Grammatischer Wechsel

In historical linguistics, the German term "Grammatischer Wechsel" ("grammatical alternation") refers to the effects of Verner's law when viewed synchronically within the paradigm of a Germanic verb.

According to Grimm's law, the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) voiceless stops *p, *t and *k usually became Proto-Germanic *f, *þ (dental fricative) and *x (velar fricative). Karl Verner identified the principle that these instead become the voiced stops *b, *d and *g if they were word-internal and immediately preceded by an unstressed vowel in PIE. Furthermore, PIE *s, which usually came into Germanic unchanged, became *z in this position; Proto-Germanic *z later became Germanic *r.

Consequently, four pairs of consonants emerged, each pair representing a single PIE phoneme. The following table shows the precise developments from Proto-Indo-European through Proto-Germanic and West Germanic to Old English, Old High German and Dutch. It is mainly in the dentals that these languages show significant differences in the patterns of "grammatischer Wechsel".

(In West Germanic, and hence in Old English, the fricatives took the voiced allophones [ð] , [v] and [z] when they were word-internal; see: Pronunciation of English th. In Old High German the stops were moved according to the High German consonant shift. In Dutch, the idiosyncrasies of this shift mean that Dutch (like German) experiences the shift þ→d but (like English) does not experience the shift d→t; thus the dental variety of "grammatischer Wechsel" is eliminated in Dutch by the normal operation of sound laws.)

"Grammatischer Wechsel" is the phenomenon that a verb which in PIE had a stem ending in one of these phonemes displays a differing reflex in different parts of the paradigm, a result of the movable nature of stress in PIE. This only affects Germanic strong verbs. The regular pattern is that Grimm's law forms are found in the present stem and in the preterite singular, while Verner's law forms are found in the preterite plural and in the past participle.

A process of levelling has meant that there are only few examples of this in the modern languages. In East and North Germanic, this levelling was almost complete before the earliest records, though Gothic and Old Norse did have traces of "Grammatischer Wechsel". In Old English, too, the levelling had already begun to the extent that in some verbs the preterite singular had taken the consonant of the preterite plural. The only surviving example in Modern English is "was:were", but a trace can also be seen in the adjective "forlorn", which reflects the old participle of the verb "to lose". Likewise Modern German has lost most of its examples by levelling, but d:t can be observed in verbs like "leiden, litt, gelitten" ("to suffer") or h:g in "ziehen, zog, gezogen" ("to pull"). Apart from the English copula mentioned above, the only occurrences of s:r in the modern languages are in Dutch: "verliezen, verloor, verloren" ("to lose").

Some examples:

Original /*p/ (no examples in the modern languages):Old English "hebban - hōf hōfon hafen" ("to lift" cf. "heave")Original /*t/ (survives in modern German):Old English: "cweþan (cwiþþ) cwæþ - cwǽdon cweden" ("to say": cf. "quoth"):Old English: "sēoþan (sīeþþ) sēaþ - sudon soden" ("to boil" cf. "seethe"):Modern German: "schneiden - schnitt geschnitten" ("to cut")Original /*k/ (survives in modern German and Dutch):Middle High German: "zîhen zêch - zigen gezigen" ("to upbraid"):Old English: "þeon (þīehþ) þāh - þigon þigen" ("to prosper" cf. German "gedeihen"):Dutch: "zien zie gezien - zag zagen" ("to see", Dutch lost intervocalic "h", see Old Dutch)Original /*s/ (survives in modern Dutch, and in the English copula):Old English "cēosan (cīest) cēas - curon coren" ("to choose"):Old English "frēosan (frīest) frēas - fruron froren" ("to freeze"):Dutch: "vriezen vries - vroor gevroren" ("to freeze")

NB. Not all consonant apophony in Germanic verbs is caused by "grammatischer Wechsel". The consonant alternation in certain weak verbs which typically goes along with the Rückumlaut phenomenon ("think:thought", German "denken:dachte") is a result of a later development in Germanic known as the Germanic spirant law. Likewise, the terminal devoicing which produces a fortis-lenis alternation in Dutch ("wrijven:wreef") is an unrelated historical phenomenon.