Grammatical change
As grammatical change (too . AltGr γράμμα gramma , character, letter '; literally "letter change") is a by Verner's Law designated described consonants change that occurs in etymologisch related words as well as within certain inflectional paradigms.
Occurrence and occurrence
The grammatical change occurs in principle in all Germanic languages , but it has been compensated to a different extent in the individual languages by analogy . If the main tone of a word in Indo-European was after the stem-end consonant, then these were changed from / p / / t / / k / / s / to / b / / d / / g / / z /.
Even in the old Germanic language levels handed down to us, the law is only to be found lexicalized, and it is dismantled at an early stage - to varying degrees depending on the language and dialect - in favor of intraparadigmatic regular consonance.
Examples from New High German:
- Yeast - raise
- suffer - suffered
- cut - cut
- simmer - boiled
- pull - pulled
- Row - row
- (they had been
- lose - dungeon, loss
- freeze - frost
Examples from Middle High German:
- heven / heben ' heben ': heve / hebe - huop [instead of * huof] - huoben - sublime
- lîden 'suffer': lîde - leit - liten - geliten
- zîhen 'draw': zîhe - zêch - zigen - gezigen
- pull 'pull': ziuhe - zôch - zugen - pulled
- slahen ' to beat': slahe - sluoc [instead of * sluoh] - sluogen - hit
- friezes 'freeze': friuse - frôs - fruren - frozen
- Read , read ': lise - las - Laren / read - gelëren / read
- sîn ' to be': have - what - would - have been (gesîn)
There are similar phenomena in other languages, such as Finnish ("change of level").
Overview of the consonant changes in the old Germanic languages
| Urgerm. | Got. | Ahd. | Ae. | As. | Aisl. |
| * f - * ƀ | f - b | f, v - b, p | (collapsed) | (collapsed) | (collapsed) |
| * þ - * đ | þ - d | d, th - t | þ, ð - d | (not clear) | (collapsed) |
| * χ - * ǥ | h - g | h - g, k | ø, h - g | h - g | ø - g |
| * χʷ - * ǥʷ | ƕ - g, w | h - g, w | ø, h - g, w | h - g, w | ø - g, w |
| * s - * z | s - z | s - r | s - r | s - r | s - r |
After: Schaffner (2001: 65).
Individual evidence
- ^ Winfried Lechner: Proto-European , University of Athens (DGC 46 Language History Handout # 4 WiSe 2008/09), p. 6. (PDF; 248 kB; accessed on February 3, 2015)
literature
- Schaffner, Stefan: Vernersche law and the inner-paradigmatic grammatical change of the primitive Germanic in the nominal area . Innsbruck Contributions to Linguistics 103rd Innsbruck 2001.
- Harald Wiese: A journey through time to the origins of our language. How Indo-European Studies explains our words , Logos Verlag Berlin, 2007, ISBN 978-3-8325-1601-7 .