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The voicing occurred in PG at the time when the stress was not
yet fixed on the root-morpheme.

The sound /z/ was further affected in western and northern
Germanic: /s/→/z/→/r/. This process is known as rhotacism. As

a result of voicing by Verner’s Law an interchange of
consonants in the grammatical forms of the word appeared. Part

of the forms retained a voiceless fricative, while other forms –

with a different position of stress in Early PG – acquired a
voiced fricative.

Examples: wesan (бути) – w?s (був) – w?ron (були); weor?an

(ставати) – wear? (став) – wurdon (стали) – worden
(перетворений).

Both consonants could undergo later changes in the OG
languages, but the original difference between them goes back

to the time of movable word stress and PG voicing.

2.3 Vowels of GLs

GLs also had some specific features in the system of vowels.
IE short /ŏ/ and /ǎ/ correspond to GLs short /ǎ/: Gr octō – Goth

ahtau, Rus ночь, Ukr нічь – Germ nacht
IE long /ō/ and long /ā/ correspond to GLs long /ō/: Lat frāter –

Goth brō?ar (брат), Lat flōs – OE blōma (цветок).
Short /ŏ/ & long /ā/ appeared in GLs from inner sources.

2.4 Germanic fracture
In GLs the quality of a stressed vowel in some cases

depended on the type of the sound that followed it. This

dependence is reflected in the notion of fracture. The fracture
concerns two pairs of vowels: /e/ & /i/, /u/ & /o/.

In the root syllable IE /e/ = GL /i/, if it was followed by
1) /i/, 2) /j/, 3) nasal+consonant, else IE /e/ = G /i/.

Examples: Lat medius – OE middle (середина), Lat ventus – OE
wind (вiтер) but Lat edere – OE etan (їсти).

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