Жоғарғы неміс тілінің дыбыстық өзгерістері

Series of sound changes affecting some West Germanic languages

In historical linguistics, the High German consonant shift or second Germanic consonant shift is a phonological development (sound change) that took place in the southern parts of the West Germanic dialect continuum in several phases. It probably began between the 3rd and 5th centuries and was almost complete before the earliest written records in High German were produced in the 8th century. From Proto Germanic, the resulting language, Old High German (henceforth, OHG), can be neatly contrasted with the other continental West Germanic languages, which for the most part did not experience the shift, and with Old English, which remained unaffected.

Other consonant changes on the way from West Germanic to Old High German are included under the heading "High German consonant shift" by some scholars who see the term as a description of the whole context, but are excluded by others who use it to describe the neatness of the threefold chain shift. Although it is possible to see > , > and > as a similar group of three, both the chronology and the differing phonetic conditions under which these changes occur speak against such a grouping.

The Proto Germanic voiced dental fricative , which was an allophone of in certain positions, became a plosive in all positions throughout the West Germanic languages. Thus, it affected High German, Low German, Dutch, Frisian and Old English alike. It did not spread to Old Norse, which retained the original fricative. Because of its much wider spread, it must have occurred very early, during Northwest Germanic times, perhaps around the 2nd century. English has partially reversed this shift through the change > , for example in father, mother, gather and together. In dialects with th stopping, either disappears and merges with or becomes a dental plosive that contrasts with the alveolar
In phase 3 of the High German consonant shift, this was shifted to , as described above.

Other changes include a general tendency towards terminal devoicing in German and Dutch, and to a far more limited extent in English. Thus, in German and Dutch, , and (German), (Dutch) at the end of a word are pronounced identically to , and (German), (Dutch). The in German Tag (day) is pronounced as in English tack, not as in English tag. But this change is not High German in origin, but generally thought to have originated in Frankish, as the earliest evidence for the change appears in Old Dutch texts at a time when there was still no sign of devoicing at all in Old High German or Old Saxon. Nevertheless, the original voiced consonants are usually represented in modern German and Dutch spelling. This is because related inflected forms, such as the plural Tage , have the voiced form, since here the plosive is not terminal. As a result of these inflected forms, native speakers remain aware of the underlying voiced phoneme, and spell accordingly. In Middle High German, these sounds were spelled differently: singular tac, plural tage.

Since the High German consonant shift took place before the beginning of writing of Old High German in the 8th century, the dating of the various phases is uncertain. The estimates quoted here are mostly taken from the dtv Atlas zur deutschen Sprache (p. 63). Different estimates appear elsewhere, as in Waterman, who asserts that the first three phases occurred fairly close together and were complete in Alemannic territory by 600, taking another two or three centuries to spread north. Sometimes historical constellations help us; for example, the fact that Attila is called Etzel in German proves that the second phase must have been productive after the Hunnish invasion of the 5th century. The fact that many Latin loan words are shifted in German (e. g., Latin strata > German Straße), while others are not (e. g., Latin poena > German Pein) allows us to date the sound changes before or after the likely period of borrowing. But the most useful source of chronological data is German words cited in Latin texts of the late classical and early medieval period. Precise dating would in any case be difficult, since each shift may have begun with one word or a group of words in the speech of one locality, and gradually extended by lexical diffusion to all words with the same phonological pattern, and then over a longer period of time spread to wider geographical areas. But relative chronology can easily be established by the observation that, for example, t > tz must precede d > t, which in turn must precede þ > d; otherwise words with an original þ could have undergone all three shifts and ended up as tz. By contrast, as the form kepan for "give" is attested in Old Bavarian, showing both > > and > > , it follows that > and > must predate phase 3. Alternative chronologies have been proposed. According to a theory by the controversial German linguist Theo Vennemann, the consonant shift occurred much earlier and was already completed in the early 1st century BC. On this basis, he subdivides the Germanic languages into High Germanic and Low Germanic. Few other linguists share this view.

The subdivision of West Central German into a series of dialects, according to the differing extent of the phase 1 shifts, is particularly pronounced. It is known as the Rhenish fan (Rheinischer Fächer, Rijnlandse waaier) because on the map of dialect boundaries, the lines form a fan shape. Here, no fewer than eight isoglosses run roughly West to East and partially merge into a simpler system of boundaries in East Central German. The table on the right lists the isoglosses (bold) and the main resulting dialects (italics), arranged from north to south.

Some of the consonant shifts resulting from the second and third phases appear also to be observable in Lombardic, the early mediaeval Germanic language of Italy, which is preserved in runic fragments of the late 6th and early 7th centuries. But the Lombardic records are not sufficient to allow a complete taxonomy of the language. It is therefore uncertain whether the language experienced the full shift or merely sporadic reflexes, but b > p is clearly attested. This may mean that the shift began in Italy, or that it spread southward as well as northward. Ernst Schwarz and others have suggested that the shift occurred in German as a result of contacts with Lombardic. If, in fact, there is a relationship here, the evidence of Lombardic would force us to conclude that the third phase must have begun by the late 6th century, rather earlier than most estimates, but this would not necessarily require that it had spread to German so early. If, as some scholars believe, Lombardic was an East Germanic language and not part of the German language dialect continuum, it is possible that parallel shifts took place independently in German and Lombardic. But extant words in Lombardic show clear relations to the Bavarian language. Therefore, Betz and others prefer to treat Lombardic as an Old High German variety. There were close connections between Lombards and Proto Bavarians. For example, the Lombards settled in Tullnerfeld, about west of Vienna, until 568, but it is evident that not all Lombards went to Italy after that time; the rest seem to have become part of the then newly formed Bavarian groups. According to Jonas of Bobbio (before 650) in Lombardy, when Columbanus came to the Alemanni at Lake Constance shortly after 600, he made cupa ("barrels", English cup, German Kufe) burst. This shows that in the time of Columban the shift from p to f had occurred neither in Alemannic nor in Lombardic. But the Edictus Rothari (643; surviving manuscript after 650) attests the forms grapworf ('throwing a corpse out of the grave', German Wurf and Grab), marhworf ('a horse', OHG marh, 'throws the rider off'), and many similar shifted examples. So it is best to see the consonant shift as a common Lombardic–Bavarian–Alemannic shift between 620 and 640, when these tribes had plenty of contact.

As an example of the effects of the shift one may compare the following texts from the later Middle Ages, on the left a Middle Low German citation from the Sachsenspiegel (1220), which does not show the shift, and on the right the equivalent text from the Middle High German Deutschenspiegel [de] (1274), which shows the shifted consonants; both are standard legal texts of the period. Sachsenspiegel (II,45,3) Deutschenspiegel (Landrecht 283) De man is ok vormunde sines wives,to hant alse se eme getruwet is. Dat wif is ok des mannes notinneto hant alse se in sin bedde trit,na des mannes dode is se ledich van des mannes rechte. Der man ist auch vormunt sînes wîbeszehant als si im getriuwet ist. Daz wîp ist auch des mannes genôzinnezehant als si an sîn bette tritnâch des mannes rechte. First lines identical: "The man is also guardian of his wife / as soon as she is married to him. / The wife is also the man's companion / as soon as she goes to his bed". Last line of the Sachsenspiegel is "After the man's death, she is free of the man's rights"; that of the Deutschenspiegel "according to a man's rights".