The Stops and Spirants of Early Germanic

Abstract

The student who turns to our many excellent handbooks for information on the stops and spirants of Proto-Germanic finds that they agree completely in some respects, but disagree just as completely in others. All of them assume for Proto-Germanic a set of voiceless spirants and a set of voiceless stops: the spirants /f þ h/ as in English fish, thin, horn , derived from PIE /p t k/ as in Latin piscis, tenuis, cornu; and the stops /p t k/ as in English lip, two, kin , derived from PIE /b d g/ as in Latin labium, duo, genus. All of them also assume that there were some further sounds derived from PIE /bh dh gh/ and, by Verner's Law, from /p t k/, and that these sounds were voiced; but there is no agreement whatever as to whether these sounds were stops, or spirants, or both.

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