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THE PREHISTORY OF ENGLISH - Coggle Diagram
THE PREHISTORY OF ENGLISH
GRIMM'S LAW
The proto-indio.european language
The important sound from the PIE language are the STOP CONSONANTS:
Descended from the languages: Sanskrit, LATIN and GREEK.
A change in sounds that comes from country to country.
The changes occur as function of manner of articulation.
Sr. William Jones.
Tried to comparte different languages in order to discover some similarities.
GRIMM
He descovered from RAMUS RASK
That the PIE has a lot of similarities with the PIE system.
Latin "pes" > German "fuss"
Latin "ager" > German "Acker"
The changes can be summerized:
Voiceless stops > Voiceless fricatives
Voiced stops > voiceless stops
Voiced aspirated stops > Voiced stops
VERNER'S LAW
described a historical sound change in the Proto-Germanic language .
The Proto-Germanic voiceless fricatives [f], [θ], [s] and [x] became voiced [β], [ð], [z] and [ɣ] if they were immediately preceded by an unstressed syllable.
two environmental features were crucial:
the new sound correspondences were in force when the stress was not in the vowel immediately preceding
the sound in question was bounded by elements that had the feature [+voice] (either vowels or voiced consonants)
Grimm’s and Verner’s Laws together are known as the First Germanic Consonant Shift.
PIE:
t > Grimm:
θ > Verner: θ - ð
THE SECOND CONSONANT SHIFT
Low German dialects, affected the southern varieties of the West Germanic dialect continuum.
Phase 3.
voiced plosives become voiceless.
b ----- p
d------t
g------ k
the dental shift d > t universally finds its way into standard German
English mother, Dutch moeder, German Mutter)
English red, Dutch rood, German rot)
Phase 4.
þ→d.
It affects a single consonant rather than a group of three
It is also distinctive in that affects Low German and Dutch.
English brother, Dutch broeder, German Bruder
Phase 2.
the 8th century.
the sounds became affricates in three environments
When geminated: OHG)/t/ > /t͡s/ written "z"
After a liquid: /k/ > /k͡x/ written "ch"
In word-initial position:
/p/ > /p͡f/ Writen "ph"
PHASE 1. Fricatives.
they were shortened and merged with the existing single consonants.
Geminate plosives in words like
appul "apple" or
katta "cat" were not affected
Plosives preceded by another consonant like in
skarp "sharp" or
hert "heart".