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Grimm formulates the first sound shift as a system

The second edition of the first volume of Jacob Grimm's Deutsche Grammatik presented the Germanic consonant changes as an ordered shift affecting whole series of sounds together rather than as a list of individual correspondences. Framing the changes as a system is what converted them into a law: a systematic statement generates predictions in words not yet examined, and can therefore fail. Every subsequent development in the field — the search for conditioning factors, the doctrine of exceptionless change, the reconstruction of unattested segments — follows from treating sound change as rule-governed.

Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.

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Evidence

Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.

Recorded on Grimm's Law — the first Germanic sound shift

  1. Rask publishes the Germanic consonant correspondences
  2. Grimm formulates the first sound shift as a system
  3. Verner explains the exceptions to Grimm's Law
  4. The Neogrammarian doctrine: sound laws admit no exception

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