Grassmann's law [SEP] named after
Grassmann's law
Grassmann's law, named after its discoverer Hermann Grassmann, is a dissimilatory phonological process in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit which states that if an aspirated consonant is followed by another aspirated consonant in the next syllable, the first one loses the aspiration. The descriptive version was given for Sanskrit by Pāṇini.
Here are some examples in Greek of the effects of Grassmann's law:
- 'I sacrifice (an animal)'
- 'it was sacrificed'
- 'hair'
- '
few words, without any apparent regularity.
The Neogrammarian linguists of the 19th century introduced the term "sound law" to refer to rules of regular change, perhaps in imitation of the laws of physics. and the term "law" is still used in referring to specific sound rules named after their authors, such as Grimm's Law, Grassmann's Law, . Real-world sound changes often admit exceptions; nevertheless, the expectation of their regularity or absence of exceptions is of great heuristic value, since it allows