THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. q7 



sion of surd breath. The several stages in the history of our words 

 father and brother may be set down thus : — 



*_patai% '^fafar, "^fapar, ''' fadar, Goth, fa da r, A.-S. faeder, M. E. 



fader, JLng. father. 

 *Mratar, *bro/ar, , •, Goth bro;ar, A.-S. bropor, 



M. E. broper, Eng. brother. 

 The law of change commonly known as Verner's law may be stated 

 as follows : — Primitive Indogermanic k, (q), t, p, shifted without ex- 

 ception to the stird spirants h, th, f. But when the vowel next pre- 

 ceding did fiot originally bear the principal accent, primitive Germanic 

 h, th, f, became the sonant spirants gh, dh, v, and later the sonant 

 stops g, d, b. In other words, a surd standing between sonants 

 tends to become sonant, unless some such influence as the 

 expulsion of surd breath in accenting the syllable to which it be- 

 longs, counteracts that tendency and causes the retention of the 

 surd. 



This principle will explain how the Indogermanic participial 

 suflSx -to seen in Gr. poietos, L. capitis appears in English as -d {loved)., 

 the original accent following the t, while the noun suffix seen in L. 

 cantus appears as -th [birth), the original accent preceding the t ; 

 again, Skt. a?itara corresponds to Goth, anthar, E. other, G. ander 

 while Skt. antar corresponds to Goth, undar, E. under, G. imter. 

 It will explain also the differences in the singular and plural of such 

 Anglo-Saxon preterites as ivearth, ivurdon ; beah, bugon. The same 

 principle is seen in what is commonly known as rhotacism, the 

 change oi s (in the Germanic languages through z) to r in syllables 

 originally unaccented. It is thus that we can connect the compara- 

 tive suffixes of adjectives in Greek and Latin, originally showing s, 

 with those of Gothic containing z and those of English containing 

 r ; and it is thus also that we can reconcile the Anglo-Saxon equiva- 

 lents of such preterites as our chose {sing, ceas, plur. cut on). The re- 

 cognition of this important principle of sound change has served to 

 make clear some obscure points even in non-Germanic languages. 



6. Some seeming inconsistencies in Anglo-Saxon and English 

 forms are to be attributed to our tendency to make words like others 

 with which we are familiar. Such " levellings by analogy " are seen 

 in the change from K.-'^ . faeder, niodor to Yj. father, mother through 

 the influence oi brother (A.-S. brothor), and in that from K.S. ffta, 



