Re: Grimm's Law

--- Roger Mills <romilly@...> wrote:
> Elliott Lash wrote:
>
>
> > Christopher B Wright <faceloran@...> writes:
> >
> >>Okay, Grimm's Law says that these sound changes
> took place from
> >>Proto-Germanic to Old High German:
>
> (snip material that seemed wrong......)
> >>
> >>>>The all-too-curious
> >>Chris Wright
> >
> >
> >Hmm, this doesn't look right.
> >What I've seen for Grimm's law is:
> >
> >/p/   > /f/
> >/t/   > /T/
> >/k/   > /x/
> >/b/   > /p/
> >/d/   > /t/
> >/g/   > /k/
> >/b_h/ > /b/
> >/d_h/ > /d/
> >/g_h/ > /g/
> >
> This is indeed Grimm's law, which operated IE >Proto
> Germanic. The old
> circular M-T-A mnemonic.  It occurred to me too, but
> Chris is asking about
> Gmc > High German, which is different.......(and I
> don't recall the
> details.)
According to Comrie in "The World's Major Languages",
the Gmc > High German sound shift went something like
this:

Voiceless stops > Voiceless fricatives/affricates
Voiced stops > Voiceless stops, yielding:

p > f, pf
t > s, ts
k > x, kx
b > p
d > t
g > k

Where "x" is either /C/ or /x/.

Comrie doesn't explain, however, where the voiceless
stops changed to fricatives and where to affricates,
nor why /kx/ is absent in modern High German.


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