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Inhistorical linguistics, theGerman termgrammatischer Wechsel ("grammatical alternation") refers to the effects ofVerner's law when they are viewedsynchronically within the paradigm of aGermanic verb.
According toGrimm's law, theProto-Indo-European (PIE)voicelessstops*p,*t,*k and*kʷ usually becameProto-Germanic*ɸ, *θ (dental fricative),*x and*xʷ (velar fricative).Karl Verner identified the principle (Verner's law) that they instead become thevoiced consonants*ƀ, *đ, *ǥ, *ǥʷ if they were immediately preceded within the same word by a syllable that wasunaccented in Proto-Indo-European. (The Proto-Germanic phonemes*ƀ, *đ, *ǥ, *ǥʷ are thought to have had multiple phonetic realizations depending on the context (allophones), being phonetic voicedplosives[bdggʷ] in some contexts, and voicedfricatives[βðɣɣʷ] in other contexts.) Furthermore, PIE*s, which usually came into Germanic unchanged, became*z in this position. This*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 fromProto-Indo-European throughProto-Germanic toOld Norse,West Germanic,Old English,Old High German andMiddle Dutch. It is mainly in the dentals that those languages show significant differences in the patterns ofgrammatischer Wechsel. Note that the table lists only the outcome of word-internal consonants, since word-initial consonants were generally not affected by Verner's law.
| PIE | PG | ON | WG | OE | OHG | MDu | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| *p | *ɸ | f | *ɸ | f/v | f | f/v | ByGL *p→*ɸ. |
| *ƀ | *β | b | ByVL *p→*ƀ. | ||||
| *t | *θ | ð | *θ | θ/ð | d | d | By GL *t→*θ. Then θ→d German and Dutch. |
| *đ | *d | d | t | 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. |
| *ǥ | 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. |
| *ǥʷ | ɣ | *ɣ | j/ɣ | ɡ | x/ɣ | Parallel to *k, but *ɣʷ had split into *ɣ and *w by late Proto-Germanic. | |
| w/- | *w | w | w | w | |||
| *s | *s | s | *s | s/z | s | s/z | GL leaves s unaffected; allophone[z] in English. |
| *z | r | *r | r | r | r | By VL s→z→r. |
In Old English, the Proto-Germanic voiceless fricatives*θ, *ɸ, and*s developed into voiced allophones,[ð],[v] and[z], when they were word-internal between voiced sounds, and in Middle Dutch also when word-initial; see:Pronunciation of English ⟨th⟩. In Old High German, Proto-Germanic*ƀ, *đ, *ǥ developed to/b,t,ɡ/ according to theHigh German consonant shift, and*θ became/d/. In Dutch, the idiosyncrasies of the shift mean that Dutch (like German) experiences the shift þ→d but (like English) does not experience the shift d→t; thus, the dental variety ofgrammatischer Wechsel is eliminated in Dutch by the normal operation of sound laws. Likewise, the outcomes of Proto-Germanic*φ and*ƀ merged in almost all Germanic languages (except Gothic and German), eliminating this variety early on. In Old Norse,*θ and*đ likewise merged altogether.
Grammatischer Wechsel is the phenomenon that a verb that in PIE had a stem ending in one of those 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 alwaysathematic and therefore almost always had a shift of accent between the singular indicative (where it was on the root syllable) and the remaining forms including the past participle (where it was on the ending). However, the perfect aspect was present in only primary underived verbs and so any derived verbs lacked perfect forms altogether. The latter verbs formed the base of theGermanic weak verbs and did not inherit the accent shift and so the alternation itself affects onlyGermanic strong verbs.
A process oflevelling has meant that there are only a few examples in the modern languages. In East and North Germanic, the levelling was almost complete before the earliest records, butGothic andOld Norse had traces ofgrammatischer Wechsel. In Old English, too, the levelling had already begun to the extent that in some verbs thepreterite singular had taken the consonant of the preterite plural. The only surviving example in Modern English iswas-were, but a trace can also be seen in the adjectiveforlorn, which reflects the old participle of the verbto lose, orsodden, which is originally a participle ofseethe. This latter is parallelled by Germansieden, sott, gesotten. German also features d-t inleiden, litt, gelitten ("to suffer") andschneiden, schnitt, geschnitten ("to cut"). One example of h:g isziehen, zog, gezogen ("to pull"). 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:verliezen, verloor, verloren ("to lose") andverkiezen, verkoos, verkoren ("to choose").[1]
Here are some examples:
NB. Not all consonant apophony in Germanic verbs is caused bygrammatischer Wechsel. The consonantalternation in certainweak verbs that typically goes along with theRückumlaut phenomenon (think:thought, Germandenken:dachte) is a result of a later development in Germanic known as theGermanic spirant law. Likewise, theterminal devoicing that produces afortis-lenis alternation in Dutch (wrijven:wreef) is an unrelated historical phenomenon.
In PIE,causative verbs (meaning "to cause to") were derived from verb roots with a suffix *-éye-, and the root vowel was changed to theo-grade. Verbs with this suffix eventually became part of the first weak class (*-jan verbs). 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.
heffen ("to lift/raise", from the strong verb *habjaną) -hebben ("to have", from the weak verb *habjaną)
The termGrammatischer Wechsel was originally applied to any pair of etymologically-related words that had different accent placement, including also Proto-Indo-Europeanathematic nouns. The alternations in nouns were largely eliminated early on in Germanic, but a few cases exist of parallel forms being still preserved in different Germanic languages (such asEnglishglass andIcelandicgler, an example of the s-z alternation). No attested language, old or modern, shows any alternation in noun paradigms, however.