Grimm's Law
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Grimm's law (also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift) is a set of statements describing the inherited Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stops as they developed in Proto-Germanic (PGmc, the common ancestor of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family) sometime in the 1st millennium BC. It establishes a set of regular correspondences between early Germanic stops and fricatives (see: Consonant) and the stop consonants of certain other Indo-European languages (Grimm used mostly Latin and Greek for illustration). As it is presently formulated, Grimm's Law consists of three parts, which must be thought of as three consecutive phases in the sense of a chain shift:
- Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops change into voiceless fricatives.
- Proto-Indo-European voiced stops become voiceless.
- Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirated stops lose their aspiration and change into plain voiced stops.
Grimm's law was the first non-trivial systematic sound change to be discovered in linguistics; its formulation was a turning point in the development of linguistics, enabling the introduction of a rigorous methodology to historical linguistic research. The "law" was discovered by Friedrich von Schlegel in 1806 and Rasmus Christian Rask in 1818, and later elaborated (i.e. extended to include standard German) in 1822 by Jacob Grimm, the elder of the Brothers Grimm, in his book Deutsche Grammatik. Some scholars use the term Rask's-Grimm's rule.
In detail
Further changes following Grimm's Law can sometimes obscure its effects. The most illustrative examples are used here.| Phase | Change | Germanic (shifted) examples | Non-Germanic (unshifted) cognates |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | *p→f | English: foot, Dutch: voet, German: Fuß, Gothic: fōtus, Icelandic: fótur, Danish: fod, Norwegian, Swedish: fot | Ancient Greek: πούς (pūs), Latin: pēs, Sanskrit: pāda Lithuanian: pėda |
| *t→þ | English: third, Old High German: thritto, Gothic: þridja, Icelandic: þriðji | Ancient Greek: τρίτος (tritos), Latin: tertius, Gaelic treas, Sanskrit: tri, Lithuanian: trys | |
| *k→h | English: hound, Dutch: hond, German: Hund, Gothic: hunds, Icelandic, Faroese: hundur, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish: hund | Ancient Greek: κύων (kýōn), Latin: canis, Gaelic cú | |
| what, Gothic: ("hwa"), Dutch: wat, Icelandic hvað, Danish hvad | Latin: quod, Gaelic ciod, Sanskrit ka-, kiṃ | ||
| 2 | *b→p | English: peg | Latin: baculum |
| *d→t | English: ten, Dutch: tien, Gothic: taíhun, Icelandic: tíu, Danish, Norwegian: ti, Swedish: tio | Latin: decem, Gaelic deich, Lithuanian: dešim, Sanskrit: daśan | |
| *g→k | English: cold, Dutch: koud, German: kalt, Icelandic: kaldur, Danish: kold, Swedish: kall | Latin: gelū | |
| English: quick, Gothic: qius, Icelandic: kvikur, Swedish: kvick | Latin: vivus 'alive', Greek: βίος (bios) 'life', Gaelic beò 'alive', Lithuanian: gyvas, guvus | ||
| 3 | English: brother, Dutch: broeder, German: Bruder, Gothic: broþar, Icelandic: bróðir, Danish, Swedish: broder | Ancient Greek: φρατήρ (phrātēr), Sanskrit: (bhrātā) Lithuanian: brolis | |
| English: door, Frisian: doar, Dutch: deur, Gothic: daúr, Icelandic: dyr, Danish, Norwegian: dør, Swedish: dörr | Ancient Greek: θύρα (thýra), Sanskrit: dwār | ||
| English: goose, Frisian: goes, Dutch: gans, German: Gans, Icelandic: gæs, Faroese: gás, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish: gås | Ancient Greek: χήν (khēn) | ||
| English: wife, Proto-Germanic: wiban (from former gwiban), Old Saxon, Old Frisian: wif, Old Norse: vif, Danish, Swedish: viv, Dutch: wijf, Old High German: wib, German: weib | Tocharian B: kwípe, Tocharian A: kip |
- Note: Some linguists dispute the origin of the word "wife". The current assumed root word is Proto-Indo-European *ghwíbh-.
Exceptions
The voiceless stops did not become fricatives if they were preceded by *s.| Change | Germanic examples | Non-Germanic examples |
|---|---|---|
| *sp | English: spew, Gothic: speiwan Dutch: spuien Swedish: spy | Latin: spuere |
| *st | English: stand, Dutch: staan, German: stehen, Icelandic: standa, Norwegian, Swedish: stå | Latin: stāre |
| *sk | English: short, Old Norse: skorta, Old High German: scurz | Sanskrit: krdhuh, Latin: curtus, Lithuanian: skurstu |
| English: scold, Old Norse: skáld | Proto-Indo-European: skwetlo |
- Note: Some linguists dispute the origin of the word "scold" but *skwetlo is the current assumed root.
| Change | Germanic examples | Non-Germanic examples |
|---|---|---|
| *pt→ft | Gothic: hliftus "thief" | Ancient Greek: κλέπτης (kleptēs) |
| *kt→ht | English: eight, Dutch: acht, Frisian: acht, German: acht, Gothic: ahtáu | Ancient Greek: οκτώ (oktō), Latin: octō, Sanskrit: aṣṭan |
| English: night, Old High German: naht, Old Frisian, Dutch, German: nacht, Gothic: nahts | Greek: nuks, Latin: nox, Sanskrit: naktam |
Correspondences to PIE
The Germanic "sound laws", combined with regular changes reconstructed for other Indo-European languages, allow one to define the expected sound correspondences between different branches of the family. For example, Germanic (word-initial) *b- corresponds regularly to Latin *f-, Greek pʰ-, Sanskrit bʰ-, Slavic, Baltic or Celtic b-, etc., while Germanic *f- corresponds to Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Slavic and Baltic p- and to zero (no initial consonant) in Celtic. The former set goes back to PIE *bʰ- (faithfully reflected in Sanskrit and modified in various ways elsewhere), and the latter set to PIE *p- (shifted in Germanic, lost in Celtic, but preserved in the other groups mentioned here).See also
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