famous collection of fairy-tales. His statement was completed by the Danish scholar Verner in 1875, who explained a mass of exceptions by discovering the second of the four rules which follow.
§ 60. In early Germanic, probably at some time between 500 and 200 B.C., the following changes took place:
(1) All Breathed Plosives (unless preceded by s) became the corresponding Breathed Fricatives, p became f, t became þ (Eng. th in thin) and so on. Thus
- thf in Eng. thornfull corresponds to p in Lat. plēnus,
- th in Eng. thorn corresponds„ to„ t in Lat. terō,
and, since the Germanic Palatal Fricative became later merely h in English, h in Eng. hund-red corresponds to c in Lat. centum. But after s the Plosives were unchanged, as in Eng. sta-nd : Lat. stā-re.
(2) (a) These Breathed Fricatives remained when they came at the beginning of a word, as in the examples just given, or when they occurred immediately after a syllable bearing the Accent, as in the suffix -th which in English in such words as youth, width, corresponds to -t- in Latin in such words as iuven-ta, senec-ta. We know from Greek and Sanskrit that the syllable preceding this suffix was accented in the parent Indo-European language. So Eng. mother, brother[1] beside Gr. μήτηρ (older μᾱ́τηρ), φρᾱ́τηρ ‘member of a group of families.’
(b) But when the Breathed Fricative stood before a vowel which itself bore the accent, the Breathed
- ↑ The -th- in these words was once the Breathed fricative (§ 41) as in youth, not Voiced as it has become in modern English.
