ScholarWorks@숙명여자대학교

초록

Lee, Sechang. 2007. First Consonant Shift in the Germanic obstruent system. Korean Journal of Linguisics, 32-3, 537-553. Most accounts of the Proto-Indo-European obstruent system agree that the system underwent some important changes in early Germanic, the first of which is generally described under the heading of Grimm’s Law. The study of the sound change in question cannot be complete without considering the motivation of the shift. What is especially intriguing about this sound shift is that its surface manifestations seem heavily influenced by the re-ranking of a few universal constraints concerning the markedness of voiced or voiceless obstruents in the Germanic consonant system. It will be shown in this paper that the seemingly unrelated and complicated patterns of those sound shifts are basically due to the interactions of a small set of proposed universal constraints within the framework of the Optimality Theory in the sense of Prince & Smolensky (1993) and McCarthy & Prince (1995). I also make a critical review of a couple of previous Optimality-theoretic research on Grimm’s Law and try to show how my analysis overcomes some of the empirical and theoretical problems they potentially face. (Sookmyung Women’s University)

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