Holtzmann's Law

Holtzmann's law is a Proto-Germanic sound law originally noted by Adolf Holtzmann in 1838.

The law involves the gemination, or doubling, of PIE semivowels (glides) * -y- and * -w- in strong prosodic positions into Proto-Germanic * -jj- and * -ww-, which had two outcomes:

• hardening into occlusive onsets:
  • -ggj-/-ggw- in North Germanic;
  • -ddj-/-ggw- in East Germanic
• vocalization of the first semivowel, its addition to a diphthong, and division of the diphthong and remaining semivowel into two separate segments in West Germanic.

The process is brought about by the fact that vowels (or semivowels) in the syllable margin are invariably transformed into consonantal articulations.

The conditions of the sound change were long debated, since there was a seemingly random distribution of affected and unaffected words. At first, dependence on word accent was assumed, parallel to Verner's Law. One currently accepted solution, first proposed by Smith (1941), postulates dependency on the presence of a PIE laryngeal, which when lost, triggered lengthening as if the semivowels were vowels, and forced them into the syllable margin.

According to Lehmann (1955), the lengthening occurs in the contexts of PIE * -VwH-, * -iyH-, * -ayH-, * -aHy- (where V is any short vowel, and H is any laryngeal).

For example, PIE *drewh₂yo → early Proto-Germanic *trewwjaz "trustworthy, faithful" →:

• *triwwjaz: Old Norse tryggr, Gothic triggws
• *triuwjaz: Old English trēowe, Old High German gitriuwi.

One instance where a laryngeal was never present is PIE *h₂ōwyóm "egg", but after the loss of * -w-, the * -y- shifted into the syllable margin, giving:

• with hardening:
  • *ajjis: Crimean Gothic ada (pl.) (*addi (sg.) < *ajjis)
  • *ajjaN: Old Norse egg
• with diphthongization:
  • *aijaz: German Ei, Old English ǣġ