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Germanic spirant law
The Germanic spirant law, or Primärberührung, is a specific historical instance in linguistics of dissimilation that occurred as part of an exception of Grimm's law in Proto-Germanic, the ancestor of Germanic languages.
The law affects the various series of stops in Proto-Indo-European that underwent Grimm's law and Verner's law. If the stops were immediately followed by t or s, they changed to voiceless fricatives (spirants):
Under normal conditions, any voiced stop would likely have been devoiced before /t/ and /s/ during Proto-Indo-European times, and so all three Indo-European series of stop consonants (aspirated, voiced and voiceless) had already merged before those two consonants. Therefore, for example, /bʰt/, /bt/ and /ɡʰt/, /ɡt/ had already become /pt/ and /kt/ in some of the late Proto-Indo-European dialects. Likewise, /bʰs/, /bs/ and /ɡʰs/, /ɡs/ had become /ps/ and /ks/. Compare, for example, Latin scrībere 'to write' and legere 'to gather, read' with their past participles scrīptus and lēctus (likely also with a type of compensatory lengthening). Cases before /s/ are also numerous, as can be noticed by comparing Latin scrībere and its perfect scrīpsī, or pingere 'to paint' and pīnxī and also the genitive noun form rēgis and its nominative rēx 'king'.
The specifically-Germanic part of the change in which the first plosive became a fricative but not the /t/ following it seems to have been just an exception to Grimm's law. Under the normal operation of the law, voiceless plosives become fricatives in Germanic. However, if two plosives stood next to each other, the first became a fricative by Grimm's law, if it was not so already, but the second remained a plosive. That exception applied not only to series of two plosives but also to series of /s/ and a plosive, and the plosive was then preserved. In some cases, that gave alternations between two related forms, one with s-mobile and the other without, such as English steer, Icelandic stjór, Dutch stier (← *steuraz ← PIE *steuros with preserved /t/) vs. Limburgish deur, duur, Old Norse þjórr (← *þeuraz ← PIE *tauros with regularly shifted /t/).
Unlike Grimm's law in general, however, the Germanic spirant law continued to operate for some time and to have acted as a surface filter, which eliminated any sequences of a stop followed by t as they arose by borrowing or native word formation. A notable example is the partial loanword *skriftiz (compare Dutch schrift) borrowed from Latin scrīptum 'script'.
The change affecting dental consonants is generally assumed to have been a separate phenomenon, and it already occurred in Proto-Indo-European since other Indo-European languages show similar results. It seems to have occurred only when a dental plosive was followed by a suffix beginning with /t/; geminated /tt/ remained if it occurred within a single morpheme. Evidence from Germanic and other Indo-European languages such as Latin confirms that Latin edere 'to eat' shows the past participle ēsus 'eaten' from earlier *ed-tus. However, a geminate /tt/ is preserved in both Gothic and Latin atta 'father'.
In some instances, /ss/ was partially restored to /st/ by analogy with other words, particularly in verbs. For example, the second-person singular past form of *sitjanan 'to sit' would have become *sód-ta → *sótsta → *sass (compare the related Old English word sess 'seat'). However, it was restored to *sast, based on parallel forms in other verbs such as *stalt (from *stelanan 'to steal') and *halft (from *helpanan 'to help').
A later change that was fed by the spirant law was the disappearance of /n/ before /x/. The preceding vowel received compensatory lengthening and was nasalised:
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Germanic spirant law
The Germanic spirant law, or Primärberührung, is a specific historical instance in linguistics of dissimilation that occurred as part of an exception of Grimm's law in Proto-Germanic, the ancestor of Germanic languages.
The law affects the various series of stops in Proto-Indo-European that underwent Grimm's law and Verner's law. If the stops were immediately followed by t or s, they changed to voiceless fricatives (spirants):
Under normal conditions, any voiced stop would likely have been devoiced before /t/ and /s/ during Proto-Indo-European times, and so all three Indo-European series of stop consonants (aspirated, voiced and voiceless) had already merged before those two consonants. Therefore, for example, /bʰt/, /bt/ and /ɡʰt/, /ɡt/ had already become /pt/ and /kt/ in some of the late Proto-Indo-European dialects. Likewise, /bʰs/, /bs/ and /ɡʰs/, /ɡs/ had become /ps/ and /ks/. Compare, for example, Latin scrībere 'to write' and legere 'to gather, read' with their past participles scrīptus and lēctus (likely also with a type of compensatory lengthening). Cases before /s/ are also numerous, as can be noticed by comparing Latin scrībere and its perfect scrīpsī, or pingere 'to paint' and pīnxī and also the genitive noun form rēgis and its nominative rēx 'king'.
The specifically-Germanic part of the change in which the first plosive became a fricative but not the /t/ following it seems to have been just an exception to Grimm's law. Under the normal operation of the law, voiceless plosives become fricatives in Germanic. However, if two plosives stood next to each other, the first became a fricative by Grimm's law, if it was not so already, but the second remained a plosive. That exception applied not only to series of two plosives but also to series of /s/ and a plosive, and the plosive was then preserved. In some cases, that gave alternations between two related forms, one with s-mobile and the other without, such as English steer, Icelandic stjór, Dutch stier (← *steuraz ← PIE *steuros with preserved /t/) vs. Limburgish deur, duur, Old Norse þjórr (← *þeuraz ← PIE *tauros with regularly shifted /t/).
Unlike Grimm's law in general, however, the Germanic spirant law continued to operate for some time and to have acted as a surface filter, which eliminated any sequences of a stop followed by t as they arose by borrowing or native word formation. A notable example is the partial loanword *skriftiz (compare Dutch schrift) borrowed from Latin scrīptum 'script'.
The change affecting dental consonants is generally assumed to have been a separate phenomenon, and it already occurred in Proto-Indo-European since other Indo-European languages show similar results. It seems to have occurred only when a dental plosive was followed by a suffix beginning with /t/; geminated /tt/ remained if it occurred within a single morpheme. Evidence from Germanic and other Indo-European languages such as Latin confirms that Latin edere 'to eat' shows the past participle ēsus 'eaten' from earlier *ed-tus. However, a geminate /tt/ is preserved in both Gothic and Latin atta 'father'.
In some instances, /ss/ was partially restored to /st/ by analogy with other words, particularly in verbs. For example, the second-person singular past form of *sitjanan 'to sit' would have become *sód-ta → *sótsta → *sass (compare the related Old English word sess 'seat'). However, it was restored to *sast, based on parallel forms in other verbs such as *stalt (from *stelanan 'to steal') and *halft (from *helpanan 'to help').
A later change that was fed by the spirant law was the disappearance of /n/ before /x/. The preceding vowel received compensatory lengthening and was nasalised: