Karl Verner

Born Mar. 7, 1846, in Århus; died Nov. 5, 1896, in Copenhagen. Danish linguist.

Verner is the author of the so-called Verner’s law, which explains the alternation of voiceless and voiced consonants in the Germanic languages as a reflex of free stress, an earlier feature of these languages, which preceded a strong expiratory accent on the root. In Germanic philology Verner’s law is formulated as follows: “The voiceless spirants h, p, f, and s, which came about as a result of the Germanic consonant shift, become voiced, if the immediately preceding vowel does not bear the original Indo-European primary stress. Voicing did not occur in the clusters ht, hs, ft, fs, sk, st, and sp. “ Compare Ancient Sanskrit pit ā, Gothic fadar, Old High German Fater, Old English fader —father.