Note 6 — Chapter II · BEGINNING OF NINETEENTH CENTURY

I am therefore surprised to find that in a recent article (Am. Journ. of Philol. 39. 415, 1918) Collitz praises Grimm’s view in preference to Rask’s because he saw “an inherent connexion between the various processes of the shifting,” which were “subdivisions of one great law in which the formula T:A:M may be used to illustrate the shifting (in a single language) of three different groups of consonants and the result of a double or threefold shifting (in three different languages) of a single group of consonants. This great law was unknown to Rask.” Collitz recognizes that “Grimm’s law will hold good only if we accept the term ‘aspirate’ in the broad sense in which it is employed by J. Grimm”—but ‘broad’ here means ‘wrong’ or ‘unscientific.’ There is no kreislauf in the case of initial k = h; only in a few of the nine series do we find three distinct stages (as in tres, three, drei); here we have in Danish three stages, of which the third is a reversal to the first (tre); in E. mother we have five stages: t, þ, ð, d, (OE. modor) and again ð. Is there an “inherent connexion between the various processes of this shifting” too?