格林定律

格林定律：
从1806年开始，格林兄弟就致力于民间童话和传说的搜集、整理和研究工作，出版了《儿童和家庭童话集》（两卷集）和《德国传说集》（两卷）。

雅科布还出版了《德国神话》，威廉出版了《论德国古代民歌》和《德国英雄传说》。

1806～1826年间雅科布同时还研究语言学，编写了4卷巨著《德语语法》，是一部历史语法，后人称为日耳曼格语言的基本教程。

在《德语语法》1822年的修订版中，他提出了印欧诸语言语音演变的规则，后人称之为格林定律。

他指出，在印欧语系中日耳曼语族历史上，辅音分组演变，在英语和低地德语中变了一次，后来在高地德语中又再变一次。

事实上，格林定律只是大体上正确，后来由K.A.维尔纳加以补充。

1838年底格林兄弟开始编写《德语词典》，1854～1862 年共出版第一至三卷。

这项浩大的工程兄弟俩生前未能完成，后来德国语言学家继续这项工作，至1961年才全部完成。

印欧语系含大部分欧洲语言和印度次大陆语言在内的约150种语言。

英国语言学家Sir William Jones1786年指出梵语与希腊语和拉丁语可能来自同一个原始语，它们具有亲缘关系。

1822年，Jacob Grimm发现了日耳曼语言中所发生的一系列的有规则的辅音变化。

这些辅音的有规则变化后被称为格林定律：
a. 浊爆破音变为清爆破音: bàp
b. 清爆破音变为摩擦音: pàf
c. 浊送气音变为浊不送气音:bhàb
通过比较法重建了被称为原始印欧语系的具有同一来源的语法，包括欧洲语言和印度次大陆的语言的许多亚语系都是以该原始语演化发展来的。

Grimm's law (also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift or the Rask's-Grimm's rule), named for Jacob Grimm, is a set of statements describing the inherited Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stops as they developed in Proto-Germanic (PGmc, the common ancestor of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family) in the 1st millennium BC. It establishes a set of regular correspondences between early Germanic stops and fricatives and the stop consonants of certain other centum Indo-European languages (Grimm used mostly Latin and Greek for illustration). As it is presently formulated, Grimm's Law consists of three parts, which must be thought of as three consecutive phases in the sense of a chain shift:[1]
Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops change into voiceless fricatives.
Proto-Indo-European voiced stops become voiceless stops.
Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirated stops become voiced fricatives; ultimately, in most Germanic languages these voiced fricatives become voiced stops.
The chain shift can be abstractly represented as:
bʰ→ b → p → f
dʰ→ d → t → θ
gʰ→ g → k → x
gʷʰ→ gʷ→ kʷ→ xʷ
Here each sound moves one position to the right to take on its new sound value.
The voiced aspirated stops may have first become voiced fricatives before hardening to the voiced unaspirated stops "b", "d", and "g" under certain conditions; however, some linguists dispute this. See Proto-Germanic phonology.
Grimm's law was the first non-trivial systematic sound change to be discovered in linguistics; its formulation was a turning point in the development of linguistics, enabling the introduction of a rigorous methodology to historical linguistic research. The "law" was discovered by Friedrich von Schlegel in 1806 and Rasmus Christian Rask in 1818. It was elaborated (i.e. extended to include standard German) in 1822 by Jacob Grimm, the elder of the Brothers Grimm, in his book Deutsche Grammatik.
Further changes following Grimm's Law, as well as sound changes in other Indo-European languages, can sometimes obscure
Note: Some linguists dispute the origin of the word "wife". Calvert Watkins has assumed the root word is Proto-Indo-European *gʷʰíbʰ-. [1]
Note: Proto-Germanic *gw from Proto-Indo-Eropean *gʷʰhas undergone further changes of various sorts. After *n it was preserved as *gw, but later changed to *g except in Gothic. Elsewhere, it became either *w or *g during late Proto-Germanic. This is strikingly regular. Each phase involves one single change which applies equally to the labials (p, b, bʰ, f) and their equivalent dentals (t, d, dʰ, þ), velars (k, g, gʰ, h) and rounded velars (kʷ, gʷ, gʷʰ, hw). The first phase left the phoneme repertoire of the language without voiceless stops, the second phase filled this gap but created a new one, and so on until the chain had run its course.
Note: Icelandic hv has actually reverted Grimm's Law in the last few generations, and is now pronounced [kʰv] or [kʰf]. Cf. also nynorsk kv-/k-.
Some linguists dispute the origin of the word "scold", but Julius Pokorny among others proposed *skwetlo as the assumed root. Dutch has *k → *h (ch) even after *s, though this is a separate development.
Furthermore, the voiceless stop *t also did not become a fricative if preceded by *p, *k, or *kʷ (themselves voiceless stops). The voiceless stop it was preceded by did fricativize, however. This is sometimes treated separately under the heading
[t:] before pre-aspirating. Thus, the [h] of the modern Icelandic form is not a direct descendant of ancient /h/.[2]The same ancestry holds for the /tt/ of Icelandic átta as well.[3]
The most recalcitrant set of apparent exceptions to Grimm's Law, which defied linguists for a few decades, eventually received explanation from the Danish linguist Karl Verner (see the article on Verner's law for details).
Correspondences to PIE
The Germanic "sound laws", combined with regular changes reconstructed for other Indo-European languages, allow one to define the expected sound correspondences between different branches of the family. For example, Germanic (word-initial) *b- corresponds regularly to Latin *f-, Greek pʰ-, Sanskrit bʰ-, Slavic, Baltic or Celtic b-, etc., while Germanic *f- corresponds to Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Slavic and Baltic p- and to zero (no initial consonant) in Celtic. The former set goes back to PIE *bʰ- (faithfully reflected in Sanskrit and modified in various ways elsewhere), and the latter set to PIE *p- (shifted in Germanic, lost in Celtic, but preserved in the other groups mentioned here).
GRIMM'S LAW & VERNER'S LAW
Major Changes from I-E to Germanic
Large number of words without known IE cognates. Some NE forms include broad, drink, drive, fowl, hold, meat, rain, and wife.
Only two tenses: present and preterit (past)
Preterit tense formed with dental suffix (d or t)
"Strong" verbs change their tense by internal changes
e.g., rise-rose, sing-sang
"Weak" verbs change tense by adding the dental suffix (-ed)
Weak & strong declensions of adjectives
lost in Modern English
Regular stress of the first syllable
compare Latin Viri' - viro'rum or ha'beo - habe'mus
I-E vowels underwent Germanic modification
I-E stops underwent the "First Sound Shift" explained by Grimm's Law
Grimm's Law
Jacob Grimm, 1827
German linguist attempted to explain why many Germanic words differed so systematically from their I-E cognates. His formulation (later refined) is called Grimm's Law or the First Sound Shift. High German underwent a Second Sound Shift, but that won't concern our study of English language history.
I-E stops gradually assumed new sounds
bh --> b dhh --> d ghh --> g ph --> f th --> (theta) kh --> h bh --> p dh --> t gh --> k
Verner's Law
Karl Verner, 1875
Danish linguist wondered why not every I-E stop changed in the same way. His formulation established that Grimm's Law was consistent and could account for all known cognate evolution
Intermediate step in Stage 1 shift:
All voiceless stops changed once:
ph --> f th --> theta kh --> h sh --> s z
If the sound was in an initial position or immediately after a stressed verb, it changed no further.
Those in other positions changed to voiced spirants (b, d, g)
格拉斯曼定律
格拉斯曼定律是一项用来描述印欧语语音递变的定律，由德国的格拉斯曼(Hermann Grassmann)提出，以补充格里姆定律的不足。

格里姆定律为历史语言学奠定了坚实的基础，但这项定律也不是无懈可击，有少数例外。

一些例外出现在带有送气塞音的词根中。

例如：
梵文bódh-ati “注意”
希腊文peúth-omai “经历”
哥特语（日耳曼语族）ana-biudan “命令、指挥”
根据格里姆定律：
梵文b-对应希腊文的b和哥特语的p
梵文希腊文哥特语
b b p
哥特语b对应梵文bh和希腊文ph
梵文希腊文哥特语
bh ph b
希腊文p对应梵文p和哥特语f
梵文希腊文哥特语
p p f
从上表可以看出，用格里姆无法解释第一辅音的对应关系。

格拉斯曼认为这种对应关系是希腊文和梵文中一系列音变的结果，并提出非常合理的解释：希腊文和梵文两种语言有共同的语音现象，即如果原始印欧语中同一个词包含两个浊送气塞音，在希腊文和梵文里，第一个送气辅音将变成不送气。

这就是格拉斯曼定律。

由于在希腊文里，原始印欧语的浊送气塞音变成清送气塞音，所以在格拉斯曼定律的作用之下，这些塞音将会成为不送气清塞音：*bheudh- > *pheuth- > peuth-。

梵文保留了浊送气塞音，因此这些塞音变成浊不送气塞音：*bheudh- > *bhodh- > bodh-。

Grassmann's law
Grassmann's law, named after its discoverer Hermann Grassmann, is a dissimilatory phonological process in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit which states that if an aspirated consonant is followed by another aspirated consonant in the next syllable, the first one loses the aspiration. The descriptive version was described for Sanskrit by Pāṇini.
Here are some examples in Greek of the effects of Grassmann's Law:
[tʰu-ɔː] θύυ 'I sacrifice (an animal)' [e-tu-tʰɛː] ἐτύθη 'it was sacrificed' [tʰrik-s] θπίξ 'hair'
[trikʰ-es] τπίσερ 'hairs' [tʰap-sai] θάται 'to bury (aorist)' [tʰapt-ein] θάπτειν 'to bury (present)'
[tapʰ-os] τάφορ 'a grave' [tapʰ-ɛː] ταφή 'burial'
In the reduplication which forms the perfect tense in both Greek and Sanskrit, if the initial consonant is aspirated, the prepended consonant is unaspirated by Grassmann's Law. For instance [pʰu-ɔː] φύυ 'I grow' : [pe-pʰuː-ka] πέφςκα 'I have grown'. The fact that deaspiration in Greek took place after the change of Proto-Indo-European *bʰ, *dʰ, *gʰ to /pʰ, tʰ, kʰ/, and the fact that no other Indo-European languages have Grassmann's law, has been argued to show that Grassmann's law developed independently in Greek and Sanskrit, i.e. that it was not inherited from PIE[1]
Verner's law, stated by Karl Verner in 1875, describes a historical sound change in the Proto-Germanic language whereby voiceless fricatives*f, *þ, *s, *h (including *hʷ), when immediately following an unstressed syllable in the same word, underwent voicing and became respectively the fricatives *b, *d, *z, *g (and *gʷ).
The problem
When Grimm's law was discovered, a strange irregularity was spotted in its operation. The Proto-Indo-European(PIE) voiceless stops *p, *t and *k should have changed into Proto-Germanic (PGmc) *f, *þ(dental fricative [θ]) and *h (velar fricative [x]), according to Grimm's Law. Indeed, that was known to be the usual development. However, there appeared to be a large set of words in which the agreement of Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Baltic, Slavic etc. guaranteed PIE *p, *t or *k, and yet the Germanic reflex was voiced (*b, *d or *g).
At first, irregularities did not cause concern for scholars since there were many examples of the regular outcome. Increasingly, however, it became the ambition of linguists to formulate general and exceptionless rules of sound change that would account for all the data (or as close to all the data as possible), not merely for a well-behaved subset of it (see Neogrammarians).
One classic example of PIE *t > PGmc *d is the word for 'father'. PIE *ph2tēr (here, the macron marks vowel length) > PGmc *fadēr (instead of expected *faþēr). The structurally similar family term *bʱrātēr 'brother' did indeed develop as predicted by Grimm's Law (Gmc. *brōþēr). Even more curiously, we often find both *þ and *d as reflexes of PIE *t in different forms of one and the same root, e.g. *werþ- 'turn', preterite *warþ 'he turned', but preterite plural and past participle *wurd- (plus appropriate inflections).
The solution
Karl Verner was the first scholar to note the factor governing the distribution of the two outcomes. He observed that the apparently unexpected voicing of voiceless stops occurred if they were non-word-initial and if the vowel preceding them carried no stress in PIE. The original location of stress was often retained in Greek and early Sanskrit, though in Germanic stress eventually became fixed on the initial (root) syllable of all words. The crucial difference between *pātḗr and *bʱrātēr was therefore one of second-syllable versus first-syllable stress (cf. Sanskri t pitā versus bhrātā).
The *werþ- | *wurd- contrast is likewise explained as due to stress on the root versus stress on the inflectional suffix (leaving the first syllable unstressed). There are also other Vernerian alternations, as illustrated by Modern German ziehen | (ge)zogen 'draw' < PGmc. *tiuh- | *tug- < PIE *déuk- | *duk´- 'lead'.
There is a spinoff from Verner's Law: the rule accounts also for PGmc *z as the development of PIE *s in some words. Since this *z changed to *r in the Scandinavian languages and in West Germanic (German, Dutch, English, Frisian), Verner's Law resulted in alternation of *s and *r in some inflectional paradigms, known as grammatischer Wechsel. For example, the Old English verb ceosan 'choose' had the past plural form curon and the past participle (ge)coren < *kius- | *kuz- < *ǵéus- | *ǵus- 'taste, try'. We would have chorn for chosen in Modern English if the consonantal shell of choose and chose had not been
morphologically levelled (cf. German kiesen : gekoren 'choose (archaic)'). On the other hand, V ernerian *r has not been levelled out in E. were < PGmc. *wēz-, related to E. was. Similarly, E. lose, though it has the weak form lost, also has the archaic form lorn (now seen in the compound forlorn) (cf. Dutch "verliezen"/"verloren"); in German, on the other hand, the *s has been levelled out both in war 'was' (plur. waren 'were') and verlieren 'lose' (part. verloren 'lost').
Here is a table illustrating the sound changes according to Verner. In the bottom row, for each pair, the sound on the right represents the sound changed according to Verner's Law.
PIE *p *t *k *kʷ
*s
Grimm *f *θ*x *xʷ
Verner *f *v *θ *ð *x *ɣ *xʷ *ɣʷ *s *z
Significance
Karl Verner published his discovery in the article "Eine Ausnahme der ersten Lautverschiebung" (an exception to the first sound shift) in Kuhns Zeitschrift in 1876, but he had presented his theory already on 1 May, 1875 in a comprehensive personal letter to his friend and mentor, Vilhelm Thomsen.
It was received with great enthusiasm by the young generation of comparative philologists, the so-called Junggrammatiker, because it was an important argument in favour of the Neogrammarian dogma that the sound laws were without exceptions ("die Ausnahmslosigkeit der Lautgesetze").
Dating Verner's law
It is worth noting that Verner's Law comes chronologically before the Germanic shift of stress to the initial syllable, because the voicing is conditioned by the old location of stress. Put differently, the rule order "Verner's law → stress shift" was counterbleeding; the stress shift erased the conditioning environment and made the Vernerian variation between voiceless fricatives and their voiced alternants look mysteriously haphazard. Until recently it was assumed that Verner's law was productive after Grimm's Law. Now it has been pointed out (Vennemann 1984:21, Kortlandt 1988:5-6) that, even if the sequence is reversed, the result can be just the same given certain conditions.
维尔纳定律
维尔纳定律（Verner's law），由卡尔·维尔纳于1875年提出，该定律描述了发生在原始日尔曼语（PGmc）中的一次历史音变，指出了，出现在非重读音节的末尾的清擦音*f, *&thorn;, *s 和*x，经过浊化转变成了*b, *d, *z和*g。

发现了格林定律以后，在运用过程中出现了一系列的不规则现象。

原始印欧语（PIE）的清塞音*p, *t, *k 按照格林定律本应该在原始日尔曼语中分别转变成*f, *&thorn;（齿间擦音）和*x(舌根擦音），通常情况下的确是这样的。

但是，在一大批的同源词中，以其在拉丁语、古希腊语、梵语、和波罗的语中的形态可断定其PIE音素是*p, *t, *k，在日尔曼语中却表现为浊塞音*b, *đ, *g。

疑问
起先，少许的「异常」并未引起过多的关注，学者们更热心于发现更多「规则」的实例。

然而，终究还是有越来越多的语言学家，不再满足于这些「听话」子集，而是决心要构建出普遍适用的「无例外」的音变规则体系。

一个由PIE的*t 到PGmc的*d 的典型例子是*ph₂tēr（「父」，*h₂表示喉音，e上的一横是长音记号）与*fađēr 的对映（而不是预期的*fa&thorn;ēr )。

有趣的是，同为亲属称谓且结构也相似的PIE：*bʰreh₂tēr（「兄弟」）所对映的PGmc：brō&thorn;ēr则完全符合格林定律。

更有意思的是，我们经常会发现，与PIE：*t对映的*&thorn; 和*đ还可以分别出现在同一词根的不同形态中，如*wer&thorn;-（「转」）字的单数第三人称过去时为*war&thorn;，而复数型和过去分词却作*wurđ-（加相应的屈折词尾）。

解答
卡尔·维尔纳第一个开始去探求，究竟是甚麼因决定了这两种结果的分配。

通过观察，他发现，这些发生了不按「规则」的浊化的清擦音不会出现在词首，而且前临的元音在PIE中都是非重音。

在现代日尔曼语中重读音节多固定在词首，但是原始的PIE重音位置很多都在希腊语和早期梵语中保留了下来。

*ph₂tēr 和*bʰreh₂tēr之间最要紧的区别就在于，前者的重音在第二音节，後者却是位于词首（cf.梵语的pitā和bhrātā）。

类似的，*wer&thorn;-和*wurđ- 的差异也因重音位词干和屈折词尾（首音节轻读）的不同而得以解释。

还有其他一些符合维尔纳定律的例子，比如：现代德语的ziehen | (ge)zogen （「拉」）< PGmc. *tiux- | *tug- < PIE *déuk- | *duk&acute;- （「引」）
维尔纳定律还有一个伴随产物：即在此规则下，PIE 中的s 在PGmc的某些词中转变成了z。

继而，在斯堪的纳维亚语和西部日尔曼语支的德语、荷兰语、英语和弗里斯兰语中，z又转变成了r ，维尔纳定律解释了某些屈折变化中/s/和/r/的交替。

比如，古英语动词ceosan （「选」，现代英语作「choose」），复数过去时为curon 过去分词为(ge)coren < *kius- | *kuz- < *ǵéus- | *ǵus-（「尝，试」）。

假如声母未发生转变的话，coren的词形可能会一直保存在英语中（cf. kiesen : gekoren（choose，古语））。

但是维尔纳的/r/在「were」（现代英语系动词「是」的复数过去时）中就没有被磨灭——were < PGmc. *wēz- 与was （「是」的单数过去时）对立。

类似的lose(英语lost「丢失」的弱化形）也有一个forlorn 与之相配（cf.荷兰语verliezen : verloren；在德语的对映词中，/s/已经磨灭，lose 对映为verlieren，forlorn对映verloren）。

维尔纳定律的时限
日尔曼语言发生了重移至词首的转变之後维尔纳定律就不再适用了。

因为古语的重音位置纔是导致此类浊化的必要条
件，从清辅音向相应浊化变体转变所依赖的环境被重音的移动取消了。

然而最近有观点认为维尔纳定律在「後」格林定律时代仍然有效。

专家指出，在一定条件下，即使转化方向相反最终结果也有可能是一样的。

意义
卡尔·维尔纳于1976年在历史语言探索杂志上发表了题为Eine Ausnahme der ersten Lautverschiebung（「一个音变特例」）论文中阐述了他的发现。

但是早在一年前在他写给Vilhelm Thomsen（维尔纳的朋友和导师）的一封私信中他就已经简要地讲述了这一理论。

维尔纳的发现在年青一代比较语言学家——所谓新语法学家——中间激起了极大的热情。

因为它为新语法学家们所追求的无例外的音变规则("die Ausnahmslosigkeit der Lautgesetze")提供了有力的理论依据。

新语法学派德语原文是Junggramatiker
19世纪70年代新语法学派由德国莱比锡大学K.布鲁格曼、H.奥斯特霍夫、B.德尔布吕克(1842～1922)、A.莱斯金、H.保罗等人建立。

因为他们对梵语与古希腊语的关系提出了
新见解，老一辈语言学家如G.库尔蒂乌斯等深为不满，称他们为“青年语法学派”，含有揶揄之意。

但是他们欣然接受了这个名称，后来人们也就沿用下来。

在语言学界，现在一般叫做“新语法学派”。

新语法学派的材料和思想，导源于19世纪前期的历史比较语言学家J.格林和中期的A.施莱歇尔等人。

这个学派指出，梵语有些词形比古希腊语距离原始印欧语原状更远，原始印欧语词根并不都是单音节的等等。

新语法学派强调两点：一是语音演变规律无例外，二是语音变化中的类推作用。

远在1822年，格林就提出了语音演变规律，人们也曾看到有些例外情况，1875年K.维尔纳提出了补充说明。

新语法学派因此觉得,历史音变已得到了充分解释。

1878年，布鲁格曼和奥斯特霍夫在一篇文章中宣称，语音变化按规律进行，没有例外，跟自然科学一样，有其严格的规律。

他们说,人类语言变化的因素不外乎心理、生理两种，可是语音变化是缓慢的，不自觉的，所以“语音定律的活动完全是盲目的，依照自然的盲目需要而进行。

”他们没有注意到，语言演变是社会历史现象。

语言不是脱离说话人而存在的实体，语音演变要受社会和历史两方面的制约。

语言并不能像自然科学那样有预见性,不能预言有什么音变会在什么时候什么地方发生。

在类推作用中，新语法学派看到
了语音演变的心理因素。

类推作用是以某些词或形式为标准，改变另一些词或形式来与之看齐。

如果这样，就会产生不遵循语音演变规律的现象。

例如拉丁语变为古法语，按规律a 音应有两种新发展：非重音的a保留原状，如“爱”的不定式由拉丁语amare变为古法语amer，但是在m或n之前的重音a都变成ai,如拉丁语“我爱”amo变成古法语aim，拉丁语"你爱"amas变成古法语aimes,拉丁语"他爱"amat变成古法语aime(t)。

这样,在拉丁语中,同是一个"爱"的词根,在古法语就有am-和aim-两种不同的形式。

后来法语以aim-为标准进行类推，结果变成现代法语的aimer、aime、aimes和aime、am-这个词根形式就消失了。

这样讲类推作用，能说明许多音变现象，但是语音演变是复杂的，有的音变并非由于类推，而由于其他原因，例如避免产生同音词，避免与忌讳名称发音相似，或者对词源有所误解等等。

只讲类推作用，仍然不能把一切例外都讲清楚。

新语法学派在19世纪末、20世纪初影响很大
除德国人外，其他国家的语言学家，如丹麦的V.L.P.汤姆逊和维尔纳、俄国的Ф.Ф.福尔图纳托夫等都自称属于这一派。

新语法学派提倡研究活的方言,但受到方言地理学家H.舒哈特和J.吉耶龙(1854～1926) 等人的强烈反对，他们经过实地调查之后，认为语音在空间和时间方面的情况复杂而且变动不居，不能像新语法学派那样划出清楚的界线，说什么地区的方言在什么时候总是发什么音，毫无例外。

新语法学派也存在许多局限性。

该学派夸大了语音规律的绝对性，没有意识到语言和方言在地域和结构上的性对统一性。

在语言研究中采用原子主义的方式，孤立地研究语言现象，材料零散，缺乏系统性。

该学派研究的重点是语言的个人因素，忽略了语言的社会因素，所以对语言本体的研究难以深入下去。

当然，新语法学派在语言学史上的贡献是不可磨灭的。

它总结了19世纪比较语言学和历史语言学的成果，预示了20世纪初结构主义语言学的诞生。

该学派也被人成为“语言学家的第一个现代学派”。

布鲁格曼和德尔布吕克合著的《印欧语言比较语法》，以及保罗的《语言历史的原则》，都是宝贵的语言学文献。

Neogrammarian
The Neogrammarians (also Young Grammarians, German Junggrammatiker) were a German school of linguists, originally at the University of Leipzig, in the late 19th century who proposed the Neogrammarian hypothesis of the regularity of sound change. According to this hypothesis, a diachronic sound change affects simultaneously all words in which its environment is met, without exception. Verner's law is a famous example of the Neogrammarian hypothesis, as it resolved an apparent exception to Grimm's law. The Neogrammarian hypothesis was the first hypothesis of sound change to attempt to follow the principle of falsifiability according to scientific method. Today this hypothesis is considered more of a guiding principle than an exceptionless fact, as numerous examples of lexical diffusion (where a sound change affects only a few words at first and then gradually spreads to other words) have been attested.
Other contributions of the Neogrammarians to general linguistics were:
The object of linguistic investigation is not the language system, but rather the idiolect, that is, language as it is localized in the individual, and therefore is directly observable.
Autonomy of the sound level: being the most observable aspect of language, the sound level is seen as the most important level of description, and absolute autonomy of the sound level from syntax and semantics is assumed.
Historicism: the chief goal of linguistic investigation is the description of the historical change of a language.
Analogy: if the premise of the inviolability of sound laws fails, analogy can be applied as an explanation if plausible. Thus, exceptions are understood to be a (regular) adaptation to a related form.
Despite their strong influence in their time, the methods and goals of the Neogrammarians have been criticized from various points of view[citation needed], but mainly for: reducing the object of investigation to the idiolect; restricting themselves to the description of surface phenomena (sound level); overvaluation of historical languages and neglect of contemporary ones
The Neogrammarian view
Comparative philology is a term for the study of the historical development of the languages of the Indo-European language family. This technique was evolved by the group of linguists working in the second half of the 19th century, mostly in Germany. Going on a German term —Junggrammatiker —used first in disrespect for young linguists, the English translation Neogrammarians was devised. What is here called the Neogrammarian view refers to the methods used for linguistic reconstruction in the 19th century. It first arose towards the end of the 18th century with the discovery that classical languages like Greek, Latin and Sanskrit are related to each other. Soon after this a number of scholars independently established interconnections between the languages of the Germanic, Romance, Celtic, Slavic and Baltic groups of languages. Notable among the authors of this earlier group is Jakob Grimm who established a series of sound laws which applied to Germanic in its earlier stages.
Sound law This is a term which refers to a change or a series of related changes in the phonology of a language. The term law (German Lautgesetz) is used to stress the regularity of the change. The classic example of a sound law is the so-called Germanic sound shift or Grimm‟s law. This states that in the early stage when Germanic was differentiating itself from the remaining dialects of Indo-Germanic, all voiceless stops were shifted to voiceless fricatives, i.e. /p/ became /f/, /t/ became /θ/
/x/ was weakened to /h/ in word position and represented as h in writing. From this fact one can conclude that those words which have been inherited from Germanic and which are written with initial h originally had /x-/. The sequence /xw/ in Germanic later developed analogically to /hw/. Through assimilation of the /w/ to the preceding voiceless glottal fricative the voiceless [ʍ] which was voiced in the early modern period in southern English but which is retained in many conservative dialects.
Verner‟s law The sound law was the central theoretical concept in comparative philology so that exceptions to laws represente d a considerable difficulty to linguistic interpretation within this model. The results of a sound law could be veiled by later analogy which did away with irregularity in morphological paradigms but still, for Germanic, there were disturbing exceptions to the operation of established sound laws which could not be explained by an appeal to analogy. Scholars had noticed at an early stage that the Germanic consonant shift did not affect all instances where it might have applied. Grimm called these exceptional cases grammatischer Wechsel ('morphological alternation') because they were to be found in verb paradigms, for example).
In 1877 the Danish scholar Karl Verner published an article entitled "Eine Ausnahme der germanischen Lautverschiebung" ('An exception to the Germanic sound shift'), in which he demonstrated that the apparent irregularity here constituted in fact a clear rule. Since then this phenomenon bears his name. In essence Verner‟s Law runs as follows: If a voiceless consonant occurred i n a syllable which was preceded by another which did not carry the main accent then this consonant was voiced unless the phonetic environment blocked this. Now because accent was relatively free in Indo-European (as still to be seen in Russian) there were many words which were affected by Verner‟s Law, for instance in the preterite of strong verbs (but not in the first and third person singular) the accent was on the second syllable. Later with the rise of initial accent in Germanic the
the earlier situation.
and underwent Verner‟s Law because the accent was not on the preceding syllable, yielding /ð/ which was later fortified to a plosive.
Another major sound shift in Germanic is the High German sound shift which explains many differences between English and
Indo-European family. Linguists stressed the exceptionless character of sound laws (German Ausnahmslosigkeit). According to this view the only exceptions to a valid sound law can occur due to the force of analogy. This is where an expected change is not found because another element in a grammatical paradigm has caused a change to be blocked or has masked a change at some later point Thus the change of /s/ to /r/ in the past tense of the verb sein in German has been masked by the analogical spread of /r/ to all elements of the verbal paradigm, e.g. ich war, du warst, etc. In English we can see that an alternation originally existed: I was, you were, etc.
Reconstructing the proto-language One of the major concerns of comparative philology was with the reconstruction of the proto Indo-European language. The technique for reconstruction is as follows: going on a series of attested forms one postulates a common original form which is phonologically most likely. As an example take the postulation of Germanic /ɑ:/. In German one has words like Geist, Heim and in English the corresponding forms ghost, home. Assuming (correctly) that both languages are near relatives, the most likely common form of the vowel in these words is /ɑ:/. This is then called a protosegment and written with a preceding asterisk, i.e. *a (note that this sound does not occur in any present-day language). The sum of all the protosegments for this common stage of English, German is called West Germanic; a stage further back would be Germanic which would include Gothic (the only attested member of the East Germanic branch) and Old Norse (the Northern Germanic branch) before these were separated out into recognisably different languages.
The method for language reconstruction outlined here is termed the …comparative philology‟ method and is associated with the school of linguists who originated in Leipzig in the last quarter of the 19th century and who are called …Neogrammarians‟ (German …Junggrammatiker'). The most notable representatives of this direction in linguistics are Karl Brugmann and Berthold Delbrück; the main theorist of this school is Hermann Paul (see the relevant section in the history of linguistics section). Conditioned and unconditioned sound changes A conditioned sound change is one which is caused by some segment in the environment of another. A clear instance of this is i-umlaut which is caused in a given syllable by the high vowel or /j/ in a following syllable. It is important to note that this change leads to morphological irregularity as in the following cases in
The latter is found when referring to siblings and in one or two set phrases: my elder sister, an elder statesman; otherwise older is used.
Unconditioned sound change affects every possible segment which matches its input, i.e. it is not dependent on — conditioned by — environment. An example of this would be the diphthongisation of Middle English /i:/ and /u:/, which does not cause any grammatical irregularity; the loss of /x/ in Middle English is another instance of unconditioned sound change.
Great vowel shift
One major change in the pronunciation of English took place roughly between 1400 and 1700; these affected the …long‟ vowels, and can be illustrated in the diagram below. This is known as the Great Vowel Shift (GVS). Generally, the long vowels became closer, and the original close vowels were diphthongised
Around the time we started speaking modern English -- the time of Shakespeare -- English underwent a dramatic change known as the Great Vowel Shift (GVS) that was partly responsible for our odd, unintuitive English spelling.
Prior to the time of Queen Elizabeth I and Shakespeare, English speakers pronounced the vowels about the same as other speakers, and not too differently from the way the Romans would have pronounced Latin. If, as a native English-speaker, you've ever studied French, you know that the letter "i" is pronounced like an English long "e". Say it aloud. That's probably how English speakers in, say, Chaucer's time, would have pronounced a long "i".
The Great V owel Shift affected only the long (or "tense") vowels. The short vowels were not affected. This is the general process, here used to explain the pronunciation of Latin to English-speakers. It is not intended to be an adequate linguistic analysis of the GVS.
Orthographically, long vowels in English are often marked
by being repeated (e.g. "feet", "feel," "tooth") or
by having an "e" at the end of the word that, our teachers tell us, make the preceding vowel long (e.g., "like", "came", "home"). V owels are pronounced in different areas of the mouth. If you hold your chin while going through the vowel sounds, you'll notice your chin rises and falls. When your chin is up, you're pronouncing high vowels and when you're chin is as far down as it goes in vowel pronunciation, you're pronouncing an "a", the low vowel. V owels are often pronounced more in the front or back of your mouth.。