GRIMMS LAW

Presentation by
Humera Jehangir
History of English Language and
Linguistics

Grimms law,descriptionoftheregularcorrespondences
inIndo-EuropeanlanguagesformulatedbyJacobGrimm
inhisDeutsche Grammatik(181937;Germanic
Grammar).Itpointedoutprominentcorrelationsbetween
the
GermanicandotherIndo-EuropeanlanguagesofEurope
andwesternAsia.
Thelawwasasystematicandcoherentformulation,well
supportedbyexamples,ofpatternsrecognizedasearlyas
1814bytheDanishphilologistRasmusKristianRask.
Itisimportantforhistoricallinguisticsbecauseitclearly
demonstratestheprinciplethatsoundchangeisaregular
phenomenonandnotarandomprocessaffectingonly
somewords,ashadbeenthoughtpreviously.

Grimm described two consonant shifts

involving essentially nine consonants.
One shift (probably a few centuries before the
Christian era) affected the Indo-European
consonants and is evident in English, Dutch,
other Low German languages, and Old Norse.
The other shift (about the 6th centuryAD) was
less radical in scope and affected the
Germanic consonants, resulting in the
consonant system evident inOld High German
and its descendants, Middle High German and
Modern High German (standard German).

According to the law, the ancient unvoicedp, t,

kbecame the English unvoicedf, th, hand the Old
High Germanf, d, h,producing such correlations as
that between the initial consonants of
Greekpod,Englishfod,and Old High Germanfuo.
The law further stated that the ancient voicedb, d,
gbecame the English unvoicedp, t, kand the Old
High German spirant stopsf, ts, kh;hence, the
correlation between Latinduo,English two, and
modern Germanzwei(pronounced tsvai).
Also, the originally voicedbh, dh, ghbecame the
English voicedb, d, gand the Old High Germanp, t,
k;compareSanskritbhrati,English bear, and the
Upper German dialects of Old High Germankiperan(later standard Germange-bren).
The Old High German examples show the second
shift in addition to the first, which is seen in English.

One of the first major puzzles 18th and 19th

century scholars faced with proto-IndoEuropean was explaining certain sound shifts.
The shift between Latinpater("father") and
Spanishpadreis fairly clear to see in Romance
languages--basically the/t/has changed to
a/d/. That's a fairly small step linguistically.
Both/t/and/d/are alveolar stops, so they are
basically the same sound.
The only difference is that/d/is voiced (i.e.,
the vocal cords vibrate) and/t/is unvoiced
(i.e., the vocal cords don't vibrate

However, a great number of words in IndoEuropean languages have what at first looked
like inexplicable shifts with no perceivable
simple pattern--especially those in the
Germanic branches.
How could a single source word develop into
both the Old Englishfaeder("father") and the
Latinpater?
The letters/f/and/p/aren't closely related at
all in pronunciation--since/p/is a bilabial stop
and requires lip articulation rather than a
spirant or fricative like/f/.
It was quite the brain-boggle for many
decades.

Luckily, a scholar of fairy-tales came in to save

the day and rescue the puzzled philologists.
The unlikely savior was the folkloristJakob
Grimm. He, along with his brother Wilhelm,
studiedmrchen, or fairy tales.
This Jakob Grimm fellow is the same scholar
who collected them--along with his brother.
The Grimm brothers were multilingual
(scholars had to be to collect folklore from all
over Europe in the 19th century)
And they had an excellent background in
philology.

Jakob Grimm saw a pattern in the consonant

shifts.
Along with a Danish contemporary named
Rask, Grimm came up with a theory in 1822 to
account for correspondences between
consonants found in Germanic languages with
different consonants found in Sanskrit,
Greek, and Latin.
This rule is called Grimm's Law: Here it is in all
its tripartite philological glory:

Grimm's Law #1:

(a)A word beginning a voiceless stop such
as/p/in most Indo-European languages has
for its cognate sound an aspirant/f/in
Germanic languages.
(b)A word beginning in a voiceless stop such
as/t/in most Indo-European languages has as
its cognate sound an aspirant// ("th")in
Germanic languages.
(c)A word beginning in a voiceless stop such
as/k/in most Indo-European languages has as
its cognate sound an/h/in Germanic
languages.
This is not as complex as it looks. Basically,
the rule can be summarized as follows:

Germanic Words Beginning

With...

Will Have Indo-European Cognate

Words Beginning With the Sound
of . . .

th ()

English
one
Two
to
three
four
Five
six
seks
seven
eight
nine
ten

Dutch
Danish
een
en
twee
vier
zes

drie

fire
vijf

zeven
acht
negen
tien
ti

tre
fem

otte

syv
ni

Grimms Law: consonant changes between

Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic

ptk>fx
became fricatives in Germanic, but stayed same in
Latin & Greek
bdg>ptk
devoiced in Germanic, but stayed same in Latin &
Greek
bh dh gh > b d g
deaspirated in Germanic, but fricatives in Latin (f,
f, h), devoiced in Greek (ph, th, kh), retained in
Sanskrit, Hindi

p>f
Sanskrit pita
padam
Greek pate:r
poda
Latin pate:r
pedem
Gothic fadar
fotu
English father foot
PIE
*pter- *ped

(majority rule here in the inference about PIE)

Completed Chain Shift