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Inhistorical linguistics, theIngvaeonic nasal spirant law (also called theAnglo-Frisian orNorth Sea Germanic nasal spirant law) is a description of aphonological development that occurred in theIngvaeonic dialects of theWest Germanic languages. This includesOld English,Old Frisian, andOld Saxon, and to a lesser degreeOld Dutch (Old Low Franconian).
The sound change affected sequences ofvowel +nasal consonant +fricative consonant. (Spirant is an older term for 'fricative'.) The sequences in question are-ns-,-mf-, and-nþ-, preceded by any vowel.[1] The nasal consonant disappeared, sometimes causingnasalization andcompensatory lengthening of the vowel before it. The nasalization disappeared relatively soon after in many dialects along the coast, but it was retained long enough to preventAnglo-Frisian brightening of/ɑː/ to/æː/.[2] The resulting long nasalized vowel/ɑ̃ː/ was rounded to/oː/ in most languages under various circumstances.[3]
In Old Saxon on the other hand, the nasal consonant is later restored in all but a small handful of forms, so that Old Saxon/fĩːf/ ('five') appears as/fiːf/ in allMiddle Low German dialects, while Old Saxon/mũːθ/ ('mouth') appears as/mʊnd/ in all Middle Low German dialects. The Old Saxon words/ɣɑ̃ːs/ ('goose') and/ũːs/ ('us') appear variably with and without a restored consonant, an example being the combination of/ɣoːs/ and/ʊns/ on the Baltic coast.
The sequence-nh- had already undergone a similar change in late Proto-Germanic several hundred years earlier, and affected all Germanic languages, not only the Ingvaeonic subgroup (seeGermanic spirant law).[4] The result of this earlier change was the same: a long nasal vowel. However, the nasalization in this earlier case did not cause rounding of nasal/ɑ̃ː/ in Old Saxon, which instead became simple/ɑː/, while the later Ingvaeonic spirant law resulted in/oː/. In Old English and Old Frisian, rounding occurred here as well, giving/oː/ in both cases. It was this earlier shift that created the n/∅ inthink/thought andbring/brought.
Compare the first person plural pronoun "us" in various old Germanic languages:
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Gothic representsEast Germanic, and its correspondence to German and Standard Dutch shows it retains the more conservative form. The/n/ has disappeared in English, Frisian, Old Saxon (New Low German has bothus anduns), and dialectal Dutch withcompensatory lengthening of the/u/. This phenomenon is therefore observable throughout the "Ingvaeonic" languages. It does not affect High German, East Germanic or North Germanic.
Likewise:
English shows the results of the shift consistently throughout its repertoire of native lexemes. One consequence of this is that English has very few words ending in-nth; those that exist must have entered the vocabulary subsequent to the productive period of the nasal spirant law:
Likewise, the rare occurrences of the combinations -nf-, -mf- and -ns- have similar explanations.
Although Dutch is based mostly on theHollandic dialects, which in turn were influenced by Frisian, it was also heavily influenced by theBrabantian dialect which tends not to show a shift. As a result, the shift is generally not applied but is still applied to some words. For example Dutchvijf vs. Germanfünf,zacht vs.sanft. Coastal dialects of Dutch tend to have more examples, e.g. standard Dutchmond'mouth' vs. Hollandicmui (earliermuide) "slit between sandbanks where tidal streams flow into". Brabantian dialects tend to have fewer examples, having unshifted examples in a few cases where standard Dutch has the shift, as in the toponymsZonderwijk (Veldhoven),Zondereigen (Baarle-Hertog), etc. cognate to standard Dutchzuid'south'.
Met uitzondering van brocht > bracht kan mogelijke invloed van de noordoostelijke dialecten hier niet ingeroepen worden, want die vertoonden ook vrij veel ingweoonse trekken. Gedacht dient te worden aan een gebied zonder ingweoonse kenmerken en in het licht van de immigratiestromen in die tijd ligt dan veeleer Brabantse invloed voor de hand.
Except forbrocht >bracht "brought", the possible influence of the northeastern dialects [Low Saxon] cannot be cited as evidence, since they also show quite a lot of ingvaeonic traits. One must instead think of a region without ingvaeonic traits, and given the direction of immigration of that time [into Holland's larger southern cities following the fall of Antwerp in 1585], Brabantine influence is a straightforward explanation.
— Johan Taeldeman, "De opbouw van het AN: meer zuidelijke dan oostelijke impulsen",Tijdschrift voor de Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde, volume 123 (2007), issue 2, p. 104.
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The spirant law was originally active inCentral Franconian dialects ofHigh German, which is proof that it was not entirely restricted to Ingvaeonic. Compare for exampleLuxembourgisheis'us',Gaus ('goose', now archaic). Modern Standard German is based more on eastern varieties which are not affected by the shift. The standard language does, however, contain a number ofLow German borrowings with it. For exampleSüden ('south', oustingOld High Germansundan), orsacht ('soft, gentle', alongside nativesanft).
In someHigh andHighest Alemannic German dialects, there is a similar phenomenon calledStaub's law, for exampleüüs ('us', Standard Germanuns),füüf ('five', Standard Germanfünf), ortreiche ('drink', Standard Germantrinken).