. The obstruents occasioned no such complete disruption. For the allophones of the obstruents, though modified in articulation, were altered only to a minor extent in their contrasts with one another; as long as the IE oppositions between /t dh d/ were maintained in Proto-Germanic between /0 ti t/, we can view as a minor linguistic change the shift described in Grimm's law. The ob-