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| | Ancient Germanic culture Portal |
| Proto-Germanic | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Northern Europe | |
| Language extinction: | evolved into Proto-Norse, Gothic, Frankish and Ingvaeonic by the 4th century | |
| Language family: | Indo-European Germanic Proto-Germanic | |
| Writing system: | Elder Futhark | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | gem | |
| ISO 639-3: | — | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Map of the Nordic Bronze Age culture, ca 1200 BC
.PNG/58px-Pre-roman iron age (map).PNG)
Map of the Pre-Roman Iron Age culture(s) associated with Proto-Germanic, c. 500 BC-50 BC. The magenta-colored area south of Scandinavia represents the Jastorf culture
.png/58px-Germanic tribes (750BC-1AD).png)
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, or Common Germanic, is the hypothetical common ancestor (proto-language) of all the Germanic languages, which include, among others, modern English, Dutch, German, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Swedish.Another, less common name used in English-language literature by a few noteworthy scholars is (Primtive) Germanic Parent Language. For example, see Bloomfield, Leonard (1984). Language. The University of Chicago Press, pages 298-299. 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 Late Common Germanic immediately following the "Proto-Germanic" stage.Comrie, Bernard (editor) (1987). The World\'s Major Languages. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, pages 69-70. ISBN 0-19-506511-5. Some loan-words from early Germanic which exist in neighbouring non-Germanic languages are believed to have been borrowed from Germanic during the Proto-Germanic phase; an example is Finnish and Estonian kuningas "king", which closely resembles the reconstructed Proto-Germanic *kuningaz.
Proto-Germanic is itself descended from Proto-Indo-European (PIE).
Contents |
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.
In one major theory of 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.Bell-Fialkoll (Editor), Andrew (2000). The Role of Migration in the History of the Eurasian Steppe: Sedentary Civilization v. "Barbarian" and Nomad. Palgrave Macmillan, page 117. ISBN 0312212070. 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. 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.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.
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). "Languages of the World: Germanic languages". The New Encyclopædia Britannica. (1993). Chicago, IL, United States: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. ISBN 0-85229-571-5. This long-standing, well-known article on the languages can be found in almost any edition of Britannica.
By definition, Proto-Germanic is the stage of the language constituting the most recent common ancestor of the attested Germanic languages, dated 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 "pre-Proto-Germanic" or more commonly "pre-Germanic."Pre-Proto-Germanic is relatively recent, but it still does not solve the problem of distinguishing pre-PIE from PIE but pre-Germanic populations. By 250 BC, Proto-Germanic had branched into five groups of Germanic (two each in West and North, and one in East).
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.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 0521459249. One of the problems with the node 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.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. Retrieved on 2007-11-05.
W. P. Lehmann considered that Jacob Grimm\'s "First Germanic Sound Shift", or Grimm\'s Law and Verner\'s Law,Described in this and the linked articles but see Kleinman. 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.Lehmann, W. P. (Jan. - Mar., 1961). "A Definition of Proto-Germanic: A Study in the Chronological Delimitation of Languages". Language 37: pages 67-74. Proto-Indo-European had featured a moveable pitch accent comprising "an alternation of high and low tones"Bennett, William H. (May, 1970). "The Stress Patterns of Gothic" (html). PMLA 85: pages 463-472. Retrieved on 2007-11-06. First page and abstract no charge. 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, PIE *woyd-á > Gothic wait, "knows" (the greater/lesser than sign in linguistics indicates a genetic descent). Antonsen agreed with Lehmann about the upper boundaryAntonsen, Elmer H. (Jan. - Mar., 1965). "On Defining Stages in Prehistoric German". Language 41: pages 19-36. 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."Antonsen, Elmer H. (2002). Runes and Germanic Linguistics. Walter de Gruyter, pages26-30. ISBN 3110174626. This presentation also summarizes Lehmann\'s view.
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.Antonsen (2000) page 28 table 9.
Loans into Proto-Germanic from other Indo-European languages can be relatively dated by their conformance to Germanic sound changes. As the dates of neither the borrowings nor the sound changes are known with any precision, the utility of the loans for absolute, or calendar, chronology has been nil.
Most loans from the Celtic appear to have been made before the First Grimm Shift.Ringe, Donald (2006). From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic. Oxford University Press, page 296. ISBN 019928413X. An example of a Celtic loan is *rīk-, "king", Celtic *rīg-, with g>k.Watkins, Calvert (2000). Appendix I: Indo-European Roots: reg-. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. It was not borrowed from Latin because only the Celtic has the ī. Another is *walhaz-, "foreigner", from the Celtic represented by Latin Volcae, a Celtic tribal name, with c>h. One might hypothesize that the loans took place at the floruit of Celtic hegemony in the Hallstatt, but it spans several centuries.
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.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: pages 245-254. 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 1588113795
Phonology is the study of phonemes, which are represented in linguistics by placing them between slashes: /p/. Every phoneme contrasts with all the others; that is, none can be substituted for any other in a word without changing the meaning. Sounds or phones that can be substituted are allophones. A phoneme is considered to be a set of non-contrastive allophones. Alternatively, a sound may be specified by placing it between brackets: [p], but the latter is a transcription, or representation of the actual sound, and does not signify any allophones. Both types of symbol are used in this article.
The major types of phonemes in the Proto-Germanic inventory are consonants and vowels.
For more details on this topic, see International Phonetic Alphabet, Proto-Indo-European language.
The consonant inventory was generated by the action of Grimm\'s Law and Verner\'s Law on the PIE consonants of Pre-Proto-Germanic.
The table below lists the consonantal phonemes of Proto-Germanic classified by reconstructed pronunciation. The slashes around the phonemes are omitted for clarity. Two phonemes in the same box connected by "or" represent allophones, which are explained below. For descriptions of the sounds and definitions of the terms follow the links on the headings.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.
| CONSONANTS | Labials | Coronals | Velars | Labiovelars |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voiceless stops | p or pp | t or tt | k or kk | kʷ |
| Voiceless fricativesThe grapheme þ is often used instead of the IPA symbol θ. | f or ff | θ or θθ | x or h | xʷ or hʷ |
| Voiced fricatives or stopsThe phonemes /b/, /d/ and /g/ can be the stop consonants [b], [d] and [g] or the fricatives [β], [ð] and [ɣ], all of which characters are symbols in the IPA. The fricatives may also be written as graphemes with the bar used to produce ƀ, đ and ǥ. The characters in this and other similar tables typically do not use one system consistently throughout. | ƀ, b or bb | đ, d or dd | ǥ, g or gg | ǥʷ or gʷ |
| Nasals | m or mm | n or nn | ||
| sibilants | z, s or ss | |||
| Liquids, Glides | w or ww | r, l or rr, ll | j or jj |
Grimm\'s law as applied to pre-proto-Germanic is a chain shift of the original Indo-European stop consonants:
| unvoiced to fricative | voiced to unvoiced | aspirated to unaspirated | |
|---|---|---|---|
| labials | /p/ > /f/ | /b/ > /p/ | /bʰ/ > /b/ |
| dentals | /t/ > /θ/ | /d/ > /t/ | /dʰ/ > /d/ |
| velars | /k/ > /x/ | /ɡ/ > /k/ | /ɡʰ/ > /ɡ/ |
| labiovelars | /kʷ/ > /xʷ/ | /ɡʷ/ > /kʷ/ | /ɡʷʰ/ > /ɡʷ/, /w/, /ɡ/ |
P, t, k did not change 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).Van Kerckvoorde, Colette M. (1993). An Introduction to Middle Dutch. Mouton de Gruyter, page 123. ISBN 3110135353. 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/.
In addition tt>ss.
A second operation of the law 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 ...."McMahon, April M.S. (1994). Understanding Language Change. Cambridge University Press, page 227. ISBN 0521446651.
Verner\'s Law addresses a category of exceptions to Grimm\'s Law: a voiced fricative sometimes appears in place of an unvoiced fricative expected by Grimm\'s Law; for example, *PIE bhrátēr > Pgmc *brōþēr "brother" but PIE mātér > Pgmc mōðēr "mother." The law states that unvoiced fricatives: /s/, /f/, /θ/, /x/ are voiced when preceded by an unaccented syllable, but the accent system is the PIE one in Pre-Proto-Germanic. Verner\'s Law therefore follows Grimm\'s Law in time and precedes the Proto-Germanic stress accent. The voicing of some /s/ according to Verner\'s Law produced /z/, a new phoneme.
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."Trask, Robert Lawrence (2000). The Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics. Fitzroy Dearborn, page 122. ISBN 1579582184.
The double letters in the phonemes of the table represent consonants that have been lengthened or prolonged under some circumstances, appearing in some daughter languages as geminated graphemes. The phenomenon is therefore termed gemination. Kraehenmann says:Kraehenmann, Astrid (2003). Quantity and Prosodic Asymmetries is Alemannic: Synchronic and Diachronic. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, page 58. ISBN 3110176807. "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/, /g/ and /gʷ/ says Ringe "were stops in some environments and fricatives in others. The pattern of allophony is not clear in every detail."Ringe, page 100. 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:
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | [i(:)] | [u(:)] | |
| Mid | [e(:)] | [o:] | |
| Near-open | [æ:] (ē2) | ||
| Open | [a] |
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 (*).
It is often asserted out that 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. It is in fact debatable whether Germanic inflections are reduced at all. Other Indo-European languages attested much earlier than the Germanic languages, such as Hittite, also have a reduced inventory of noun cases. Germanic and Hittite might have lost them, or maybe they never shared in their acquisition.
Nouns and adjectives were declined in (at least) six cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental, and vocative. 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.
Proto-Germanic had six cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental, vocative), three genders, three numbers (singular, dual, plural), three moods (indicative, subjunctive < PIE optative, imperative), two voices (active, passive < PIE middle). This is quite similar to the state of Latin, Greek, and Middle Indo-Aryan of c. 200 AD.
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 conjugated 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), or 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 | *wulfōs, -ōz | *gastiz | *gastijiz |
| Accusative | *wulfan | *wulfanz | *gastin | *gastinz |
| Genitive | *wulfisa, -asa | *wulfōn | *gastisa | *gastijōn |
| Dative | *wulfai, -ē | *wulfamiz | *gastai | *gastī |
| Vocative | *wulfa | — | *gasti | — |
| Instrumental | *wulfō | — | *gastī | — |
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 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
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 | — | — |
| Instrumental | *þiō | — | — | — | — | — |
| Locative | *þī | — | — | — | — | — |
Proto-Germanic had only two tenses (preterite 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 tense. 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, as compared with 6 or 7 tenses in Greek and Latin. However:
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:Casas, Carlos Quiles; Fernando López-Menchero Díez (July 2007). A Grammar of Modern Indo-European (html). Asociación Cultural Dnghu. The ASCII text used on the web site has been replaced by the Proto-Germanic characters presented in this article.
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