Verner's law

E38325

Verner's law is a historical linguistic principle explaining a systematic set of consonant alternations in the Germanic languages that refined and expanded upon Grimm's law.


Statements (43)
Predicate Object
instanceOf historical linguistic principle
phonological rule
sound law
accountsFor alternations in noun inflection in Germanic
alternations in strong verb paradigms in Germanic
alternations such as *f ~ *b, *þ ~ *d, *h ~ *g in Germanic
appliesTo Germanic languages
Proto-Germanic
basedOn position of the original Proto-Indo-European accent
complements Grimm's law
concerns Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic sound changes
accent-conditioned sound change
consonant voicing
discoveredBy Karl Verner
exampleOf accent-sensitive phonological rule
conditioned sound change
explains alternation of voiceless and voiced fricatives in Germanic
certain exceptions to Grimm's law
systematic consonant alternations in Germanic languages
field Germanic linguistics
historical linguistics
firstPublishedIn Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung
hasConsequence alternation between /s/ and /r/ in some Germanic forms
morphophonemic alternations in Germanic verb classes
voicing of fricatives in certain environments in Germanic
hasKeyConcept accent position determines voicing outcome
exceptions to regular sound laws can be explained by additional conditioning factors
influenced development of comparative Germanic linguistics
theory of phonological alternations
isTaughtIn courses on Germanic philology
courses on historical linguistics
languageFamily Indo-European languages
namedAfter Karl Verner
publicationYear 1877
refines Grimm's law
relatedTo Grimm's law
Kluge's law
sound change
statesThat Proto-Indo-European *p *t *k *kʷ after an unaccented syllable became Proto-Germanic *b *d *g *gʷ (voiced stops/fricatives)
Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops became voiced fricatives when not immediately preceded by the word accent
supports Neogrammarian hypothesis of exceptionless sound laws
timeDepth late Proto-Indo-European to early Proto-Germanic period
typeOfChange regular sound change


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