All the Germanic languages of the past and present have common linguistic features; some of these features are shared by other groups in the IE family, others are specifically Germanic.
Word Stress - It is known that in ancient IE, prior to the separation of Germanic, there existed two ways of word accentuation: musical pitch and force stress. The position of the stress was free and movable, which means that it could fall on any syllable of the word and could be shifted. It was changed in PG. Force and expiratory stress became the only type of stress used. In Early PG word stress was still as movable as in ancient IE but in Late PG its position in the word was stabilized. The stress was now fixed on the first syllable, which was usually the root of the word and sometimes the prefix; the other syllables – suffixes and endings – were unstressed.
Consonants. PG consonant shift - The consonants in Germanic look ‘shifted’ as compared with the consonants of non-GLs. The changes of consonants in PG were first formulated in terms of a phonetic law by Jacob Grimm in the early 19c. and are often called Grimm’s Law. It is also known as the First or PG consonant shift. Grimm’s Law had three acts: 1. IE voiceless stops [p], [t], [k] became Germanic voiceless fricatives [f], [th], [x]; 2. IE voiced stops [b], [d], [g] became Germanic voiceless stops [p], [t], [k]; 3. PIE aspirated voice stops [bh], [dh], [gh] became PG voiced stops [b], [d], [g] without aspiration.
Verner’s Law explains some correspondences of consonants which seemed to contradict Grimm’s Law and were for a long time regarded as exceptions. According to Verner’s Law all the early PG voiceless fricatives [f,θ,h] which arose under Grimm’s Law, and also [s] inherited from PIE, became voiced between vowels if the preceding vowel was unstressed: f → b, θ → d, s → z and h → g.
i-mutation and its traces in MnE. - Palatal mutation (or i-Umlaut) happened in the 6th -7th c. and was shared by all Old GLs, except Gothic. Palatal mutation – fronting and raising of vowels under the influence of [i] and [j] in the following syllable (to approach the articulation of these two sounds). As a result of palatal mutation: [i] and [j] disappeared in the following syllable sometimes leading to the doubling of a consonant in this syllable.
