Winter's law, named after Werner Winter, who postulated it in 1978, is a proposed sound law operating on Balto-Slavic short vowels */e/, */o/, */a/ (< Proto-Indo-European (PIE) *h₂e), */i/ and */u/ according to which they lengthen before unaspirated voiced stops, and that syllable gains a rising, acute accent.
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Winter's law in the context of Indo-European sound laws
As the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) broke up, its sound system diverged as well, as evidenced in various sound laws associated with the daughter Indo-European languages.Especially notable is the palatalization that produced the satem languages, along with the associated ruki sound law. Other notable changes include:
- Grimm's law and Verner's law in Proto-Germanic
- an independent change similar to Grimm's law in Armenian, dubbed the Armenian Consonant Shift
- Adjarian's law in Proto-Armenian
- loss of prevocalic *p- in Proto-Celtic
- Brugmann's law in Proto-Indo-Iranian
- Winter's law and Hirt's law in Balto-Slavic
- merging of voiced and breathy-voiced stops, and /a/ and /o/, in various "northern" languages
- Sturtevant's law
- Cowgill's laws of Germanic and Greek
- Osthoff's law
- Slavic first, second and third ("progressive") palatalization
Bartholomae's law in Indo-Iranian, and Sievers's law in Proto-Germanic and (to some extent) various other branches, may or may not have been common Indo-European features. A number of innovations, both phonological and morphological, represent areal features common to the Italic and Celtic languages; among them the development of labiovelars to labial consonants in some Italic and Celtic branches, producing "p-Celtic" and "q-Celtic" languages (likewise "p-Italic" and "q-Italic", although these terms are less used). Another grouping with many shared areal innovations comprises Greek, Indo-Iranian, and Armenian; among its common phonological innovations are Grassmann's law in Greek and Indo-Iranian, and weakening of pre-vocalic /s/ to /h/ in Greek, Iranian and Armenian.