Verner's Law - The Solution

The Solution

Karl Verner was the first scholar to note the factor governing the distribution of the two outcomes. He observed that the apparently unexpected voicing of voiceless stops occurred if they were non-word-initial and if the vowel preceding them carried no stress in PIE. The original location of stress was often retained in Greek and early Sanskrit, though in Germanic stress eventually became fixed on the initial (root) syllable of all words. The crucial difference between *pātḗr and *bʰrā́tēr was therefore one of second-syllable versus first-syllable stress (cf. Sanskrit pitā́ versus bhrā́tā).

The *werþ- : *wurd- contrast is likewise explained as due to stress on the root versus stress on the inflectional suffix (leaving the first syllable unstressed). There are also other Vernerian alternations, as illustrated by German ziehen 'to draw, pull' : zogen 'to tug, drag' ← PGmc. *teuhanan : *tugōjanan ← PIE *déuke/o : *duk´-éHₐ- 'lead'.

There is a spinoff from Verner's Law: the rule accounts also for PGmc *z as the development of PIE *s in some words. Since this *z changed to *r in the Scandinavian languages and in West Germanic (German, Dutch, English, Frisian), Verner's Law resulted in alternation of *s and *r in some inflectional paradigms, known as grammatischer Wechsel. For example, the Old English verb ceosan 'choose' had the past plural form curon and the past participle (ge)coren ← *keusanan : *kuzún ~ *kuzánaz ← *ǵéusonom : *ǵus-ń̥t ~ *ǵusénos 'taste, try'. We would have chorn for chosen in Modern English if the consonantal shell of choose and chose had not been morphologically levelled (cf. obs. German †kiesen 'to choose' : gekoren 'chosen'). On the other hand, Vernerian *r has not been levelled out in En were ← PGmc *wēzún, related to En was. Similarly, En lose, though it has the weak form lost, also has the archaic form lorn (now seen in the compound forlorn) (cf. Dutch verliezen : verloren); in German, on the other hand, the *s has been levelled out both in war 'was' (pl. waren 'were') and verlieren 'lose' (part. verloren 'lost').

The following table illustrates the sound changes according to Verner. In the bottom row, for each pair, the sound on the right represents the sound changed according to Verner's Law.