Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics.pdf

A-Z 469Germanic law of spirantsThe Indo-European consonant clusters bt, gt, gs, dt occur in Proto-Germanic not—as tobe expected from the Germanic sound shift ( Grimm’s law)—as pt, kt, ks, tt, butrather as [ft, χt, χs, s(s)]. Therefore, it may be assumed that in Indo-European the stemfinalvoiced stops assimilated ( assimilation) to the voiceless stops of the followingsyllable, cf. e.g. Lat. scrībere: scrīptum; regere: rēctus. In the Germanic sound shift thesevoiceless stops regularly turned into their corresponding voiceless fricatives, cf. IE*skabt-, *reĝ-tos: Proto-Gmc *skaft *reχt; in the case of dt and tt there was an additionalassimilatory fricativization of the stops, cf. IE *sedtos>Lat. (ob)sessus: Proto-Gmc*sed s tos>*sestos>*sessos.ReferencesProkosch, E. 1939. A comparative Germanic grammar. Baltimore, MD.Wisniewski, R. 1963. Die Bildung des schwachen Präteritums und die primären Berührungseffekte.PBB (T) 85. 1–17.sound changeGermanic sound shiftGrimm’s lawgerund [Lat. gerere ‘to perform, to do’]1 Impersonally used verbal noun in Latin which replaces the lacking case inflection ofthe infinitive. Formally the gerund corresponds to a future passive participle;semantically it indicates the action in and of itself: ars libros recte legendi ‘the art ofreading books correctly.’ Grammatically the gerund functions as an at tribute to thedominating element (ars) and at the same time its valence determines the form of thedependent elements (libros).2 In English, a verb in the form of a present participle which is used as a noun:Reading spynovels was his favorite pastime.