Verner's Law Research Articles

The Development of Prefixation in Time and Space

AbstractThe paper argues that seemingly aberrant phonological developments of local adverbs that have become prepositions and verbal and nominal prefixes in Baltic, Germanic and Armenian are to be explained by the assumption of a phase of ‘ditropic’ behaviour: ‘ditropic clitics’ select as their prosodic host any stressed word preceding their syntactic host without forming a semantic unit. This enclitic behaviour of forms that in the historically attested stages of Baltic, Germanic and Armenian are prepositions and verbal and nominal prefixes is argued to explain their seemingly aberrant phonological developments: the shortening of Lithuanian (preverbal) nu‐ and pri‐ beside (prenominal) núo‐ and príe‐ due to Leskien's law, the operation of Verner's law in Proto‐Germanic *ga‐ beside residual *ham‐ from Proto‐Indo‐European *kom‐ and of Verner's law or assimilatory voicing in Proto‐Gmc *du‐, and the behaviour of the Armenian prepositions / prefixes betraying word‐internal position e.g. in the reduction of the affricate /dz/ to /z/ in Arm z‐. After the local adverbs passed through a phase of ditropic behaviour in all three proto‐languages, the mismatch between prosody and morphosyntax was resolved by a ‘prosodic jump’, phonologically attaching the local adverbs to their semantic and syntactic hosts.

Verner's Law

Verner's Law

English Dialect “Default Singulars,” Was versus Were, Verner's Law, and Germanic Dialects

A current suggestion in the variationist literature is that the predominance of forms like we was in nonstandard varieties of English is predictable in that was-generalization represents a case of the “default singular.” I argue that while the principle of the default singular is a sound one, it is not appropriate as an explanation for was-generalization. What is involved is not a matter of singular versus plural but of r-forms of the past tense of to be versus s-forms, with forms like were, war , wor representing the r-variant and was, wiz , wus the s-variant. The ancient Germanic s/r alternation has been leveled out in most dialects over the past millennium. Examination of Germanic dialects shows that in very many cases, it is the r-forms that have survived. If some general principle were at work, we would expect s-forms to predominate. The history of the Germanic dialects as a whole shows that we are dealing with analogical leveling that does not especially favor either the s-forms or the r-forms. The term default singular has no explanatory value in this case.

Gothicsiuns, the Domain of Verner's Law and the Relative Chronology of Grimm's, Verner's and Kluge's Laws in Germanic

In various articles published over the last two decades or so, Frederik Kortlandt (1978, 1988, 1991; reaffirmed 1996, 2000), building on his theory that the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) mediae were preglottalized voiced stops (Kortlandt 1978 and more especially 1981, 1985) has claimed, contrary to the traditional view (e.g. Voyles 1992, p. 40; Mottausch 1999, p. 47), (1) that the redistribution of consonantal quality on the basis of accentual context known as Verner's law preceded the rise of voiceless spirants in Proto-Germanic (PGm.), which is often, along with other processes, called Grimm's law, and (2) that the voiced (or lenis) spirants b d g were not a feature of PGm. Since there appears to be little detailed discussion of these last two conclusions of Kortlandt's in the literature – and Bernard Mees (personal communication 30/10/1998, p. 6) has even gone so far as to say that »it is incumbent on [me] to demonstrate that there was no early Verner vis-à-vis Grimm, not [my] critics vice versa« – the intention of the remarks below is to offer a detailed assessment of Kortlandt's arguments.

Germanic accent, syllabication and the origin of Scandinavian accentuation

ABSTRACTA proposal to abandon the assumption of word accent (either pitch or stress) for Germanic is seen overall as unprofitable. The dilemma of syllable division is resolved against CVC.V and for CV.CV on general considerations following Murray and Vennemann and specific considerations allowing a better analysis of the conditions surrounding Verner's Law. It is proposed that a new Germanic heavy syllable accent, when double-peaked on words with heavy suffixes gave rise to Scandinavian accent 2, and when single-peaked on heavy roots with light suffixes, gave rise to accent 1 and to Danish stød.

The Phonetic Organization of Early Germanic

ABSTRACTThe article deals with segmentation and stress in early Germanic. An attempt is made to isolate minimal prosodic units of Germanic, not traditional syllables. These units are then analyzed in terms of morae and phonemes. Alternations by the Akzentumsprung and Verner's law are interpreted as indicating that early Germanic had sentence rather than word stress.

Preparing an Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic

PREPARING AN ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY OF PROTO- GERMANIC EDGAR C. POLOMÉ When Alf Torp and Hjalmar Falk published their Wortschatz der germanischen Spracheinheit eighty years ago as the fourth part of the third edition of August Fick's Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der indogermanischen Sprachen, they could base their reconstructed lemmata on the abundant material that the Neogrammarians and their predecessors had patiently compiled over several decades and provide a picture of the Germanic lexicon that reflected rather faithfully the features of the phonology and morphology that the Urgermanische Grammatik of Wilhelm Streitberg described and could be related easily to Brugmannian types of Indo-European roots. Accordingly, they lumped together Gmc. *ragina [neuter noun] 'decision', rahnian 'reckon', and *rëhsni 'resolution' under a root *reh- ~ reg- 'arrange, determine'— with Verner's Law and ablaut, the long -ë- of Goth, garehsns 'determination' being paralleled by OCS rëcï 'speech' (Torp 335). Unfortunately, things are not so simple anymore: to be sure, W. P. Lehmann still considers the derivation of the isolated Gothic term garehsns from a pre-Gmc. root *rek— 'arrange' (with a suffix -sni-, as in anabusns) possible and, consequently, suggests a further connection with Goth, ragin 'opinion, law, decree; task responsibility' (280) and its cognates: ON regin, the gods, as the "advising ones," OS regan(o)-giskapu 'divine destiny', etc. But Goth, rahnjan 'reckon', with its -h- versus the -k- of the other Germanic 65 66Edgar C. Polomé dialects (e.g., OE receñían) remains a problem for which Lehmann has no other solution to offer than a Benvenistian type of root-analysis, accounting for the underlying IE alternation between *k and *g: one would have to posit a PIE root *Hzer- with guttural suffixes in "theme II" types of structures, namely (1)*Hzr-ek- in Gmc. *ragin- and Goth, rahnjan, garehsns, as well as OInd. racanam 'institution, order', OCS roku 'set time', Russ. rok 'destiny, fate', Toch. A rake, B reki 'word'; (2)*Hsr-eg- in OE receñían 'reckon', ON rok [ntr.plur.] 'exposition , course, fate', OE racu 'narrative, account', etc.. as well as in Grk. bpéjw 'reach', Lat. regö 'direct, rule', MIr. rigim 'stretch out', OInd. fjyaii, rñjáti 'stretch, hasten', Av. rdzayeiti 'direct', Lith. ré'zti 'stretch'. The basic meaning of the second set seems to be 'intend, guide', which would not conflict with the concepts of 'direction , advising, decision' expressed by the terms with IE *-k-. Anyhow, this simple example shows how necessary it is to examine a number of phonological, morphological, and semantic problems before setting up a lemma—an indispensable preliminary step that would have prevented Torp and Falk from including, even tentatively, ON ran 'robbery, pillage ' as a reflex of Gmc. *rahna in the alleged meaning of 'strike for booty' on the basis of its assumed borrowing into Finnish as rahna 'wound', rahnata 'plunder, rob' (cf. de Vries, Wörterbuch 433). Actually, while Julius Pokorny compiled under the title Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch a partly updated , partly shortened version of the monumental Vergleichendes Wörterbuch des indogermanischen Sprachen (published by Walter de Gruyter in Berlin), which he produced with Alois Walde between 1926 and 1930, nobody attempted to bring out a new dictionary of any subgroupings of the In- An Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic67 do-European languages after the laudable efforts of Reinhold Trautmann and F. Muller Jzn. in their rather idiosyncratic Baltisch-Slavisches Wörterbuch and Altitalisches Wörterbuch respectively. Nevertheless, in the case of Germanic, the need for a synthesis of the extensive etymological research conducted during the present century and for a better integration of the achievements of Germanic comparative grammar into this context led to the publication of Elmer Seebold's valuable Vergleichendes und etymologisches Wörterbuch der germanischen starken Verben. Here, the whole system of the Germanic strong verb, with its vowel alternations and derivations , was surveyed in detail, with as complete an inventory of attested forms as possible—all analyzed phonologically according to the ablaut variations and morphologically according to the underlying patterning. After the review of the Formenbestand, the author provided a careful discussion of the origin and semantic elaboration of its etymological explanation , without hesitating either to take a stand in favor of...

The Operation and Relative Chronology of Verner's Law

manic shift of IE /p t k kw s/, but was part of it. The shift itself was a form of secondary split, the allophones that were formed with less effort becoming respectively /b S 9 g w z/ and those that were formed with more effort producing /f p x xw s/: hence IE *dek-t > *teg- > OE -tig 'decade, -ty', beside IE *d6k- > *tex- > OS tehan 'ten'. Except in initial position, the conditioning factor was the pre-Germanic primary accent. In initial position, the fixation of primary stress inhibited voicing by introducing or preserving more effort: IE *ptn6s > Go. fulls 'full'. If the accent of IE *pln6s had remained unchanged for centuries in Germanic, the Gothic would have been *bulls. Voicing was also inhibited in voiceless consonant clusters: *oktow > Go. ahtau 'eight'. Unlike initial syllables, which were word-bound and received primary stress, a proclitic was phrase-bound and never fully accented: thus IE *kom- > *gan- > *ga- > OE ge-. The voicing process was not completely uniform in Germanic because the fixation of primary stress did not occur simultaneously in all words of all dialects. The frequent absence of medial voicing in Gothic is due to an earlier fixation of initial stress and to the very early separation of Gothic from the other Germanic dialects. Conventional formulations of Verner's Law, though variously phrased and differing in amount of detail, agree that Germanic /f J] x xw s/ became voiced respectively to /b g g z/ if the nearest preceding vowel or other syllabic had not borne primary accent in pre-Germanic times. It is also agreed that the voicing did not take place initially or in the clusters /sp st sk ss ft fs xs xt/, regardless of the position in which the pre-Germanic primary accent had occurred. This statement of the law has encountered almost no opposition. To be sure, Bugge (1887:408) attempted to expand the formula by adding the stipulation that the Germanic voiceless fricatives later become voiced initially if the pre-Germanic primary accent had fallen on the third or following syllable. But only one of his examples, viz. Go. ga-, OE ge-, OHG gi- etc., is still given serious consideration (Pokorny 1953:612-3), and even this form constitutes a special problem. Like some others, Pokorny notes the precise phonologic correspondence between Lat. com- con- co- ( OE ge-, why did it occur so rarely? Furthermore, if pretonic position determined voicing in the instance of IE *kom', why was there no initial voicing in IE *pln6s > Go. fulls 'full'? If a formulation is to be regarded as valid, 219

Grimm's Law in Distinctive Features

A set of rules is here presented to account for the changes of Grimm's and Verner's Laws, as well as for the Germanic consonant lengthening. It is shown that the changes which occurred were to some extent predictable from the system out of which they arose. The rules are ordered in such a way that Verner's Law and the consonant lengthening precede the simultaneous development of voiced and voiceless aspirates to spirants.

PATH

SUMMARYPath is, by origin, an Iranian word which was borrowed into Germanic, thence into Finnish. Besides its familiar meaning, it has also the meaning “valley”. This latter meaning is attested in Anglo‐Saxon (§1). in later Northern English and Scottish (§2), in East Swedish dialects (§3), and, possibly, in early Dutch place‐names (§4). In Finnish, though “path” is found in its familar sense, it is more generally used in a variety of idioms (§5). Morphologically, the Germanic forms of “path” are diverse (§6); the form with final ‐[d] (pad, etc.) found in English dialects, is, where it is not a Dutch loan‐word, due to the operation of Verner's Law (§7); there is the possibility of s‐flexion (§8); finally, a number of Germanic morphological types emerge (§9). The type papi‐ is attested in High German (§10), and English, and there it does not represent a borrowing from Scandinavian (§11). The possibility of original s‐flexion still remains (§12). The borrowing from Iranian lies within the period 300 B.C.‐A.D. 300 (§13). Two Iranian roots paθ‐seem to be relevant in the present discussion; as its basic meaning the first—which stands in ancient morphological alternation with pant—has “path, road” (§§14‐16), the second has “extended” (§17). The word‐groups (a) Ir paθ‐ “arow”, and (b) E find, etc., deserve mention here (§18). These last two items, as well as paθ‐ “extended”, may all be subsumed under one and the same Indoeuropean root (§19). Postulation of original s‐flexion for the Germanic word (of. §§8,11) is finally rejected and the correlation of the Iranian and Germanic types follows without difficulty (§20).

Verner's Law in the Preterit Tense of the Gothic Reduplicating Verb Slepan

Verner's Law in the Preterit Tense of the Gothic Reduplicating Verb Slepan

A Note on the Proto-Indo-European Resonants in Germanic

all that distinguishes their environments, we conclude that the words which exhibit such marginal developments were bounded by juncture. Medially there was either no juncture or juncture of a different kind. Not all medial developments from IE voiceless stops were voiceless spirants. If the accent preceded the sound in question, it developed as in marginal position. Since a preceding accent does not by itself explain the development of a voiceless stop (it fails to account for the development initially in the word), and since in the marginal development the effect of juncture seems to have been decisive, we conclude that a post-accentual interior form should also be ascribed to the effect of such a juncture. An initial stressed syllable, then, is assumed to have been bounded by two junctures, an initial unstressed syllable by a preceding juncture and, at most, an interior juncture of less openness; examples: Goth. bahan < */+Pi+xan-/, Goth. fadar < */+fa(-)bAr/. This attempt to explain the facts described in Verner's law has a significant advantage over previous phonetics-centered interpretations. The somewhat arbitrary assignment of priority to either the voiced or the voiceless spirant becomes unnecessary. No temporal order needs to be established, neither form must be derived from the other, and it is without immediate interest whether juncture caused voicing or prevented unvoicing. Whether interior pre-accentual position was marked by weak juncture or by no juncture at all, cannot be decided. The occurrence of interior pre-accentual forms at morpheme boundaries in compounds (OHG me;gi-rahs : sahs) has no weight, in view of German compounds like Breisach (without juncture) vs. Breisgau (with juncture). If internal juncture was combined with preceding accent at the time of the developments described in Verner's law, it seems not impossible to assume such a combination also for the time of the Germanic relocation of accent. The disappearance of internal juncture could then very well lead to a weakening of the syllable boundary, as assumed by Lehmann; the interpretation of umlaut as facilitated by this weakening is very persuasive.

Notes on Verner's Law in Old Norse Strong Verbs

Notes on Verner's Law in Old Norse Strong Verbs

A Slavic Analogy to Verner's Law

A Slavic Analogy to Verner's Law

The Phonetical Explanations of Verner's Law

The Phonetical Explanations of Verner's Law

Verner's Law in Italy. By R. Setmour Conway. Trübner. 1887. 120 pp., with Map. 5s.

Verner's Law in Italy. By R. Setmour Conway. Trübner. 1887. 120 pp., with Map. 5<i>s</i>.

Verner's Law in Italy

Verner's Law in Italy

“Verner's law”

“Verner's law” Get access Celer Celer Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s7-IV, Issue 103, 17 December 1887, Page 491, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s7-IV.103.491b Published: 17 December 1887

“Verner's law.”

“Verner's law.”