Talk:Grimm's law

message: The text is practically the same as the one you can find in A Grammar of Modern Indo-European (v.3.30), pages 43-45. You can check the book here. They do mention the Wikipedia as one of their resources in the bibliography at the end of the book. But I don't know what came first. --62.57.230.59 (talk) 13:33, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: A Grammar of Modern Indo-European

message: What transliteration scheme is it that renders πούς as pūs? I would think it would be pous. 24.159.255.29 00:49, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  No, ού is in fact transliterated as ū. Greeks already pronounced the diphthong that way in the Classical period of Greek, even though they always spelled it OU. That's the accepted transliteration, and it holds in modern linguistics. RokasT 11:36, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I BEG to differ! There seems to be a confusion here between transcription (phonemic or otherwise) and transliteration. A translteration is a system for rendering each character of the original in an unambiguous way in a different signary. It doesn't have to be one-to-one (θ = th etc. is kosher), but the more straightforward and consistent the transliteration the better. Now, regarding the case in hand, we know that the sequence ou in Greek eventually became /ū/, but it is historically the outcome both of the diphthong *ow and secondary lengthening of *o. Besides, if you're going to take it on yourself to interpret Greek ou as ū, then presumably you would also render ei sometimes as ē and sometimes as ey depending on which it stood for in the original. And what about "iota subscripts"? Pretend they aren't there (which in a way is what the standard Greek orthography means)? In any case, I'm unfamiliar with any school of historical linguistics that would treat Greek transliteration in such a way, so far from it being "accepted" as a standard transliteration. Alsihler 22:11, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Your prayers have been heard. --RokasT (talk) 11:37, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Greek transliteration 

message: Anyone think there should be a note somewhere that /k/ became /x/ before advancing to /h/? I'm inclined to think so, since it has implications for Verner's law. 24.159.255.29 01:05, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  /x/ 

message: I'm pretty sure that Icelandic "hvað" is not an example for the *kʷ→hw shift, since it's still pronounced with a /k/ (even though it's not written that way). I'll remove this. -- Schnee (cheeks clone)
:A little learning is a dangerous thing. hvað is indeed the direct descendent of PGmc *hʷat-aⁿ (< *kʷod-ōm). It's probably not the best idea in any case to cite Icelandic, since Old Norse hvat does just as well (and isn't going to stir up irrelevant arguments about pronunciations that are 2,000 years too late).
:In general, I find both that the etyma are poorly chosen (why trot out a contested and implausible set to demonstrate the reflexes of *gʷh when there are far clearer ones lying around?) and that the presentation the cognate forms as cited is questionable in detail. As hinted above, the  Greek transliteration is unacceptable; forms of different meaning are sometimes glossed and sometimes not (Skt pāda is presented as meaning "foot", by implication; it does get that meaning, late, but earlier it meant "quarter", that is, "leg", of an animal), there are many small fluffs of detail (Latin "vivus" should have ī, and so on and on). I suppose someone (sigh, meaning me) should take the stuff in hand. I don't know how hard to be on the creator of the table, though the business about a root *gʷhíbh- (presumably a typo for gʷhībh-; and his or her discussion of it) has gone far to alienate my sympathies; whether or not the connection between the Germanic and Tocharian forms is valid, the other supposed cognates are both wrong (they reflect PIE *gʷenH₂- "woman") and are cited in a botched transliteration. Two of a trade never agree, and so on, and that goes double for historical linguists, but some things are out of place in what is supposed to be a rehearsal of basic principles. I'm working on a substantial revision.  Alsihler 22:25, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: hvað with a /k/ in front is a recent development, it was /x/ before that, with maybe some speakers still pronouncing it that way. 68.188.31.26 (talk) 23:28, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  "hvað" 

message: According to Chambers' Dictionary of Etymology "peg" is borrowed from Middle Dutch "pegge" and is of uncertain origin after that. Deman7001 17:48, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No problem with your change if you like it better: warp is most closely related to German werfen (throw), and is cognate with Latin verber, whence English reverberate.  You have to be careful with a /p/ in final position, because it can be a Germanic /b/ which has been subject to terminal devoicing; so initial or medial position are safer, but in this case it does seem to be a Germanic /p/ resulting from Grimm's law.  But peg was also fine.  Yes, it is borrowed from Dutch, but that is also a Germanic language and therefore does not affect its relevance.  According to Kluge's Etymologisches Wörterbuch, German Pegel IS cognate with peg.  As you know, the High German consonant shift moved p > pf in initial position, so any High German word beginning with a non-affricated /p/ must be a loan word.  In fact, Pegel is taken from Low German, which is very close to Dutch, so that tallies nicely.  The trouble is, good examples of a Germanic /p/ are hard to find.  The symmetry of Grimm's law demands that there must have been an original IE unaspirated /b/ which became /p/ in Germanic, but it seems to have been a very rare phoneme in PIE, and Calvert Watkin's dictionary, which I happen to have beside me, only knows seven IE roots beginning with it - all of which have some question mark or peculiarity attached to them.  Some scholars have questioned whether IE had the phoneme at all.  On balance, I think it probably did.  But we will always be struggling to demonstrate it with examples as clear as the father/pater or thou/tu pairs.  --Doric Loon 08:13, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Peg/ Baculum?

message: Apparently people don't know what "The most illustrative examples are used here." means, adding things that are shifted by separate sound changes and so don't illustrate Grimm's law very well. I suggest we include only English on the Germanic side (English is conveniently conservative with respect to Grimm's law), and maybe Greek and/or Sanskrit on the unshifted side. Thoughts? --Ptcamn 08:25, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: And why on earth is φρατήρ commented out? --Ptcamn 08:28, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The point is to only include "illustrative examples", "φ" would be pronounced as a voiceless labiodental fricative or an aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive. To include cognates with other sound shifts than Germanic muddles things, and complicates the point. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 11:28, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Simplifying the table 

message: Hi, when in pre-history did this sound-change occur? --Kjoonlee 23:53, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  When did this occur? 

message: I am currently working on several Germanic-related articles. My research has led me to compose a short passage relating to the dating of Grimm's law. It appears below with notes:
There is growing consensus among researchers that the First Sound Shift took place around 500 BCE. "The Gmc [Germanic] consonant shift will indeed have taken place around 500 B.C., that is, in the Iron Age or the overlapping time between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, i.e., in the transition between EPGmc [Early Proto-Germanic] and LPGmc [Late Proto-Germanic]. This timing of the consonant shift seems to be more and more the consensus." (van Coetsem 1994:140-141) One argument used to substantiate this date observes that the Greek word for hemp (kánnabis) appears to have been borrowed into that and other Indo-European languages sometime around the 5th century BCE from a hitherto unidentified but purportedly non-Indo-European source in the form *kanab-. Based on the cognates of the word in attested Germanic daughter languages (Old English hænep, Old High German hanaf, Old Icelandic hampr) it is assumed that the Proto-Germanic form of the word was *hanapaz. According to this reconstruction, it would appear that the word entered the Proto-Germanic vocabulary prior to the First Sound Shift. Assuming that hemp became known in both regions at or around the same time, the First Sound Shift can thus be considered to have taken place no earlier than the 5th century BCE.For a detailed presentation of this argument, see Streitberg (1943:135-6). For discussion, see Voyles (1994:78).
====Notes====
====Comments====
If someone would like to include this information here, I can post the full citations for the references. There is also an original argument offered by van Coetsem (1994) which involves extra-linguistic evidence (Celtic in particular), but I have not been able to locate an occurence of its being cited in other work. With that being said, I view van Coetsem's argument to be the stronger of the two. If interested, please contact me on my userpage. Aryaman (☼) 17:30, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Dating Grimm's Law

message: If someone would like to include this information here, I can post the full citations for the references. There is also an original argument offered by van Coetsem (1994) which involves extra-linguistic evidence (Celtic in particular), but I have not been able to locate an occurence of its being cited in other work. With that being said, I view van Coetsem's argument to be the stronger of the two. If interested, please contact me on my userpage. Aryaman (☼) 17:30, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments

message: Two suggestions for the tables:
1.  Generally, we are trained to think in terms of time moving forward and represented as moving from left to right in diagrams or other representations on a page.  The older becomes the newer, the earlier pronunciation changes into the more recent pronunciation.  
With this in mind, I think the table would be more understandable, more intuitive, if the column order was changed.  The columns would then also reflect the order in which the symbolic examples are given and the order in which the process actually took place.  
Additionally, internal consistency within the table is easier to understand.
Note that column 1 states: *p→f
But then the language examples reverse that order, citing the shifted examples before (to the left of) the non-shifted original state.  So the example order conflicts with the rule's order.
To resolve both these issues, I think the column of older non-shifted forms should appear to the left of the column of the newer shifted forms.
2.  Not as critical, but perhaps more logical in terms of process, would be to put the symbolic rule in the middle column.  So, one would read a row like this:
Col 1 | Col 2 | Col 3
"the old state" | "underwent this change" | "to the new state."
Hlaufman (talk) 16:58, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comprehensability of the table - adjusting the column order.  

message: Some dialectal Norwegian still uses *kʷ "kva" in speech instead of hw "hva".
Don't know if it's relevant. /per  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.136.0.201 (talk) 10:45, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Norwegian "hva" *kʷ→hw 

message: What exactly is meant by "gaelic" in the Non-Germanic (unshifted) cognates column? It is not Irish\Gaelic, but the examples given are extremely close to it. Is it the common root of all the Goidelic languages?
Bogger (talk) 15:55, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: These are the Scottish Gaelic forms. --Doric Loon (talk) 18:45, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Gaelic"  

message: Might I ask for sources for the Tocharian cognates of wife? I'll happily add this information to the entry once I come upon a good hard source. Dr. C.S. Lewis-Barrie, Ph.D. (talk) 18:23, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it's from Calvert Watkins' appendix of Indo-European Roots to the American Heritage Dictionary. Apparently, there are no other known cognates, and both the phonetic and semantic shifts seem to be unusual, so it seems wildly disputed. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * (talk) 14:28, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Source(s) for Tocharian Cognates 

message: I re-hid the less illustrative cognates once again. I know they are correct, but it would be confusing for a layman to see a bunch of examples shifted in (for a layman) haphazard ways. This shouldn't be a list to show all known cognates to words, but the most illustrative examples for explaining Grimm's law, in particular. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * (talk) 15:30, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Hidden cognates

message: Why does it say that *b→p and then show English: warp; Swedish: värpa; Dutch: werpen; Icelandic, Faroese: varpa and shows the Latin version as verber.  Should it not be v→w or something?  98.27.163.188 (talk) 01:14, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Aaahh, the v/w distinction isn't primarily phonetic, as much as ortographic. Apparently both Latin and Proto-Germanic is believed to have had one single v-sound /w/ (as in wait). The distinction here is between warp and verber, but the problem is that *b was such a rare phoneme in PIE, that it's difficult to find good examples. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * (talk) 14:25, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question. 

message: Many of the characters in the table are appearing as filler symbols rather like a very fat lower-case "L".  Is there some "proper" character set we are supposed to have loaded for these pages to display correctly?  And how do we make certain our browser uses it in this instance?
:Install Unicode, I think that should fix it. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * (talk) 09:15, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  CHaracter set ? 

message: "Viv" was dialectal/poetic only in Swedish since at least 1922 (http://runeberg.org/svetym/1230.html)
I have never heard it, "Fru" or "Dam" are always used instead. Please remove if it should be removed.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.86.193.9 (talk) 06:51, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a list of cognates, not necessarily common words. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:25, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Viv 

message: I propose redirecting the article Great consonant shift here. Please see Talk:Great consonant shift for discussion. +Angr 20:47, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Please keep the discussion centralized at Talk:Great consonant shift. +Angr 13:23, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redirect from [[Great consonant shift]] 

message: Some of the consonant laws in the Semitic group are non-trivial.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.153.226.52 (talk) 14:36, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: It was the first to be explicitly discovered, not to occur. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 18:46, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alleged first non-trivial 

message: 1) Did the shift cause any clashes at the end of the chain that we know of? Like p... shifting to f... clashing with a pre-existing f...?
2) Are there any known exceptional words? Words that didn't shift, where not imported from other languages, and are not covered by the exception rules?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.139.81.0 (talk) 03:23, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: There was no pre-existing "ɸ" or "f" before the changes.  There were various contextual partial exceptions (such as that the shifts did not apply after "s") and later complications (such as Verner's law), but Grimm's law itself does not seem to have neutralized contrasts... AnonMoos (talk) 07:56, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Two questions 

message: Angr proposed to merge these two articles on June 16, 2009, but did not initiate a discussion nor state the reasons for his merge. I'm not really an expert on this subject, so I am not certain how to go about merging the two articles. But this should be dealt with soon, as the merge request is outstanding for over three years now. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? WTF? (talk) 16:08, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Not much to merge, I'd just blank it and redirect it to Grimm's law.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:10, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: There's discussion at "Redirect from Great consonant shift" directly above.  Maybe make it a disambiguation page... AnonMoos (talk) 18:26, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Per the previous discussion even User:Greensburger who started the former appears to consider it a "layman introduction" into the same topic. I think easing on the technicalities in this article would be a better way to reach the same goal. So yeah, not much to actually merge from there. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 19:06, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  A disambiguation page would be better because Grimm's law and the High German consonant shift have very little to do with each other, other than that they both affected German and involved a chain shift of consonants. It would be misleading to have a single page treat them both as though they were somehow related. CodeCat (talk) 21:05, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: WTF (That's a vocative, not an interjection), I did initiate a discussion and state the reasons. It's all at Talk:Great consonant shift. I've reopened the discussion there in the form of an RFC at Talk:Great consonant shift#Redirect to Grimm's Law, 2012 remix. Please discuss this there so we don't have different people discussing it in different places. Angr (talk) 10:15, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: merge [[Great consonant shift]] into [[Grimm's law]]?

message: The Indo-European word *átta and its Germanic descendants show that Grimm's law preserves geminate plosives (at least -tt-) and does not turn them into fricatives. I believe geminates were rather rare in PIE, but a few did exist so what effect did Grimm's law have on them? It seems likely to me, from a common sense point of view at least, that geminates were devoiced, but did not become fricatives; after all, why would a language that devoices voiced plosives keep them when geminated even though this would have been (at the time of the chance) a non-phonemic distinction? Are there any sources that consider this question and give examples? CodeCat (talk) 19:54, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: "Atta" was originally a kind of baby-talk word (meaning "daddy", not actually "father"), and such don't always follow normal sound changes, so I'm not sure that I'd deduce too much from it.  There were few geminated stops within roots or stems in Indo-European, but when t + t came together across a morpheme boundary, the first "t" affricated or assibilated, as seen in a number of forms in Greek (including dental consonant final middle-voice perfects), in Latin ēst "he eats", etc. AnonMoos (talk) 01:02, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  *atta is the only PIE word I can think of that has a geminate, but there may be more that I'm not aware of. I don't think it still was a baby talk word in Germanic, as it became the normal word for father in Gothic. Sound laws are normally considered exceptionless (Grimm's law certainly is!) so if this word was not affected, it must be part of the law. CodeCat (talk) 04:05, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: But in non-Gothic Germanic, pater-cognates prevailed.  Here's something which comes from a rather unreliable source (all I can find right now by Googling), but which I think is probably true nevertheless: [Geminates] "appear mostly in words of expressive origin, children vocabulary, onomatopoeia, etc., which makes it more likely that PIE inherited gemination mainly as an expressive resource, different from its central phonological system"... -- AnonMoos (talk) 05:12, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Re "I don't think it still was a baby talk word in Germanic, as it became the normal word for father in Gothic": just because it became the normal word for father, that doesn't mean it wasn't a baby talk word before. The common Brythonic words for father and mother (Welsh tad and mam and something similar in Cornish and Breton), both started out as baby talk words, *tata and *mamma, and I'm sure there are plenty of examples from other languages. Angr (talk) 10:45, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Effect on geminates? 

message: Hi,
I love linguistics, but I find this article hard to follow as it seems to be written for linguistics majors. Can someone add more explanations of stops, fricatives, sibilants, shibboleths, geminis, etc., for those who don't quite understand them? ;) DBlomgren (talk) 20:07, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: We have Wikipedia articles for all of those terms. CodeCat (talk) 20:34, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Can someone shift this to layman's terms? 

message: Speaking of this heading: it might be worth noting that the similar sound law *p- > f- in Hungarian was identified a bit earlier (Sajnovics 1770, Gyarmathi 1799) and some histories of linguistics claim this as an inspiration for GL. Any opposition to mentioning this? --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 09:07, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: The pioneering work of Sajnovics and Gyarmathi is mentioned in Comparative_method#Origin_and_development, but without concrete examples. If RS draw a line from their research to the formulation of Grimm's law, a brief mention here is ok, but the wider context could then also be expanded in Comparative_method#Origin_and_development. –Austronesier (talk) 10:34, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Research history