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Proto-germanic Language Information

Proto-Germanic (often abbreviated PGmc.), or Common Germanic, as it is sometimes known, is the unattested, reconstructed common ancestor (proto-language) of all the Germanic languages such as modern English, Frisian, Dutch, Afrikaans, German, Luxembourgish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, and Swedish.[1]

The Proto-Germanic language is not directly attested by any surviving texts but has been reconstructed using the comparative method. However, a few surviving inscriptions in a runic script from Scandinavia dated to c. 200 are thought to represent a stage of Proto-Norse or, according to Bernard Comrie, Late Common Germanic immediately following the "Proto-Germanic" stage.[2] Proto-Germanic is itself descended from Proto-Indo-European (PIE).

Words in Proto-Germanic written in this article are transcribed using the system described below under transcription.

Contents

Evolution of Proto-Germanic

The evolution of Proto-Germanic began with the separation of a common way of speech among some geographically proximate speakers of a prior language and ended with the dispersion of the proto-language speakers into distinct populations practicing their own speech habits. Between those two points many sound changes occurred.

Archaeological contributions

Map of the Pre-Roman Iron Age culture(s) associated with Proto-Germanic, c. 500 BC. The magenta-colored area south of Scandinavia represents the Jastorf culture

In one major[citation needed] theory of Andrev V Bell-Fialkov, Christopher Kaplonski, Wiliam B Mayer, Dean S Rugg, Rebeca W, Wendelken about Germanic origins, Indo-European speakers arrived on the plains of southern Sweden and Jutland, the center of the Urheimat or "original home" of the Germanic peoples, prior to the Nordic Bronze Age, which began about 4500 years ago. This is the only area where no pre-Germanic place names have been found.[3] The region was certainly populated before then; the lack of names must indicate an Indo-European settlement so ancient and dense that the previously assigned names were completely replaced. If archaeological horizons are at all indicative of shared language (not a straightforward assumption), the Indo-European speakers are to be identified with the much more widely ranged Cord-impressed ware or Battle-axe culture and possibly also with the preceding Funnel-necked beaker culture developing towards the end of the Neolithic culture of Western Europe.[4][5]

The expansion of the Germanic tribes 750 BC – AD 1 (after the Penguin Atlas of World History 1988): Settlements before 750BC New settlements until 500BC New settlements until 250BC New settlements until AD 1

Proto-Germanic then evolved from the Indo-European spoken in the Urheimat region. The succession of archaeological horizons suggests that before their language differentiated into the individual Germanic branches the Proto-Germanic speakers lived in southern Scandinavia and along the coast from the Netherlands in the west to the Vistula in the east around 750 BC.[6]

Evidence in other languages

In some non-Germanic languages spoken in areas adjacent to Germanic speaking areas, there are loanwords believed to have been borrowed from Proto-Germanic. Some of which include PGmc *druhtinaz 'lord' (cf. Finnish ruhtinas), *hrengaz 'ring' (cf. Finn rengas, Estonian rõngas),[7] *kuningaz 'king' (cf. Finn kuningas),[2], *lambaz 'lamb' (cf. Finn lampah, lammas),[8] *lunaz 'ransom' (cf. Finn lunnas),[9] *markijanaN 'to spot, catch sight of' (cf. Est märk(ama)), *rīkijaN 'realm, empire' (cf. Est riik 'state, country'), *skappijōN 'cupboard, shelf' (cf. Finn kaappi 'chest of drawers', Est kapp), *skildiz 'shield' (cf. Est silt 'tag, token' ), *werþaN 'worth' (cf. Est väärt).[citation needed]

Linguistic definitions

By definition, Proto-Germanic is the stage of the language constituting the most recent common ancestor of the attested Germanic languages. Current scholarship dates this to the latter half of the first millennium BC. The post-PIE dialects spoken throughout the Nordic Bronze Age, roughly 2500–500 BC, even though they may have no attested descendants other than the Germanic languages, are referred to as "Germanic Parent Language", "pre-Proto-Germanic" or more commonly "pre-Germanic."[10] By 250 BC, Proto-Germanic had branched into five groups of Germanic (two each in the West and the North, and one in the East).[6]

For more details on this topic, see Germanic languages.

In historical linguistics, Proto-Germanic is a node in the tree model; that is, if the descent of languages can be compared to a biological family tree, Proto-Germanic appears as a point, or node, from which all the daughter languages branch, and is itself at the end of a branch leading from another node, Proto-Indo-European.[11] One of the problems with the node[6] is that it implies the existence of a fixed language in which all the laws defining it apply simultaneously. Proto-Germanic, however, must be regarded as a diachronic sequence of sound changes, each law or group of laws only becoming operant after previous changes.[12]

To the evolutionary history of a language family, a genetic "tree model" is considered appropriate only if communities do not remain in effective contact as their languages diverge. Early IE was computed to have featured limited contact between distinct lineages, while only the Germanic subfamily exhibited a less treelike behaviour as it acquired some characteristics from neighbours early in its evolution rather than from its direct ancestors. The internal diversification of especially West Germanic is cited to have been radically non-treelike.[13]

W. P. Lehmann considered that Jacob Grimm's "First Germanic Sound Shift", or Grimm's Law and Verner's Law,[14] which pertained mainly to consonants and were considered for a good many decades to have generated Proto-Germanic, were pre-Proto-Germanic, and that the "upper boundary" was the fixing of the accent, or stress, on the root syllable of a word, typically the first.[15] Proto-Indo-European had featured a moveable pitch accent comprising "an alternation of high and low tones"[16] as well as stress of position determined by a set of rules based on the lengths of the word's syllables.

The fixation of the stress led to sound changes in unstressed syllables. For Lehmann, the "lower boundary" was the dropping of final -a or -e in unstressed syllables; for example, post-PIE *woyd-á > Gothic wait, "knows" (the > and < signs in linguistics indicate a genetic descent). Antonsen agreed with Lehmann about the upper boundary[17] but later found runic evidence that the -a was not dropped: ékwakraz … wraita, "I wakraz … wrote (this)." He says: "We must therefore search for a new lower boundary for Proto-Germanic."[18]

His own scheme divides Proto-Germanic into an early and a late. The early includes the stress fixation and resulting "spontaneous vowel-shifts" while to define the late he lists ten complex rules governing changes of both vowels and consonants.[19]

Other Indo-European loans

Loans into Proto-Germanic from other Indo-European languages can be relatively dated by how well they conform to Germanic sound laws. Since the dates of borrowings and sound laws are not precisely known, using the loans for absolute, or calendar, chronology would be impossible.

Most loans from Celtic appear to have been made before or during the Germanic Sound Shift.[20] For instance, one specimen *rīkz 'ruler' was borrowed from Celtic *rīgos 'king', with g → k.[21] It is clearly not native because PIE *ē → ī is not typical of Germanic but is a feature of Celtic languages. Another is *walhaz "foreigner; Celt" from the Celtic tribal name Volcae with c → h and o → a. Other likely Celtic loans include *ambahtaz 'servant', *brunjōn 'mailshirt', *gīslaz 'hostage', *īsarna 'iron', *lēkijaz 'healer', *lauđan 'lead', *Rīnaz 'Rhine', and *tūnaz, tūnan 'fortified enclosure'.[22][23] These loans would likely have been borrowed during the Celtic Hallstatt and early La Tène cultures when the Celts dominated central Europe, although the period spanned several centuries.

From East Iranian have come *hanapiz 'hemp' (cf. Persian kanab), *humalaz, humalōn 'hops' (cf. Ossetian xumællæg), *keppōn ~ skēpan 'sheep' (cf. Pers čapiš 'yearling kid'), *kurtilaz 'tunic' (cf. Osset kwəræt 'shirt'), *kutan 'cottage' (cf. Pers kad 'house'), *paidō 'cloak',[24] *paþaz 'path' (cf. Avestan pantā, g. pathō), and *wurstwa 'work' (cf. Av vərəštuua).[25][26] These words could have been transmitted directly by the Scythians from the Ukraine plain, groups of whom entered Central Europe via the Danube, and created the Vekerzug Culture in the Carpathian Basin (6th-5th centuries BC), or by later contact with Sarmatians, who followed the same route.[27] Unsure is *marhaz 'horse', which was either borrowed directly from Scytho-Sarmatian or through Celtic mediation.

Non-Indo-European elements

Main article: Germanic substrate hypothesis

The term substrate with reference to Proto-Germanic refers to lexical and phonological items that do not appear to be explained by Indo-European etymological principles. The substrate theory postulates that these elements came from a prior population that remained among the Indo-Europeans and was sufficiently influential to transmit some elements of its own language. The theory of a non-Indo-European substrate was first proposed by Sigmund Feist, who estimated that about 1/3 of the Proto-Germanic lexical items came from the substrate.[28]

However, research in Germanic etymology continues and as more and more plausible explanations for Germanic words whose origins were previously unclear or controversial are being proposed, and which explain those words in terms of reconstructed Indo-European words and morphology, the proportion of Germanic words without any plausible etymological explanation decreases. Estimates of that proportion are typically outdated or inflated as many proposals were unknown to scholars compiling lists of unexplained Germanic words.

Phonology

Transcription

The following conventions are used in this article for transcribing Proto-Germanic forms:

Consonants

The table below[6] lists the consonantal phonemes of Proto-Germanic classified by reconstructed pronunciation. The slashes around the phonemes are omitted for clarity. If two phonemes appear in the same box, the first of each pair is voiceless, the second is voiced. Phonemes written in parentheses represent allophones and are not independent phonemes. For descriptions of the sounds and definitions of the terms, follow the links on the headings.[30]

Proto-Germanic consonants
Bilabial Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Labial-velar
Nasal m n (ŋ) (ŋʷ)
Plosive p b t d k ɡ kʷ ɡʷ
Fricative ɸ (β) θ (ð) s z x (ɣ) xʷ
Trill r
Approximant j w
Lateral l

Notes:

  1. [ŋ] was an allophone of /n/ before velar obstruents.
  2. [ŋʷ] was an allophone of /n/ before labial-velar obstruents.
  3. [β], [ð] and [ɣ] were allophones of /b/, /d/ and /ɡ/ in certain positions (see below).
  4. The phoneme written as f was certainly still realised as a bilabial fricative (/ɸ/) in Proto-Germanic. This can be deduced from the fact that in Gothic, word-final b devoices to f, and also from Old Norse spellings such as aptr [ɑɸtr], where the letter p rather than the more usual f was used to denote the bilabial realisation before /t/.

Grimm's and Verner's law

Main articles: Grimm's Law and Verner's law

Grimm's law as applied to pre-proto-Germanic is a chain shift of the original Indo-European stop consonants. Verner's Law addresses a category of exceptions to Grimm's Law, in which a voiced fricative appears where Grimm's Law predicts a voiceless fricative. The discrepancy is conditioned by the placement of the original Indo-European word accent.

Labiovelar reduction (near u) Grimm's law: Voiceless to fricative Grimm's law: Voiced to plosive Grimm's law: Aspirated to voiced Verner's law Labiovelar dissolution
labials p > ɸ b > p bʱ > b, β ɸ > b, β
dentals t > θ d > t dʱ > d, ð θ > d, ð
velars k > x ɡ > k ɡʱ > ɡ, ɣ x > ɡ, ɣ
labiovelars kʷ > k ɡʷ > ɡ ɡʷʱ > ɡʱ kʷ > xʷ ɡʷ > kʷ ɡʷʱ > ɡʷ, ɣʷ xʷ > ɡʷ, ɣʷ ɡʷ > b ɣʷ > w, ɣ

p, t, and k did not undergo Grimm's law after a fricative (such as s) or other stops; for example, where Latin (with the original t) has stella "star" and octo "eight", Middle Dutch has ster and acht (with unshifted t).[31] This original t merged with the shifted t from the voiced consonant; that is, most of the instances of /t/ came from either the original /t/ or the shifted /t/.

Verner's law follows Grimm's law in time, and states that unvoiced fricatives: /s/, /ɸ/, /θ/, /x/ are voiced when preceded by an unaccented syllable. The accent at the time of the change was the one inherited from Proto-Indo-European, and was still free and could occur on any syllable. For example, PIE *bhrátēr > PGmc. *brōþēr "brother" but PIE *mātér > PGmc. *mōdēr "mother." The voicing of some /s/ according to Verner's Law produced /z/, a new phoneme.[6] Following Grimm's and Verner's law, Proto-Germanic lost its inherited contrastive accent, and all words became stressed on their root syllable. This was usually the first syllable unless a prefix was attached.

A similar shift on the consonant inventory of Proto-Germanic later generated High German. McMahon says: "Grimm's and Verner's Laws … together form the First Germanic Consonant Shift. A second, and chronologically later Second Germanic Consonant Shift … affected only Proto-Germanic voiceless stops … and split Germanic into two sets of dialects, Low German in the north … and High German further south ...."[32]

Allophones

Sometimes the shift produced consonants that were pronounced differently (allophones) depending on the context of the original. With regard to original /k/ or /kʷ/ Trask says: "The resulting /x/ or /xʷ/ were reduced to /h/ and /hʷ/ in word-initial position."[33]

Many of the phonemes listed in the table represent can appear lengthened or prolonged under some circumstances, appearing in some daughter languages as geminated graphemes. The phenomenon is therefore termed gemination. Kraehenmann says:[34] "Then, Proto-Germanic already had long consonants … but they contrasted with short ones only word-medially. Moreover, they were not very frequent and occurred only intervocally almost exclusively after short vowels."

The phonemes /b/, /d/, /ɡ/ and /ɡʷ/ "were stops in some environments and fricatives in others. The pattern of allophony is not clear in every detail."[35] The fricatives merged with the fricatives of Verner's Law (see above). Whether they were all fricatives at first or both stops and fricatives remains unknown. Some known rules:

Labiovelars

Numerous additional changes affected the labiovelars.

  1. Even before the operation of Grimm's law, they were reduced to plain velars next to /u/. This appears to be a sound law that was inherited from PIE and continued to operate as a surface filter, i.e. if a sound change generated a new environment in which a labiovelar occurred near a /u/, it was immediately converted to a plain velar. This caused certain alternations in verb paradigms, such as *singwanaN [siŋɡʷɑnɑ̃] ('to sing') versus *sungun [suŋɡun] ('they sang'). Apparently, this delabialization also occurred after /un/, showing that the language possessed a labial allophone [ŋʷ] as well. In this case the entire clusters [uŋʷxʷ], [uŋʷkʷ] and [uŋʷgʷ] are delabialized to [uŋx], [uŋk] and [uŋg].
  2. After the operation of Verner's law, various changes conspired to almost completely eliminate voiced labiovelars. Initially, [ɡʷ] became [b], e.g. PIE *gʷʱédʱyeti > PGmc. bidiþi "(s)he asks for". The fricative variant [ɣʷ] (which occurred in most non-initial environments) usually became [w], but sometimes instead turned into [ɣ]. The only environment in which a voiced labiovelar remained was after a nasal, e.g. in *singwanaN [siŋɡʷɑnɑ̃] "to sing". These various changes often led to complex alternations, e.g. *sehwanaN [sexʷɑnɑ̃] ('to see'), *sēgun [sɛːɣun] ('they saw', indicative), *sēwīn [sɛːwiːn] ('they saw', subjunctive), which were reanalysed and regularised differently in the various daughter languages.

Vowels

Proto-Germanic had four short vowels[36] five or six long vowels, and at least one "overlong" or "trimoric" vowel. The exact phonetic quality of the vowels is uncertain. All vowels could also be nasalized when word-final.

Proto-Germanic vowels
Front Back
short long overl. short long overl.
Close i iː u uː
Close-mid e eː?
Open-mid ɛː ɛːː? ɔː ɔːː
Open ɑ ɑː

PIE ə a o merged into PGmc a; PIE ā ō merged into PGmc ō. At the time of the merger, the vowels probably were [ɑ] and [ɑː], or perhaps [ɒ] and [ɒː]. Their timbres then differentiated by raising (and perhaps rounding) the long vowel to [ɔː][citation needed]. It is known that the raising of ā to ō can not have occurred earlier than the earliest contact between Proto-Germanic speakers and the Romans. This can be verified by the fact that Latin Rōmānī later emerges in Gothic as Rumoneis (that is, Rūmōnīs). It is explained by Ringe that at the time of borrowing, the vowel matching closest in sound to Latin ā was a Proto-Germanic ā-like vowel (which later became ō). And since Proto-Germanic therefore lacked a mid(-high) back vowel, the closest equivalent of Latin ō was Proto-Germanic ū: Rōmānī > *Rūmānīz > *Rūmōnīz > Gothic Rumoneis.

A new ā was formed following the shift from ā to ō when intervocalic /j/ was lost in -aja- sequences. It was a rare phoneme, and occurred only in a handful of words, the most notable being the verbs of the third weak class. The agent noun suffix *-ārijaz (Modern English -er) was likely borrowed from Latin around or shortly after this time.

Diphthongs

The following diphthongs are known to have existed in Proto-Germanic:

Note the change /e/ > /i/ before /i/ or /j/ in the same or following syllable. This removed /ei/ (which became /iː/) but created /iu/ from earlier /eu/.

Diphthongs in Proto-Germanic can also be analysed as sequences of a vowel plus an approximant, as was the case in Proto-Indo-European. This explains why /j/ was not lost in *niwjaz ("new"); the second element of the diphthong iu was still underlyingly a consonant and therefore the conditioning environment for the loss was not met. This is also confirmed by the fact that later in the West Germanic gemination, -wj- is geminated to -wwj- in parallel with the other consonants (except /r/).

Overlong vowels

Proto-Germanic had at least one overlong or trimoraic vowel ô [ɔːː] (possibly also ê).[37] The vowel occurred in certain word-final syllables (and possibly elsewhere) probably because in this position the vowel could not be resyllabified.[38] ô is distinguished from ō by the fact that the outcome of ô was a long vowel while that of ō developed into a short vowel in attested Germanic languages. There has been a great deal of debate over both the nature of this sound in Proto-Germanic and its origin. Older theories claimed that ô and ō were both long but differed in tone, i.e., ô had a "circumflex" (rise-fall-rise) tone while ō had an "acute" (rising) tone, much like the tones of modern Scandinavian languages,[39] and asserted that this distinction was inherited from PIE. Modern theories have reinterpreted ô as having superheavy syllable weight (three moras) and therefore greater length than ō and as originating through the contraction of adjacent vowels in hiatus (often after the loss of a laryngeal),[40] e.g., nom.pl. *wulfôz "wolves" ← pre-Germ *u̯l̥pōes ← PIE *u̯ĺ̥kʷo-es.

ē¹ and ē²

ē² is uncertain as a phoneme, and only reconstructed from a small number of words; it is posited by the comparative method because whereas all provable instances of inherited (PIE) *ē (PGmc. *ē¹) are distributed in Gothic as ē and the other Germanic languages as *ā,[41] all the Germanic languages agree on some occasions of ē (e.g., Got./OE/ON hēr "here" < PGmc. *hē²r). Gothic makes no orthographic and therefore presumably no phonetic distinction between ē¹ and ē², but the existence of two Proto-Germanic long e-like phonemes is supported by the existence of two e-like Elder Futhark runes, Ehwaz and Eihwaz.

Krahe treats ē² (secondary ē) as identical with ī. It probably continues PIE ēi, and it may have been in the process of transition from a diphthong to a long simple vowel in the Proto-Germanic period. Lehmann lists the following origins for ē²:[42]

Nasal vowels

Whether and to what extent this distinction was phonemic is a matter of debate. Phonemic nasal vowels definitely occurred in Proto-Norse and Old Norse down to at least 1125 AD, the earliest possible time for the creation of the First Grammatical Treatise (which documents nasal vowels). Surface (possibly phonemic) nasal/non-nasal contrasts occurred in the West Germanic languages down through Proto-Anglo-Frisian of 400 AD or so.

There are apparent examples indicating that phonemic nasality must have occurred at some stage of Proto-Germanic, e.g. the three-way distinction of final -u/-uN/-un in *fehu "livestock" vs. *nahtuN "night (acc.)" vs. *tehun "ten". Since final -uN comes from earlier -un while final -un comes from earlier -unt, it could be claimed that Proto-Germanic actually had an underlying phonemic contrast -u/-un/-unt and that the development of phonemic nasality occurred only after Proto-Norse split off. This makes it hard to account for the relative chronology of sound changes, however. The process of nasalisation must have occurred before the loss of word-final -t, because from earlier -nt, -n remained in the 3rd person plural ending, and also some numerals. And that change in turn must have preceded the loss of word-final -a and -e, because earlier -ta remained as -t in the 2nd person singular past ending of strong verbs. Both of these changes were universal in Proto-Germanic and there are no daughter languages that were unaffected. Therefore the analysis with word-final nasal vowels is most likely to be correct.

It is somewhat doubtful whether nasality was phonemic for overlong vowels. The later phonetic developments of word-final overlong vowels are the same whether they are reconstructed as nasal or not. Both -ô (adverbial suffix) and -ôN (genitive plural ending) develop the same way in all daughter languages, showing up as -ō in Gothic, as -a in Old English and Old Norse and as -o in Old High German. This probably indicates an early phonemic merger, possibly within Proto-Germanic times.

Phonotactics

Proto-Germanic allowed the following clusters in initial and medial position[43]:

It allowed the following clusters in medial position only:

It allowed the following clusters in medial and final position only:

The s + voiceless stop clusters, sp, st, sk, could appear in any position in a word.

Later developments

Due to the emergence of a word-initial stress accent, vowels in unstressed syllables were gradually reduced over time, beginning at the very end of the Proto-Germanic period and continuing into the history of the various dialects. Already in Proto-Germanic, word-final /e/ and /ɑ/ had been lost, and /e/ had merged with /i/ in unstressed syllables. Vowels in third syllables were also generally lost before dialect diversification began, such as final -i of some present tense verb endings, and in -maz and -miz of the dative plural ending and 1st person plural present of verbs.

Word-final short nasal vowels were however preserved longer, as is reflected Proto-Norse which still preserved word-final -aN (horna on the Gallehus horns), while the dative plural appears as -mz (gestumz on the Stentoften Runestone). Somewhat greater reduction is found in Gothic, which lost all final-syllable short vowels except u. Old High German and Old English initially preserved unstressed i and u, but later lost them in short-stemmed words and then in many long-stemmed ones as well.

Old English shows indirect evidence that word-final -aN was preserved into the separate history of the language. This can be seen in the infinitive ending -an (< *anaN) and the strong past participle ending -en (< *-anaz). Since the early Old English fronting of /ɑ/ to /æ/ did not occur in nasalized vowels or before back vowels, this created a vowel alternation because the nasality of the back vowel aN in the infinitive ending prevented the fronting of the preceding vowel: *-anaN > *-an, but *-anaz > *-ænæ > *-en.

Morphology

Historical linguistics can tell us much about Proto-Germanic. However, it should be kept in mind that these postulations are tentative and multiple reconstructions (with varying degrees of difference) exist. All reconstructed forms are marked with an asterisk (*).

Simplification of the inflectional system

It is often asserted that the Germanic languages have a highly reduced system of inflections as compared with Greek, Latin, or Sanskrit. Although this is true to some extent, it is probably due more to the late time of attestation of Germanic than to any inherent "simplicity" of the Germanic languages. As an example, there are less than 500 years between the Gothic Gospels of 360 AD and the Old High Germanic Tatian of 830 AD, yet Old High Germanic, despite being the most archaic of the West Germanic languages, is missing a large number of archaic features present in Gothic, including dual and passive markings on verbs, reduplication in Class VII strong verb past tenses, the vocative case, and second-position (Wackernagel's Law) clitics. Many more archaic features may have been lost between the Proto-Germanic of 200 BC or so and the attested Gothic language. Furthermore, Proto-Romance and Middle Indic of the fourth century AD—contemporaneous with Gothic—were significantly simpler than Latin and Sanskrit, respectively, and overall probably no more archaic than Gothic. In addition, some parts of the inflectional systems of Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit were innovations that were not present in Proto-Indo-European.

General morphological features

Proto-Germanic had six cases, three genders, three numbers, three moods (indicative, subjunctive (PIE optative), imperative), and two voices (active and passive (PIE middle)). This is quite similar to the state of Latin, Greek, and Middle Indic of c. 200 AD.

Nouns and adjectives were declined in (at least) six cases: vocative, nominative, accusative, dative, instrumental, genitive. The locative case had merged into the dative case, and the ablative may have merged with either the genitive, dative or instrumental cases. However, sparse remnants of the earlier locative and ablative cases are visible in a few pronominal and adverbial forms. Pronouns were declined similarly, although without a separate vocative form. The instrumental and vocative can be reconstructed only in the singular; the instrumental survives only in the West Germanic languages, and the vocative only in Gothic.

Verbs and pronouns had three numbers: singular, dual, and plural. Although the pronominal dual survived into all the oldest languages, the verbal dual survived only into Gothic, and the (presumed) nominal and adjectival dual forms were lost before the oldest records. As in the Italic languages, it may have been lost before Proto-Germanic became a different branch at all.

Nouns

The system of nominal declensions was largely inherited from PIE. Primary nominal declensions were the stems in /a/, /ō/, /n/, /i/, and /u/. The first three were particularly important and served as the basis of adjectival declension; there was a tendency for nouns of all other classes to be drawn into them. The first two had variants in /ja/ and /wa/, and /jō/ and /wō/, respectively; originally, these were declined exactly like other nouns of the respective class, but later sound changes tended to distinguish these variants as their own subclasses. The /n/ nouns had various subclasses, including /ōn/ (masculine and feminine), /an/ (neuter), and /īn/ (feminine, mostly abstract nouns). There was also a smaller class of root nouns (ending in various consonants), nouns of relationship (ending in /er/), and neuter nouns in /z/ (this class was greatly expanded in German). Present participles, and a few nouns, ended in /nd/. The neuter nouns of all classes differed from the masculines and feminines in their nominative and accusative endings, which were alike.

Nouns in -a- Nouns in -i-
Singular Plural Singular Plural
Nominative *wulfaz *wulfôs, -ôz *gastiz *gastīz
Accusative *wulfaN *wulfanz *gastiN *gastinz
Genitive *wulfas, -is *wulfôN *gastīz *gastijôN
Dative *wulfai *wulfamaz *gastī *gastimaz
Instrumental *wulfō *wulfamiz *gastī *gastimiz
Vocative *wulf *wulfôz *gasti *gastīz

Adjectives

Adjectives agree with the noun they qualify in case, number, and gender. Adjectives evolved into strong and weak declensions, originally with indefinite and definite meaning, respectively. As a result of its definite meaning, the weak form came to be used in the daughter languages in conjunction with demonstratives and definite articles. The terms "strong" and "weak" are based on the later development of these declensions in languages such as German and Old English, where the strong declensions have more distinct endings. In the proto-language, as in Gothic, such terms have no relevance. The strong declension was based on a combination of the nominal /a/ and /ō/ stems with the PIE pronominal endings; the weak declension was based on the nominal /n/ declension.

Strong Declension Weak Declension
Masculine Feminine Neuter Singular Plural
Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural
Nominative *blindaz *blindai *blindō *blindōz *blinda, -atō *blindō *blindanō *blindaniz
Accusative *blindanō *blindanz *blindō *blindōz *blindana *blindaniz, -anuniz
Genitive *blindez(a) *blindaizō *blindezōz *blindaizō *blindez(a) *blindaizō *blindeniz *blindanō
Dative *blinde/asmē/ā *blindaimiz *blindai *blindaimiz *blinde/asmē/ā *blindaimiz *blindeni *blindanmiz
Instrumental *blindō

Determiners

Proto-Germanic had a demonstrative which could serve as both a demonstrative adjective and a demonstrative pronoun. In daughter languages, it evolved into the definite article and various other demonstratives.

Masculine Feminine Neuter
Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural
Nominative *sa *þai *sō *þōz *þat *þō, *þiō
Accusative *þen(ō), *þan(ō) *þans *þō
Genitive *þes(a) *þezō *þezōz *þaizō
Dative *þesmō, *þasmō *þemiz, *þaimiz *þezai *þaimiz
Locative *þī
Instrumental *þiō

Verbs

See also: Germanic verb, Germanic strong verb, and Germanic weak verb

Proto-Germanic had only two tenses (past and present), compared to the six or seven in Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit. Some of this difference is due to deflexion, featured by a loss of tenses present in Proto-Indo-European, for example the perfect. However, many of the tenses of the other languages (future, future perfect, probably pluperfect, perhaps imperfect) appear to be separate innovations in each of these languages, and were not present in Proto-Indo-European.[citation needed]

The main area where the Germanic inflectional system is noticeably reduced is the tense system of the verbs, with only two tenses, present and past. However:

Verbs in Proto-Germanic were divided into two main groups, called "strong" and "weak", according to the way the past tense is formed. Strong verbs use ablaut (i.e. a different vowel in the stem) and/or reduplication (derived primarily from the Proto-Indo-European perfect), while weak verbs use a dental suffix (now generally held to be a reflex of the reduplicated imperfect of PIE *dheH1- originally "put", in Germanic "do"). Strong verbs were divided into seven main classes while weak verbs were divided into five main classes (although no attested language has more than four classes of weak verbs). Strong verbs generally have no suffix in the present tense, although some have a -j- suffix that is a direct continuation of the PIE -y- suffix, and a few have an -n- suffix or infix that continues the -n- infix of PIE. Almost all weak verbs have a present-tense suffix, which varies from class to class. An additional small, but very important, group of verbs formed their present tense from the PIE perfect (and their past tense like weak verbs); for this reason, they are known as preterite-present verbs. All three of the previously mentioned groups of verbs—strong, weak and preterite-present—are derived from PIE thematic verbs; an additional very small group derives from PIE athematic verbs, and one verb *wiljanaN "to want" forms its present indicative from the PIE optative mood.

Proto-Germanic verbs have three moods—indicative, subjunctive and imperative. The subjunctive mood derives from the PIE optative mood. Indicative and subjunctive moods are fully conjugated throughout the present and past, while the imperative mood existed only in the present tense and lacked first-person forms. Proto-Germanic verbs have two voices, active and passive, the latter deriving from the PIE mediopassive voice. The Proto-Germanic passive existed only in the present tense (an inherited feature, as the PIE perfect had no mediopassive). On the evidence of Gothic—the only Germanic language with a reflex of the Proto-Germanic passive—the passive voice had a significantly reduced inflectional system, with a single form used for all persons of the dual and plural. Note that, although Old Norse has an inflected mediopassive, it is not inherited from Proto-Germanic, but is an innovation formed by attaching the reflexive pronoun to the active voice.

Although most Proto-Germanic strong verbs are formed directly from a verbal root, weak verbs are generally derived from an existing noun, verb or adjective (so-called denominal, deverbal and deadjectival verbs). For example, a significant subclass of Class I weak verbs are (deverbal) causative verbs. These are formed in a way that reflects a direct inheritance from the PIE causative class of verbs. PIE causatives were formed by adding an accented suffix -éi̯e/éi̯o to the o-grade of a non-derived verb. In Proto-Germanic, causatives are formed by adding a suffix -j/ij- (the reflex of PIE -éi̯e/éi̯o) to the past-tense ablaut (mostly with the reflex of PIE o-grade) of a strong verb (the reflex of PIE non-derived verbs), with Verner's Law voicing applied (the reflex of the PIE accent on the -éi̯e/éi̯o suffix). Examples:

As in other Indo-European languages, a verb in Proto-Germanic could have a preverb attached to it, modifying its meaning (cf. e.g. *fra-werþanaN "to perish", derived from *werþanaN "to become"). In Proto-Germanic, the preverb was still a clitic that could be separated from the verb (as also in Gothic, as shown by the behavior of second-position clitics, e.g. diz-uh-þan-sat "and then he seized", with clitics uh "and" and þan "then" interpolated into dis-sat "he seized") rather than a bound morpheme that is permanently attached to the verb (as in all other Germanic languages). At least in Gothic, preverbs could also be stacked one on top of the other (similar to Sanskrit, different from Latin), e.g. ga-ga-waírþjan "to reconcile".

An example verb: *nemanaN "to take" (class IV strong verb).

Indicative Subjunctive Imperative
Active Passive Active Passive Active
Present 1st sing *nemō *nemôi? *nemai? *nema-uN ??? –
2nd sing *nimizi *nemazai *nemaiz *nemaizau? *nem
3rd sing *nimidi *nemadai *nemai *nemaidau? *nemadau
1st dual *nemōz (?) *nemandai *nemaiw *nemaindau? –
2nd dual *nemadiz (?) *nemandai *nemaidiz (?) *nemaindau? *nemadiz?
1st plur *nemamaz *nemandai *nemaim *nemaindau? –
2nd plur *nimid *nemandai *nemaid *nemaindau? *nimid
3rd plur *nemandi *nemandai *nemain *nemaindau? *nemandau
Past 1st sing *nam – *nēmijuN (?; or *nēmīN??) – –
2nd sing *namt *nēmīz
3rd sing *nam *nēmī
1st dual *nēmū (?) *nēmīw
2nd dual *nēmudiz (?) *nēmīdiz (?)
1st plur *nēmum *nēmīm
2nd plur *nēmud *nēmīd
3rd plur *nēmun *nēmīn
Infinitive *nemanaN
Present Participle *nemandaz
Past Participle *numanaz

Pronouns

Proto-Germanic personal pronouns[44]
First person Second person Third person
Singular Dual Plural Singular Dual Plural Singular Plural
Masculine Feminine Neuter Masculine Feminine Neuter
Nominative *ek *ik1 *wet *wit1 *wīz *wiz1 *þū *jut *jūz *iz *sī *it *īz *ijōz *ijō
Accusative *mek *mik1 *unk *uns *þek *þik1 *inkw *izwiz *inǭ *ijǭ *inz
Genitive *mīnaz *unkeraz *unseraz *þīnaz *inkweraz *izweraz *es *ezōz *es *ezǫ̂
Dative *miz *unkiz *unsiz *þiz *inkwiz *izwiz *immai *ezōi *immai *imaz
Instrumental *inō *ezō *inō *imiz

1 – Unstressed variant

Schleicher's PIE fable rendered into Proto-Germanic

August Schleicher wrote a fable in the PIE language he had just reconstructed, which though it has been updated a few times by others still bears his name. Below is a rendering of this fable into Proto-Germanic.

The first is a direct phonetic evolution of the Indo-European text. It does not take into account various idiomatic and grammatical shifts that occurred over the period. For example, the original text uses the imperfect tense, which disappeared in Proto-Germanic. The second version takes these differences into account, and is therefore closer to the language the Germanic people would have actually spoken.

Proto-Germanic, phonetic evolution only

Awiz ehwaz-uh: awiz, hwisi wullō ne est, spihi ehwanz, ainaN kuruN wagaN weganduN, ainaN-uh mekōN buraN, ainaN-uh gumanuN ahu beranduN. Awiz nu ehwamaz wiuhi: hert agnutai mek, witandī ehwanz akanduN gumanuN. Ehwaz weuhaN: hludi, awi! hert agnutai uns witundumaz: gumô, fadiz, wullōN awjaN hwurniudi sibi warmaN westraN. AwjaN-uh wullō ne isti. þat hehluwaz awiz akraN buki.

Proto-Germanic, with grammar and vocabulary modernised

Awiz ehwaz-uh: awiz, sō wullōN ne habdē, sahw ehwanz, ainanōN kurjanōN wagnaN teuhanduN, ainanōN-uh mikilōN kuriþōN, ainanōN-uh gumanuN sneumundô beranduN. Awiz nu ehwamaz sagdē: hertô sairīþi mek, sehwandē ehwanz akanduN gumanuN. Ehwaz sagdēdun: gahauzī, awi! hertô sairīþi uns sehwandumiz: gumô, fadiz, uz awīz wullō wurkīþi siz warmaN wastijōN. Awiz-uh wullōN ne habaiþi. þat hauzidaz awiz akraN flauh.

English

The Sheep and the Horses: a sheep that had no wool saw horses, one pulling a heavy wagon, one carrying a big load, and one carrying a man quickly. The sheep said to the horses: “My heart pains me, seeing a man driving horses”. The horses said: “Listen, sheep, our hearts pain us when we see this: a man, the master, makes the wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself. And the sheep has no wool”. Having heard this, the sheep fled into the plain.

See also

Ancient Germanic culture portal

Notes

  1. ^ Another, less common name used in English-language literature by a few noteworthy scholars is (Primitive) Germanic Parent Language. For example, see Bloomfield, Leonard (1984). Language. The University of Chicago Press. pp. 298–299.
  2. ^ a b Comrie, Bernard (editor) (1987). The World's Major Languages. New York, New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 69–70. ISBN 0-19-506511-5.
  3. ^ Bell-Fialkoll (Editor), Andrew (2000). The Role of Migration in the History of the Eurasian Steppe: Sedentary Civilization v. "Barbarian" and Nomad. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 117. ISBN 0-312-21207-0. Note that the term "pre-Germanic" is equivocal, meaning, as here, either prior to the Indo-European ancestors or Indo-European but prior to Proto-Germanic.
  4. ^ Kinder, Hermann; Werner Hilgemann; Ernest A. Menze (Translator); Harald and Ruth Bukor (Maps) (1988). The Penguin atlas of world history. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Volume 1 page 109. ISBN 0-14-051054-0.
  5. ^ Kinder book
  6. ^ a b c d e "Languages of the World: Germanic languages". The New Encyclopædia Britannica. Chicago, IL, United States: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. 1993. ISBN 0-85229-571-5. This long-standing, well-known article on the languages can be found in almost any edition of Britannica.
  7. ^ Don Ringe, A Linguistic History of English: From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic, v. 1 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006), 149.
  8. ^ Ringe, Ling. Hist. of Eng., 278.
  9. ^ Vladimir Orel, A Handbook of Germanic Etymology (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2003), 251.
  10. ^ Pre-Proto-Germanic is relatively recent, but it still does not solve the problem of distinguishing pre-PIE from PIE but pre-Germanic populations.
  11. ^ The links in this sentence suffice to explain the basic concept but more information can be found in numerous books including Lass, Roger (1997). Historical Linguistics and Language Change. Cambridge University Press. Chapter 3.6 "Sound Laws". ISBN 0-521-45924-9.
  12. ^ This article covers some of the major changes but for more of a presentation see Kleinman, Scott. "Germanic Sound Changes" (pdf). English 400: History of the English Language: Grammar Tutorial and Resources. California State University, Northridge. http://www.csun.edu/~sk36711/WWW2/engl400/gmcsoundchanges.pdf. Retrieved 2007-11-05.
  13. ^ [1] Perfect Phylogenetic Networks: A New Methodology for Reconstructing the Evolutionary History of Natural Languages – Luay Nakhleh,Don Ringe & Tandy Warnow, 2005, Language- Journal of the Linguistic Society of America, Volume 81, Number 2, June 2005
  14. ^ Described in this and the linked articles but see Kleinman.
  15. ^ Lehmann, W. P. (January – March, 1961). "A Definition of Proto-Germanic: A Study in the Chronological Delimitation of Languages". Language 37 (1): 67–74. doi:10.2307/411250.
  16. ^ Bennett, William H. (May 1970). "The Stress Patterns of Gothic". PMLA 85 (3): 463–472. doi:10.2307/1261448. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0030-8129%28197005%2985%3A3%3C463%3ATSPOG%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O&&origin=JSTOR-enlargePage. Retrieved 2007-11-06. First page and abstract no charge.
  17. ^ Antonsen, Elmer H. (January – March, 1965). "On Defining Stages in Prehistoric German". Language 41 (1): 19–36. doi:10.2307/411849.
  18. ^ Antonsen, Elmer H. (2002). Runes and Germanic Linguistics. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 26–30. ISBN 3-11-017462-6. http://books.google.com/books?id=gvSi3JVNRFQC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s#v=onepage&q=&f=false. This presentation also summarizes Lehmann's view.
  19. ^ Antonsen (2000) page 28 table 9.
  20. ^ Ringe, Donald (2006). From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic. Oxford University Press. pp. 296. ISBN 0-19-928413-X. ; Lane, George S. The Germano-Celtic Vocabulary, Language (1933), 244–264.
  21. ^ Watkins, Calvert (2000). "Appendix I: Indo-European Roots: reg-". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. http://www.bartleby.com/61/roots/IE427.html.
  22. ^ D.H. Green, Language and History in the Early Germanic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 149–164.
  23. ^ Donald A. Ringe, From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic (Oxford: Oxford, 2006), 296.
  24. ^ This word gave: Old English pād, Old Saxon pēda, Old High German pfeit, Bavarian Pfoad, Gothic páida 'coat'.
  25. ^ Ibid, 297.
  26. ^ Vladimir Orel, A Handbook of Germanic Etymology (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2003).
  27. ^ Barry Cunliffe, Europe Between the Oceans 9000 BC- AD 1000 (2008), pp. 303-7, 352.
  28. ^ Feist was proposing the idea as early as 1913 but his classical paper on the subject is Feist, Sigmund (1932). "The Origin of the Germanic Languages and the Europeanization of North Europe". Language 8: 245–254. doi:10.2307/408831. A brief biography and presentation of his ideas can be found in Mees, Bernard (2003), "Stratum and Shadow: The Indo-European West: Sigmund Feist", in Andersen, Henning, Language Contacts in Prehistory: Studies in Stratigraphy, John Benjamin Publishing Company, pp. 19–21, ISBN 1-58811-379-5
  29. ^ On eu and iu see Cercignani, Fausto, Indo-European eu in Germanic, in «Indogermanische Forschungen», 78, 1973, pp. 106-112.
  30. ^ While the classification varies somewhat the consonants do not; for example, coronals are sometimes listed as dentals and alveolars while velars and labiovelars are sometimes combined under dorsals.
  31. ^ Van Kerckvoorde, Colette M. (1993). An Introduction to Middle Dutch. Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 123. ISBN 3-11-013535-3.
  32. ^ McMahon, April M.S. (1994). Understanding Language Change. Cambridge University Press. pp. 227. ISBN 0-521-44665-1.
  33. ^ Trask, Robert Lawrence (2000). The Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics. Fitzroy Dearborn. pp. 122. ISBN 1-57958-218-4.
  34. ^ Kraehenmann, Astrid (2003). Quantity and Prosodic Asymmetries is Alemannic: Synchronic and Diachronic. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 58. ISBN 3-11-017680-7.
  35. ^ Ringe, page 100.
  36. ^ On i and e see Cercignani, Fausto, Proto-Germanic */i/ and */e/ Revisited, in «Journal of English and Germanic Philology», 78/1, 1979, pp. 72-82.
  37. ^ Ringe, Donald (2006). From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-928413-X. .
  38. ^ T.A. Hall, "The Distribution of Trimoraic Syllables in German and English as Evidence for the Phonological Word", available at: [2].
  39. ^ Anatoly Liberman, Germanic Accentology (Minneapolis: U of Minnestota P, 1982), 140.
  40. ^ Benjamin W. Forston, Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction, 2nd edn. (Blackwell, 2010), 342.
  41. ^ But see Cercignani, Fausto, Indo-European ē in Germanic, in «Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung», 86/1, 1972, pp. 104-110.
  42. ^ Proto-Indo-European phonology: The Origin of PGmc. Long Close e
  43. ^ [3]
  44. ^ Ringe, Donald (2006). From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-928413-X.

References

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