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Winter's law, named afterWerner Winter, who postulated it in 1978, is a proposedsound law operating onBalto-Slavic shortvowels */e/, */o/, */a/ (<Proto-Indo-European (PIE)*h₂e), */i/ and */u/ according to which they lengthen before unaspirated voiced stops, and that syllable gains a rising, acute accent.
Compare:
Winter's law distinguishes the Balto-Slavic reflexes of PIE*/b/, */d/, */g/, */gʷ/ (before which Winter's law operates in closed syllables) and PIE*/bʰ/, */dʰ/, */gʰ/, */gʷʰ/ (before which there is no effect of Winter's law). Therefore in relative chronology, Winter's law operated before PIE aspirated stops*/bʰ/, */dʰ/, */gʰ/ merged with PIE plain voiced stops */b/, */d/, */g/ in Balto-Slavic.
Secondarily, it distinguishes the reflexes of PIE*h₂e > */a/ and PIE */o/ which otherwise merged to */a/ in Balto-Slavic. Winter's law lengthened old */a/ (< PIE*h₂e) into Balto-Slavic */ā/ (> Lithuanian /o/, Latvian /ā/, OCS /a/) and old */o/ into Balto-Slavic */ō/ (> Lithuanian and Latvianuo, but OCS /a/). A later Common Slavic innovation merged the reflexes of Balto-Slavic */ā/ and */ō/ into OCS /a/, so Winter's law operated before the common Balto-Slavic change */o/ > */a/.
The original formulation claimed vowels regularly lengthened in front of PIE voiced stops in all environments. While numerous examples supported this, many counterexamples existed such as OCSstogъ "stack" < PBS*stagas < PIE*stógos, OCSvoda "water" < PBS*wadō < PIE*wodṓr (collective noun formed from PIE*wódr̥).Matasović adjusted Winter's law in 1994 to operate only on closed syllables, which was used in theLexikon der indogermanischen Verben.Kortlandt, Shintani,Rasmussen,Dybo and Holst vary the blocking mechanism differently.
Not all Balto-Slavic historical linguists accept Winter's law. Patri (2006) found that exceptions to the law create a too heterogeneous and voluminous set of data to allow any phonological generalization into a law.