Verner’s Law

Verner’s Law, phonetic principle formulated by the Danish philologist Karl Adolf Verner (1846-96) in 1875, which modifies certain points in the earlier work of the German philologist Jacob Grimm (see Grimm's Law). Verner's law describes a regular shift in stress that took place in words in the Germanic languages after the consonant shift postulated by Grimm. According to Grimm, the ancient Indo-European parent language sounds of p, t, and k changed into f, th, and h in the Germanic languages, while b, d, and g in the ancient tongue changed to the Germanic p, t, and k. Verner observed that this was true when the accent fell on the root syllable, but when the accent fell on another syllable, ancient Indo-European p, t, and k became Germanic b, d, and g. Verner then applied these rules to the consonants s and r. Verner's law states that with respect to the Germanic languages, the medial and final fricatives were voiced if they came after an unaccented syllable in the Indo-European parent language. His work is important in the study of linguistics because it proves both that language changes are evolutionary and that no exceptions or gaps exist in linguistic development.