The shift of the Gemanic voiceless plosives t- > z-,p- > pf- and -k- > -hh- was 
clearly apparent in the Romance contact areas of Tyrol and Salzburg around 
600 and must have begun in the second half of the sixth century at the latest and 
have continued to be operative into the second quarter of the seventh century, it 
did not affect any of the place-names of Slavonic origin in the eastern part of the 
region. While the shift of the dental and labial sounds follows no clearly defined 
chronological order, the development of (-)k- to the fricative (-)ch- only took 
place in the first half of the eighth century and also affected Slavonic and 
anciently slavonicized place-names. The unvoicing of (-)d- > (-)t- belongs to 
the period between 700 and 760, while that of (-)b- > (-)p- occurred between 
740 and 780. The shift of g- > k-, which has been neglected in modern 
scholarship, but which is clearly evident in the non-Germanic place-names 
integrated in Bavarian, is a consequence of the development of Germanic k- to a 
fricative, which set in around 770. At the same time, Romance voicing of the 
Vulgar Latin voiceless plosives -/-, -c- > -d-, -6-, -g- in medial positions 
only takes place after the Bavarian-OHG shift of the Germanic voiceless 
plosives, but before the Bavarian-OHG unvoicing of (-)d- > (-)t- and (-)b- > 
(-)p-. We can thus assign the Romance voicing of Vulgar Latin voiceless 
plosives in medial positions to a period between roughly 630 at the earliest and 
700. In this connection, the different foreign toponymies integrated into Bava¬ 
rian-OHG allow us to observe changes in the articulation of Vulgar Latin v and 
6, as well as of that of Romance b/v resulting from the voicing of Vulgar Latin 
medial -p-. Depending on the stage of Romance articulation operative at the 
time and the time of adoption, Vulgar Latin b and v occur as w and as shifted p, 
respectively. This implies that the phonetic status of v ranged from that of a 
half-vowel to that of a bilabial consonant. The ensuing Bavarian-OHG 
rendering of all three as p presupposes a Romance pronunciation ranging from 
that of a half-vowel to a Tight’ fricative until, at the end of the eighth century, 
the rendering of this sound complex by a new Bavarian-OHG voiced v derived 
from Germanic / marks the third phase of this phonological process and speaks 
in favour of a labiodental fricative, in the case of Slavonic b, forms taken over 
in the early phase show shifted p and it is only from the end of the eighth 
century onwards that we find the new voiced v. The Primitive Slavonic pho¬ 
nological system remains current until about 800, as is indicated by the 
evidence of the early borrowed place-names in which the metathesis of liquids 
is absent and the later Slavonic o retains the very open quality of its Primitive 
Slavonic ancestor and is rendered by Bavarian-OHG a. In the case of several 
non-Germanic place-names integrated into Bavarian which are first attested in 
the records of the Middle High German period we have to reckon with pseudo 
sound changes involving the shift of initial d- > t- and of initial b- > p- resulting 
from the operation of Notker’s initial sound law and Schroder’s law of assimi¬ 
lation. Pseudo sound changes are also present in some of the forms with initial 
ch- which is used as a substitute for Romance c- and Slavonic k- from the end of 
the ninth until well into the middle of the tenth century. 
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