# PIE Word Stress



## Alxmrphi

Hi all,

Hopefully you can clear up something I'm reading, it's from Historical Linguistics. In a chapter detailing the approach of the structuralists in comparison to the previous neogrammarians, mentions the First Consonant Shift (i.e. Grimm's law) and as an example it gives an account of PIE /t/ and what happened to it in various phonological environments going into Germanic.

The book says:



> Thus, for example, in the case of the dentals the only segment showing context-sensitive developments is /t/, which (1) remains a voiceless plosive when it is the second element in an obstruent cluster (*/'oktou/ 'eight' -> Gothic ahtau /'axtau/); (2) becomes a voiced fricative intervocalically unless immediately preceded by  the PIE word stress ('Verner's Law'; */pə'ter-/ 'father' > Gothic _fadar_ /'faðar/; after the completion of the shift the stress shifted to the first syllable of a word in Germanic).


The first part makes sense, /t/ becomes /x/ as it's the second element in the obstruent cluster (kt), but when it says it voices intervocallically *unless immediately preceded by* the PIE word stress...

What I can see is */pə'ter/ used as the example, which is, I assume labelled to be the PIE form, with the word stress (') immediately before the /t/, which the quote says is an impeding factor on intervocalic voicing, but then quotes the Gothic _fadar_, giving its pronunciation, or rather the pronunciation of the 'd' as [ð], which is a voiced fricative.

So what I thought of was, maybe the d in :


> ('Verner's Law'; */pə'ter-/  'father' > Gothic _fa*d*ar_ /'faðar/;


Is a representative of the sound, and the part following it is not something labelling the pronunciation of the Gothic word.

Is the Gothic "fader" an example of where the PIE word stress blocked /t/ from becoming [ð] ? Is then the [ð] in the modern Germanic languages a later development?

Or is this just the spelling with the pronunciation after it? This is what it looked like first, but if that's the case I don't understand the quote. If it says word stress immediately before /t/ blocks its development to a voiced fricative, then why does it give an example where that's clearly not so?

Unless the (') before /t/ in*/pə'ter- is not actually what the book says is PIE word stress ?

Hopefully to someone more used to these rules can see how the book is expressing its point, but it seems a little contradictory to me, and I know I am wrong and just don't understand what it is getting at, so I came to you guys


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## phosphore

Alxmrphi said:


> Unless the (') before /t/ in*/pə'ter- is not actually what the book says is PIE word stress ?


 
Immediately preceded by the PIE accent means _immediately preceded by an accented vowel._ In another tradition the stress mark is put before the vowel and not on the beginning of the syllable so you would have /pat'er-/ and then it would be clear what they mean.

If I remember correctly the two forms usually taken to illustrate Verner's Law are Gothic broþer /broθar/ < /bʰr'eh2tēr/ and fadar /faðar/ < /ph2t'ēr/. The accent position is reconstructed on the basis of Sanskrit. First the stops were spirantised in the intervocalic position and then the fricatives were voiced _except when immediately preceded by an accented vowel_.


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## CapnPrep

Alxmrphi said:


> Is the Gothic "fadar" an example of where the PIE word stress blocked /t/ from becoming [ð] ?


No (as phosphore just explained), it's the textbook example of a case where word stress led to *t becoming /ð/ (written with the letter ‹d› in Gothic). Unfortunately, the stress then shifted to the wrong place, so I have always wondered _why_ this was the textbook example…


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## phosphore

CapnPrep said:


> No (as phosphore just explained), it's the textbook example of a case where word stress led to *t becoming /ð/ (written with the letter ‹d› in Gothic). Unfortunately, the stress then shifted to the wrong place, so I have always wondered _why_ this was the textbook example…


 
Maybe there are no actual examples in Gothic where the stress was on the second syllable because it already shifted to the first syllable at some earlier stage?


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## Alxmrphi

Thanks guys, so... I upload this.

I was first analysing the word as *A*, CapnPrep, are you saying it was *B* then switched to *A*? So the environment in which the change took place was in* B*, allowing the voicing and fricitivization, and then moved to *A*, which, if the environment was such when the change took place it wouldn't have become [ð] ?


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## phosphore

May we add C=ph2.t'ēr instead of B=ph2t.'ēr?


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## Alxmrphi

phosphore said:


> May we add C=ph2.t'ēr instead of B=ph2t.'ēr?



Sorry I don't understand?
In my B, the /t/ belongs in the first syllable.

Ahh, now I see.... _*A*_ with the stress in the second syllable.


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## phosphore

Alxmrphi said:


> Sorry I don't understand?


 
You put the syllable break after /t/ while I would put it before it.


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## Alxmrphi

phosphore said:


> You put the syllable break after /t/ while I would put it before it.



Just for you phosphore... C


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## CapnPrep

Alxmrphi said:


> I was first analysing the word as *A*, CapnPrep, are you saying it was *B C* then switched to *A*? So the environment in which the change took place was in *B C*, allowing the voicing and fricitivization, and then moved to *A*, which, if the environment was such when the change took place it wouldn't have become [ð] ?


*A* 'pə.tēr
*C *pə.'tēr
*D* fa.'ðēr
*E *'fa.ðar​The IE word was *C*, which then became *D* in PGmc (by Grimm's Law and Verner's Law…). Then the stress shifted to the initial syllable, producing the Gothic word *E*.

*A* did not exist. Forget *A*. But if the word had been *A* in IE, it would not have resulted in* D* or* E* in Germanic.


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## Alxmrphi

CapnPrep said:


> *A* did not exist. Forget *A*. But if the word had been *A* in IE, it would not have resulted in* C* or* D* in Germanic.



Thanks CapnPrep, all makes sense now, it's hard to let go of what you know so well, even when the stress marks are there, when it's all new it's hard to let things go and my mind can still "hear" the modern stresses.

You guys have been really helpful (and quick for an EHL post )


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## berndf

CapnPrep said:


> Then the stress shifted to the initial syllable, producing the Gothic word *E*.


To avoid possible misunderstandings: The change of stress still happend within Common Germanic but (probably) in a second step.


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## Alxmrphi

*Note: I’ve had to replace THETA with THORN (þ), please treat it as IPA, it’s not coming up when I copy from Microsoft Word into the WR post window.

Right, I’ve done some reading about Verner’s Law, (which I only knew existed, and knew no details about it).

Regarding this quote:

*PIE pater' becomes fa.þer ' in Early Gmc; faðer after Verner's Law and stress shift; fæder in WGmc incl. OE). (Note ModE "father" has shifted back!)*

I think I just need to write it out in my own way so it sinks in a bit better. Grimm’s law was applied to the PIE form, effecting the* /p/* -> */f/* and */t/* -> */þ**/*. (Please note I am typing accented characters to indicate the vowel that carries the stress)

Thus changing /pa.tér/ to /fa.þér/ (Grimm’s Law)

Then on comes Verner’s Law, which voices all of the (now) voiceless fricatives that were originally voiceless plosives in Proto-Indo-European, it voices them when they follow an unaccented syllable (one with an unaccented vowel) and when surrounded by voiced sounds.

So then it’s /fa.ðér/ (voiced dental fricative now)

So this environment (with regard to the stress) is what caused the exception to Grimm’s law (voicing of voiceless fricative), but then what following was a stress shift to first syllable, thus masking the conditions for which it became voiced, this happened still in the Germanic period.

I am aware there are a few controversies about order with Verner’s Law, some even suggesting it predated Grimm’s (or that’s what Wikipedia hinted at) but right now I would just like to know if I am understanding the basics, and I’d like to only stick to the basic story.

Right, so with the GSR (Germanic Stress Rule) in place the word we have now is:
/fá.ðer/

Then the West Germanic dialects underwent a change transformed [ð] to [d], which left us with 
/fæ.der/

Then, by a method not mentioned in the quote, today a process has occurred where the [d] has reverted back to a [ð].

Can anyone tell me if I’ve got the general sketchy idea of what happened? Please just for now can it be a basic yes / no then when it has sunk in more I can go into more detail (points I want to ask about are the change of “a” to “æ” and if that was conditioned by the consonant change to [d], and also the process by which the Germanic languages reverted back to *eth*.

But for now, without too many complications, can anyone confirm what I have written is the basic / undetailed outline of what is believed to have happened?

Thanks


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## CapnPrep

Alxmrphi said:


> Then the West Germanic dialects underwent a  change transformed [ð] to [d], which left us with
> /fæ.der/
> 
> Then, by a method not mentioned in the quote,  today a process has occurred where the [d] has reverted back to a [ð].


There's not much to say about that, actually… I mean it wasn't part of a major chain shift like the other changes you've been looking at. Here's the relevant quote from the OED (s.v. _father_, n.):


> The mod.Eng. _-ther_ (ðə(r))  for OE. _-der_, _-dor_ in _father_ and _mother_ is  often wrongly said to be due to the analogy of _brother_, or to  Scandinavian influence; it is really the result of a phonetic law common  to the great majority of Eng. dialects; other examples in standard Eng.  are _gather_, _hither_, _together_, _weather_.


So apparently this only happened to /d/ before the suffix _-er_ (this is "confirmed" by Wikipedia). Hardly what I would call a "phonetic law".


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## berndf

Alxmrphi said:


> Then the West Germanic dialects underwent a change transformed [ð] to [d], which left us with
> /fæ.der/
> 
> Then, by a method not mentioned in the quote, today a process has occurred where the [d] has reverted back to a [ð].
> 
> Can anyone tell me if I’ve got the general sketchy idea of what happened? Please just for now can it be a basic yes / no then when it has sunk in more I can go into more detail (points I want to ask about are the change of “a” to “æ” and if that was conditioned by the consonant change to [d], and also the process by which the Germanic languages reverted back to *eth*.


The variant _fæder_ is found in continental Anglo-Saxon but not in neighbouring Saxon and Friesian dialects. I am coming from Hamburg which is not too far away from the Anglo-Saxon homeland. And I remember having different local dialects within the greater city where some would pronounce e.g. the word _Mark_ as [mɛ:k] or [mæ:k] and some as [mɑ:k]. I think the "æ" is just a dialectal variant and wouldn't try to put too much thought into it.

Germanic languages did *not* "revert back to eth". This change happened in English only; in late ME to be precise. Chaucer, e.g., still wrote "fader".


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## Alxmrphi

berndf said:


> The variant _fæder_ is found in continental Anglo-Saxon but not in neighbouring Saxon and Friesian dialects. I am coming from Hamburg which is not too far away from the Anglo-Saxon homeland. And I remember having different local dialects within the greater city where some would pronounce e.g. the word _Mark_ as [mɛ:k] or [mæ:k] and some as [mɑ:k]. I think the "æ" is just a dialectal variant and wouldn't try to put too much thought into it.
> 
> Germanic languages did *not* "revert back to eth". This change happened in English only; in late ME to be precise. Chaucer, e.g., still wrote "fader".



Ah ok, I assumed, given Icelandic: faðir, that it might have been a shift back to [ð], given English and Icelandic are my only links into a bit of knowledge of the Germanic family, I guess it's an easy trap to fall into, generalising two exceptions to a whole family of languages.

I also wasn't aware it was just in -er suffixes, but CapnPrep helpfully cleared that up for me. I've just realised about *faðir* (Ice.) being part of North Germanic, wouldn't have been susceptible to a change applying to _*West* Germanic_ (duhh!) what a stupid mistake to make! 



> in late ME to be precise. Chaucer, e.g., still wrote "fader".


Thanks for dating it! It makes it clearer to visualise (mentally) 


> I am coming come from Hamburg which  is not too far away from the Anglo-Saxon  homeland. And I remember having different  local dialects within the greater city where some would pronounce e.g.  the word _Mark_ as [mɛ:k] or [mæ:k] and some as [mɑ:k].  I think the "æ" is just a dialectal variant and wouldn't try to put too  much thought into it.


Dialect variant! Gotcha!  I'm never sure what actually represents a change in orthography or a change in actual spelling. But I think it was a lot more logical for them at a period of not having such a weird spelling system like Modern English, so if a word sounds a bit different then spell it a bit different.

I think that's all my questions answered now.

Thanks.


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## berndf

Alxmrphi said:


> I've just realised about *faðir* (Ice.) being part of North Germanic, wouldn't have been susceptible to a change applying to _*West* Germanic_


Exactly!


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