Grammatischer Wechsel
In historical linguistics, the German term grammatischer Wechsel refers to the effects of Verner's law when they are viewed synchronically within the paradigm of a Germanic verb.
Overview
According to Grimm's law, the Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops *p, *t, *k and *kʷ usually became Proto-Germanic *f, *θ, *x and *xʷ. Karl Verner identified the principle that these instead become the voiced consonants *b, *d, *g, *gʷ if they were word-internal and immediately preceded by an unaccented vowel in PIE. Furthermore, PIE *s, which usually came into Germanic unchanged, became *z in this position; Proto-Germanic *z later became North- and West Germanic *r.Consequently, five pairs of consonants emerged, each pair representing a single PIE phoneme. The following table shows the precise developments from Proto-Indo-European through Proto-Germanic and West Germanic to Old English, Old High German and Middle Dutch. It is mainly in the dentals that these languages show significant differences in the patterns of grammatischer Wechsel. Note that this table lists only the outcome of word-internal consonants, since word-initial consonants were generally not affected by Verner's law.
| Notes | |||||||
| *p | *ɸ | f | *ɸ | f/v | f | f/v | By p→f. |
| *p | *β | f | *β | f/v | b | f/v | By p→β. |
| *t | *θ | ð | *θ | θ/ð | d | d | By GL t→θ. Then θ→d German and Dutch. |
| *t | *ð | ð | *d | d | t | d | By VL t→ð→d. Then d→t in German. |
| *k | *x | – | *x/h | x/- | x/h | x/- | By GL k→x. x→h before a vowel. h is then lost between vowels in Old English and Dutch. |
| *k | *ɣ | ɣ | *ɣ | j/ɣ | ɡ | x/ɣ | By VL k→ɣ. Then ɣ→j in English and ɣ→ɡ in German, though all 3 use spelling ⟨g⟩. |
| *kʷ | *xʷ | – | *x/h | x/- | x/h | x/- | Parallel to *k. |
| *kʷ | *ɣʷ | ɣ | *ɣ | j/ɣ | ɡ | x/ɣ | Parallel to *k, but *ɣʷ had split into *ɣ and *w by late Proto-Germanic. |
| *kʷ | *ɣʷ | w/- | *w | w | w | w | |
| *s | *s | s | *s | s/z | s | s/z | GL leaves s unaffected; allophone in English. |
| *s | *z | r | *r | r | r | r | By VL s→z→r. |
In Old English, the fricatives took the voiced allophones, and when they were word-internal, and in Middle Dutch also when word-initial; see: Pronunciation of English ⟨th⟩. In Old High German, the stops were moved according to the High German consonant shift. In Dutch, the idiosyncrasies of this shift mean that Dutch experiences the shift þ→d but does not experience the shift d→t; thus the dental variety of grammatischer Wechsel is eliminated in Dutch by the normal operation of sound laws. Likewise, and merged in almost all Germanic languages, eliminating this variety early on. In Old Norse, and likewise merged altogether.
Within verb paradigms
Grammatischer Wechsel is the phenomenon that a verb which in PIE had a stem ending in one of these phonemes displays a differing reflex in different parts of the paradigm, a result of the movable nature of accent in PIE. The Germanic past tense derives from the PIE perfect aspect, which was always athematic and therefore almost always had a shift of accent between the singular indicative and the remaining forms including the past participle. However, the perfect aspect was only present in primary, underived verbs, and any derived verbs therefore lacked perfect forms altogether. These latter verbs formed the base of the Germanic weak verbs, and did not inherit the accent shift, so the alternation itself only affects Germanic strong verbs.A process of levelling has meant that there are only few examples of this in the modern languages. In East and North Germanic, this levelling was almost complete before the earliest records, though Gothic and Old Norse did have traces of grammatischer Wechsel. In Old English, too, the levelling had already begun to the extent that in some verbs the preterite singular had taken the consonant of the preterite plural. The only surviving example in Modern English is was:were, but a trace can also be seen in the adjective forlorn, which reflects the old participle of the verb to lose, or sodden, which is originally a participle of seethe. This latter is parallelled by German sieden, sott, gesotten. German also features d:t in leiden, litt, gelitten and schneiden, schnitt, geschnitten. One example of h:g is ziehen, zog, gezogen. All other cases have been levelled. Apart from the English copula mentioned above, the only occurrences of s:r in the modern languages are in Dutch: for example verliezen, verloor, verloren and verkiezen, verkoos, verkoren.
Some examples:
; *f ~ *b
; *þ ~ *d
; *h ~ *g
; *hw ~ *gw/w/g
; *s ~ *z
NB. Not all consonant apophony in Germanic verbs is caused by grammatischer Wechsel. The consonant alternation in certain weak verbs which typically goes along with the Germanic umlaut phenomenon is a result of a later development in Germanic known as the Germanic spirant law. Likewise, the terminal devoicing which produces a fortis-lenis alternation in Dutch is an unrelated historical phenomenon.
Between strong verbs and derived causatives
In PIE, causative verbs were derived from verb roots with a suffix *-éye-, and the root vowel was changed to the o-grade. Verbs with this suffix eventually became part of the first weak class. This suffix always bore the accent, and the verb root never did, while in regular strong verbs the verb root was accented in the present tense. This caused Verner alternation between the original verbs and the causative verbs derived from them.Examples are numerous in the older languages but are less frequent today, because some levelling has occurred, and in some cases, one verb or the other was lost.
; *f ~ *b
heffen - hebben
; *þ ~ *d
; *h ~ *g
; *hw ~ *gw/w/g
; *s ~ *z