consonant shift

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con′sonant shift`


n.
a set of changes taking place in the articulation of one or more consonant phonemes between an earlier and a later stage of a language, as the shift by which Germanic languages became differentiated from other Indo-European languages.
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References in periodicals archive
One of the curious and most important features of the book is the interpolation between his notes on pages 155 and 157 of Merula's edition of four lengthy lists of Dutch, Anglo-Saxon, Gotho-Nordic, and Celtic monosyllabic words with discussion of their etymology, especially their links with Greek; what is particularly interesting is that Junius -- a century and a half before Rasmus Rask and Jacob Grimm -- already clearly discerns some of the features of the First (or Germanic) Consonant Shift.
Observationes in Willerami Abbatis Francicam Paraphrasin Cantici Canticorum
Grimm's Law (also known as "The First Consonant Shift") identified three successive changes in the pronunciation of certain Indo-European (IE) consonants by speakers of the Germanic (Gmc) branches of the language.
The Word: The Dictionary That Reveals the Source of English
Thus Hogg refers to Luick when discussing palatalisation (260-261,263,275), assibilation (272), assibilation of [sc] (271), fricative voicing (283-284), development of velars (289), gemination (294), consonant loss (297), epenthesis (298), assimilation (300-301), and consonant shifts (306).
Karl Luick's Historische Grammatik and medieval English consonant changes
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