Grammatischer Wechsel

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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. Further developments gave the following patterns in the earliest stages of English, German and Dutch. It is mainly in the dentals that these languages show significant differences in the patterns of grammatischer Wechsel.

PIE	Proto Germanic		Old English		Old High German		Middle Dutch
	Grimm	Verner	Grimm	Verner	Grimm	Verner	Grimm	Verner
*p	*f	*b	f/v	b	f/v	b	f/v	b
*t	*θ	*d	θ/ð	d	d	t	d	d
*k	*x	*g	h	g	h	g	h	g
*s	*s	*z	s/z	r	s	r	s	r

(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 ideocyncracies 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 West 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").

Some examples:

Original /*p/

Old English hebban - hōf hōfon hafen ("to lift" cf. heave)

Original /*t/

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/

Middle High German: zîhen zêch - zigen gezigen ("to pull")

Old English: þeon (þīehþ) þāh - þigon þigen ("to prosper" cf. German gedeihen)

Original /*s/

Old English cēosan (cīest) cēas - curon coren ("to choose")

Old English frēosan (frīest) frēas - fruron froren ("to freeze")

NB. The consonant change in certain weak verbs which typically goes along with the Rückumlaut phenomenon (think:thought, German denken:dachte) is not caused by grammatischer Wechsel, but by a later development in Germanic known as the Germanic spirant law.