Lesson 3: the comparative method

es-, s-
(Lat. 
es-t
"he is", 
s-unt
"they are"). Nowadays we cannot agree 
completely with this idea, but his essay is regarded as the beginning of comparative 
grammar. 
It was the German philologer Jacob Grimm (1785-1863) who established the 
principle of the sound shift in the phonetic history of the Germanic group of 
languages or, as he called it, the Lautverschiebung in his book 
Deutsche Grammatik
-
("
German Grammar
") (1819). In his opinion, there were two sound-shifting. The first 
occurred before the 4th century; the second had been completed by the 8 th .
The first relates to the Low German group; the second, the High German. 
These shifts may be shown by the following chart: Indo-European becomes
It will be observed, first, that the law describes the alteration only of consonants; 
second, that it deals with the transformation or evolution of these consonants from the 
parent Indo-European language into the Germanic languages. It has no reference to 
languages developed out of Latin or to any language outside the Indo-European 
classification.
In 1877 Karl Verner added to Grimm’s Law a supplementary law that has 
become known by his name. He explained certain irregularities in the Grimm series 
with reference to the position of accent in the Indo-European word. For example, 

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according to Grimm’s Law, the Anglo-Saxon forms for “father”, “mother” and 
“brother” should have been 
father, mothor, brothor,
since the Latin 
pater, mater, 
frater
have, as middle consonant 
t
, which should give 
th
. Why, then, has Anglo-Saxon 
only 
brothor
where the