Proto-Germanic (often abbreviated PGmc.), or Common Germanic, as it is sometimes known, is the unattested, reconstructed proto-language of all the Germanic languages, such as modern English, Frisian, Dutch, Afrikaans, German, Luxembourgish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, and Swedish.
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. 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.''
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.
Sound changes from Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic
The following changes are known or presumed to have occurred in the history of Proto-Germanic up to the point that it began to break up into distinct dialects. The changes are roughly in chronological order, with changes that operate on the outcome of earlier ones appearing later in the list.
Pre-Proto-Germanic
This stage began with the separation of the Germanic people, perhaps while still forming part of the Proto-Indo-European dialect continuum. It contained many innovations that were shared with other Indo-European branches to various degrees, probably through areal contacts, and mutual intelligibility with other dialects would have remained for some time.
Depalatalisation of PIE palatal stops, merging them with the plain stops (Germanic is therefore a centum language):
> - "hundred" > >
> - "work" > >
> - "stranger" > > "guest"
Epenthesis of before the syllabic sonorants:
> - "hundred" > >
> - "inside" > > "among"
> - "wolf" > >
> - "worm" > >
An epenthetic was inserted already in PIE after dental consonants when followed by a suffix beginning with a dental. This sequence now becomes: > > - "known" (pronounced ) > > > "certain"
A single example exists where was word-internal, in which case it remained (even after Grimm's law below)- "dad" >
Geminate consonants are shortened after a consonant or a long vowel - "act of calling" (pronounced ) > > > "command"
Word-final long vowels are lengthened to "overlong" vowels - "seeds" > >
Loss of laryngeals, phonemicising the allophones of :
Word-initial laryngeals are lost before a consonant - "tooth, acc." > >
* Laryngeals are lost before vowels:
* > - "is" > >
* > , > otherwise - "in front" > (with shift of accent) > "in addition"
* > , > otherwise - "eagle" > >
Laryngeals are lost after vowels, but lengthen the preceding vowel: > - "seeds" > >
* Two vowels that come to stand in hiatus because of this change contract into an overlong vowel - "dative plural" > > ; "eh₂-stem nom. pl." > >
* In word-final position, the resulting long vowels remain distinct from (shorter than) the overlong vowels that were formed from PIE word-final long vowels - "thematic 1st sg." >
* Laryngeals remain between consonants.
Cowgill's law: (and possibly ) is strengthened to between a sonorant and - "us two" > > >
Vocalisation of remaining laryngeals: > - "father" > > ; "sand" > >
Velars are labialised by following : "horse" > > >
Labiovelars are delabialised next to (or ) and before - ~ "killing" > > > "battle"
* This rule continued to operate into the Proto-Germanic period.
Early Proto-Germanic
This stage began its evolution as a form of centum PIE that had lost its laryngeals and had five long and six short vowels, as well as one or two overlong vowels. The consonant system was still that of PIE minus palatovelars and laryngeals, but the loss of syllabic resonants already made the language markedly different from PIE proper. Mutual intelligibility might have still existed, but strained, and this period marked the definitive break of Germanic from the other Indo-European languages and the beginning of Germanic proper, containing most of the sound changes that are now held to define this branch distinctively. This stage contained various consonant and vowel shifts, the loss of contrastive accent, and the beginnings of the reduction of unstressed syllables as a result.
Loss of word-final non-high short vowels , , - "(s)he knows" > >
A or preceding the vowel is also lost - "of that" > >
Single-syllable words were not affected, but clitics were - "and" > >
When the lost vowel was accented, the accent shifted to the preceding syllable - "us" > > > > (not , showing that loss occurred before Verner's law)
Grimm's law: Chain shift of the three series of stops. Note that voiced stops had already been devoiced before a voiceless obstruent prior to this stage. Labiovelars were delabialised before .
* Voiceless stops become fricatives, unless preceded by another obstruent.
* > () - "father" > >
* > () - "that" > >
* > () - "fight" > > ; "axle" > (devoicing) > >
* > () - "what" > >
* The sequences , , , , (only in "dad") remain.
* Germanic spirant law: In the sequences , , only the first element undergoes the shift; becomes - "grabbed" > > > "captive"; "eight" > > > ; "night, acc." > > >
* Voiced stops are devoiced:
* > - "deep" > > > (reformed as a-stem)
* > - "tooth, acc." > > ; "what" > >
* > - "work" > > >
* > () - "(s)he will step, subj." > > "(s)he comes"
* Aspirated stops become voiced fricatives (which become stops in some environments, such as after nasals, see below):
* > , () - "(s)he is carrying" > >
* > , () - "thing put" > > "judgement"
* > , () - "goose" > >
* > , () - "chant" > > "song"
Verner's law: voiceless fricatives are voiced, allophonically at first, when preceded by an unaccented syllable:
> - "over" > > >
> - "tribe" > > >
> - "young" > > > > (with -z by analogy)
> - "wheels (collective)" > > >
> - "of darkness" > > > ; "wheel" > > >
Some small words which were generally unaccented were also affected - , unstressed "I am" > > > ; , unstressed "they are" > > > (the stressed variants, which would have become and , were lost)
All words become stressed on their first syllable. The PIE contrastive accent is lost, phonemicising the voicing distinction created by Verner's law.
Word-initial > - "(s)he is asking for" > > > "(s)he waits" (with -þ- by analogy)
Assimilation of sonorants:
> - "thin" ~ fem. > ~ > ~ > ~ > ~
> - "full" > > >
> - "I am, unstr." > > >
Unstressed > - "thematic 1st du." >
Unstressed > before a consonant or word-finally - "u-stem gen. sg." > >
Unstressed > except before - "abstract noun suffix" > > >
Unstressed contracts to - "i-stem gen. sg." > > > (with -z by analogy)
before later becomes , but not until after the application of i-mutation.
Some words which could be unstressed as a whole were also affected, often creating stressed/unstressed pairs - "I" > > unstressed (remaining beside stressed )
Unstressed > - "(s)he is lying down" ~ "they are lying down" > ~ > ~ > ~ (with -þ- by analogy)
This process creates diphthongs from originally disyllabic sequences - "thematic optative 3pl" > > > ; "in the morning" > > "early"; "three" > > >
The sequence becomes - "strangers, nom. pl." > > > "guests"
Merging of non-high back vowels:
, > - "stranger" > > "guest"; "fight" > "battle"
, > - "thing put" > > > "judgement"; "sweet" > >
, > (â) - "seeds" > > > ; "eh₂-stem nom. pl." > >
Late Proto-Germanic
By this stage, Germanic had emerged as a distinctive branch and had undergone many of the sound changes that would make its later descendants recognisable as Germanic languages. It had shifted its consonant inventory from a system rich in plosives to one containing primarily fricatives, had lost the PIE mobile pitch accent in favour of a predictable stress accent, and had merged two of its vowels. The stress accent had also begun to cause the erosion of unstressed syllables already, which would continue in its descendants up to the present day. This final stage of the language included the remaining development until the breakup into dialects, and most notably featured the appearance of nasal vowels and the first beginning of
umlaut, another characteristic Germanic feature.
Word-final > - "that, acc. masc." > > "then"; "a-stem acc. sg." > > >
> before dental consonants - "hundred" > > > ; "ten" > > >
Word-final is lost after unstressed syllables, and the preceding vowel is nasalised (written as following N) - "a-stem acc. sg." > > > ; > > > ; "dative plural" > > >
Nasal is lowered to - "I was putting" > > > >
Elimination of :
Unstressed is lost between consonants - "sand" > > ; "to be silent" > (with added suffix) "they are silent" > > >
> elsewhere - "father" > > ; "to be silent" > (with added suffix) "(s)he is silent" > > >
Loss of after unstressed syllables - "ten" > > ; "(s)he would carry, subj." > > ; ~ "honey" > ~ > ~ > ~
> , sometimes - "snow" > > ; "wheels (collective)" > > >
i-mutation: > when followed by or in the same or next syllable - "(s)he is carrying" > > ; "middle" > > ; "new" > >
This eliminates the remaining , changing it to - "god" > > "Týr"; "three" > >
> when followed by a syllable-final nasal - "in" > ; "(s)he chants" > > "(s)he sings"
* This followed the earliest contact with Finnic people, since Finnish preserves the older vowel in the loanword ''rengas'' "ring" (from early Proto-Germanic ''*hrengaz'', later ''*hringaz'').
Long a is raised:
> - "thing put" > > "judgement"; "sweet" > >
> - "seeds" > > ; "eh₂-stem nom. pl." > >
* This followed the earliest contact with the Romans, since Latin Rōmānī was borrowed as *Rūmānīz and then shifted to *Rūmōnīz.
is lost between vowels except after and (but it is lost after syllabic ). The two vowels that come to stand in hiatus then contract to long vowels or diphthongs - "thematic optative 1sg sg." > > > ; "in the morning" > > "early"
This process creates a new from earlier - "to stand" > (with suffix added) "they stand" > >
is lost before , causing
compensatory lengthening and nasalisation of the preceding vowel - "(s)he hangs" > (phonetically )
Archaeological contributions
In one major 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. 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.
[[File:Germanic tribes (750BC-1AD).png|thumb|left|245px|The expansion of the Germanic tribes750 BC – AD 1 (after the Penguin Atlas of World History 1988):
]]
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.
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''), *''kuningaz'' 'king' (cf. Finn ''kuningas''), *''lambaz'' 'lamb' (cf. Finn ''lampah'', ''lammas''), *''lunaz'' 'ransom' (cf. Finn ''lunnas''), *''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'').
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." 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).
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. 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.
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.
W. P. Lehmann considered that Jacob Grimm's "First Germanic Sound Shift", or Grimm's Law and Verner's Law, 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. Proto-Indo-European had featured a moveable pitch accent comprising "an alternation of high and low tones" 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 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."
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.
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. For instance, one specimen *''rīkz'' 'ruler' was borrowed from Celtic *''rīgos'' 'king', with ''g'' → ''k''. 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'. 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', *''paþaz'' 'path' (cf. Avestan ''pantā'', g. ''pathō''), and *''wurstwa'' 'work' (cf. Av ''vərəštuua''). 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. Unsure is *''marhaz'' 'horse', which was either borrowed directly from Scytho-Sarmatian or through Celtic mediation.
Non-Indo-European elements
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.
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:
Voiced obstruents appear as ''b, d, g''; this does not imply any particular analysis of the underlying phonemes as stops or fricatives . In other literature, they may be written as graphemes with a bar to produce , and .
Unvoiced fricatives appear as ''f, þ, h'' (perhaps ). may have become in certain positions at a later stage of Proto-Germanic itself. Similarly for , which later became or in some environments.
Labiovelars appear as ''kw, hw, gw''; this does not imply any particular analysis as single sounds (e.g. ) or clusters (e.g. ).
The "yod" sound appears as ''j'' . Note that the normal convention for representing this sound in Proto-Indo-European is ''y''; the use of ''j'' does not imply any actual change in the pronunciation of the sound.
Long vowels are denoted with a macron over the letter, e.g. ''ō''. When a distinction is necessary, and are transcribed as ''ē¹'' and ''ē²'' respectively. ''ē¹'' is sometimes transcribed as ''æ'' or '''' instead, but this is not followed here.
Overlong vowels appear with circumflexes, e.g. ''ô''. In other literature they are often denoted by a doubled macron.
Nasal vowels are written here with following ''N'', e.g. ''ôN'' . Most commonly in literature, they are denoted simply by a following n. However, this can cause confusion between a word-final nasal vowel and a word-final regular vowel followed by ; a distinction which was phonemic. Tildes (ã, ĩ, ũ...) are also used. Don Ringe denotes them with
ogoneks (ą, į, ų...).
Diphthongs appear as ''ai, au, eu, iu, ōi, ōu'' and perhaps ''ēi, ēu''. However, when immediately followed by the corresponding semivowel, they appear as ''ajj, aww, eww, iww''. ''u'' is written as ''w'' when between a vowel and ''j''. This convention is based on the usage in Don Ringe's recent book ''From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic''.
Long vowels followed by a non-high vowel were separate syllables and are written as such here, except for ''ī'', which is written ''ij'' in that case.
Consonants
The table below 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.
| + Proto-Germanic consonants
|
| !
|
bilabial consonant>Bilabial
|
interdental consonant>Dental
|
alveolar consonant>Alveolar
|
palatal consonant>Palatal
|
velar consonant>Velar
|
Labial-velar consonant>Labial-velar
|
| nasal consonant>Nasal
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Stop consonant>Plosive
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| fricative consonant>Fricative
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| trill consonant>Trill
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| approximant consonant>Approximant
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| lateral consonant>Lateral
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Notes:
# was an allophone of before velar obstruents.
# was an allophone of before labial-velar obstruents.
# , and were allophones of , and in certain positions (see below).
# The phoneme written as ''f'' was certainly still realised as a bilabial fricative () 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'' , where the letter p rather than the more usual f was used to denote the bilabial realisation before .
Grimm's 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.
{|class="wikitable"
!
! 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
|
| >
| >
| > ,
| > ,
|
|-
| dentals
|
| >
| >
| > ,
| > ,
|
|-
| velars
|
| >
| >
| > ,
| > ,
|
|-
|labiovelars
| > > >
| >
| >
| > ,
| > ,
| > > ,
|}
''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). 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/.
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 ...."
Verner's law follows Grimm's law in time, and states that unvoiced fricatives: 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 according to Verner's Law produced , a new phoneme. 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.
As a result of the loss of contrastive accent, the conditioning environment for the original consonant alternations created by Verner's law was lost. As a result, since the original cause of the alternation was no longer obvious to native speakers, significant levelling occurred throughout the Germanic period as well as in the later daughter languages. The alternations became less phonetic and increasingly grammatical in nature, leading to the phenomenon known as Grammatischer Wechsel. Already in Proto-Germanic, most alternations in nouns were levelled in one direction or the other, although some were preserved, only to be levelled later in the daughters (but differently in each one). Alternations in noun and verb endings were also levelled, usually in favour of the voiced alternants in nouns, but a split remained in verbs where unsuffixed (strong) verbs received the voiced alternants while suffixed (weak) verbs had the voiceless alternants. Alternation between the present and past of strong verbs remained common and was not levelled in Proto-Germanic, and survives up to the present day in some Germanic languages.
Allophones
Sometimes the shift produced consonants that were pronounced differently (allophones) depending on the context of the original. With regard to original or Trask says: "The resulting or were reduced to and in word-initial position."
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: "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 , , and "were stops in some environments and fricatives in others. The pattern of allophony is not clear in every detail." 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:
Word-initial and were or became and .
Word-initial was , judging from developments in Anglo-Frisian.
Stops appeared after homorganic nasal consonants: , , , . This was the only place where a voiced labiovelar could still occur.
Gemination produced , , . This rule continued to apply at least into the early West Germanic languages, since the West Germanic gemination produced geminated plosives from earlier voiced fricatives.
was after l or z. Evidence for after is conflicting: it appears as a stop in Gothic ''waurd'' "word" (not *''waurþ'', with devoicing), but as a fricative in Old Norse ''orð''.
Labiovelars
Numerous additional changes affected the labiovelars.
#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'' ('to sing') versus *''sungun'' ('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].
#After the operation of
Verner's law, various changes conspired to almost completely eliminate voiced labiovelars. Initially, became , e.g. PIE *gʷʱédʱyeti > PGmc. bidiþi "(s)he asks for". The fricative variant (which occurred in most non-initial environments) usually became , but sometimes instead turned into . The only environment in which a voiced labiovelar remained was after a nasal, e.g. in *''singwanaN'' "to sing". These various changes often led to complex alternations, e.g. *''sehwanaN'' ('to see'), *''sēgun'' ('they saw', indicative), *''sēwīn'' ('they saw', subjunctive), which were reanalysed and regularised differently in the various daughter languages.
Vowels
Proto-Germanic had four short vowels 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
|
|
|
! colspan="3" |
! colspan="3" |
| ! short
|
! long
|
! overl.
|
! short
|
! long
|
! overl.
|
| Close vowel>Close
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Close-mid vowel>Close-mid
|
|
?
|
|
|
|
|
| Open-mid vowel>Open-mid
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Open vowel>Open
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
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 and , or perhaps and . Their timbres then differentiated by raising (and perhaps rounding) the long vowel to . 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 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:
Short: , , ,
Long: , , (possibly , )
Note the change > before or in the same or following syllable. This removed (which became ) but created from earlier .
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 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 ).
Overlong vowels
Proto-Germanic had two overlong or trimoraic long vowels ''ô'' and ''ê'' , the latter mainly in adverbs (cf. *''hwadrê'' "whereto, whither"). Trimoraic vowels generally occurred at
morpheme boundaries where a bimoraic long vowel and a short vowel in hiatus contracted, especially after the loss of an intervening
laryngeal (-''VHV''-). One example, without a laryngeal, includes the class II weak verbs (''ō''-stems) where a -''j''- was lost between vowels, so that -''ōja'' → ''ōa'' → ''ô'' (cf. *''salbōjanaN'' → *''salbônaN'' → Gothic ''salbōn'' "to anoint"). However, the majority occurred in word-final syllables (inflectional endings) probably because in this position the vowel could not be resyllabified. Additionally, Germanic, like Balto-Slavic, lengthened bimoraic long vowels in absolute final position, perhaps to better conform to a word's
prosodic template; e.g., PGmc *''arô'' "eagle" ← PIE *''h₃érō'' just as Lith ''akmuő'' "stone", OSl ''kamy'' ← *''aḱmō̃'' ← PIE *''h₂éḱmō''). Contrast:
contraction after loss of laryngeal: gen.pl. *''wulfôN'' "wolves'" ← *''wulfôn'' ← pre-Gmc *''wúlpōom'' ← PIE *''''; ō-stem nom.pl. *''-ôz'' ← PIE *''-eh₂es''.
contraction of short vowels: a-stem nom.pl. *''wulfôz'' "wolves" ← PIE *''wĺ̥kʷoes''.
But vowels that were lengthened by laryngeals did not become overlong. Compare:
ō-stem nom.sg. *''-ō'' ← *''-ā'' ← PIE *'''';
ō-stem acc.sg. *''-ōN'' ← *''-ān'' ← *''-ām'' (by Stang's law) ← PIE *'''';
ō-stem acc.pl. *''-ōz'' ← *''-āz'' ← *''-ās'' (by Stang's law) ← PIE *'''';
Trimoraic vowels are distinguished from bimoraic vowels by their outcomes in attested Germanic languages: word-final trimoraic vowels remained long vowels while bimoraic vowels developed into short vowels. Older theories about the phenomenon claimed that long and overlong vowels were both long but differed in tone, i.e., ''ô'' and ''ê'' had a "circumflex" (rise-fall-rise) tone while ''ō'' and ''ē'' had an "acute" (rising) tone, much like the tones of modern Scandinavian languages, Baltic, and Ancient Greek, and asserted that this distinction was inherited from PIE. However, this view was abandoned since languages do not combine distinctive intonations on unstressed syllables with contrastive stress and vowel length. Modern theories have reinterpreted overlong vowels as having superheavy syllable weight (three moras) and therefore greater length than ordinary long vowels.
By the end of the Proto-Germanic period, word-final long vowels were shortened to short vowels. Following that, overlong vowels were shortened to regular long vowels in all positions, merging with originally long vowels except word-finally (because of the earlier shortening), so that they remained distinct in that position. This was a late dialectal development, because the end result was not the same in all Germanic languages: word-final ''ē'' shortened to ''a'' in East and West Germanic but to ''i'' in Old Norse, and word-final ''ō'' shortened to ''a'' in Gothic but to ''o'' (probably ) in early North and West Germanic, with a later raising to ''u'' (the 6th century Salic law still has ''maltho'' in late Frankish). Perhaps the most economic explanation is that the shortening of word-final long ''ē'' and ''ō'' initially only produced and within Proto-Germanic times, and that the raising and lowering occurred only after the dialects had begin to split up.
The shortened overlong vowels in final position developed as regular long vowels from that point on, including the lowering of ''ē'' to ''ā'' in North and West Germanic. The monopthongization of unstressed ''au'' in Northwest Germanic produced a phoneme which merged with this new word-final long ''ō'', while the monophthongization of unstressed ''ai'' produced a new ''ē'' which did not merge with original ''ē'', but rather with ''ē2'', as it was not lowered to ''ā''. This split, combined with the asymmetric development in West Germanic, with ''ē'' lowering but ''ō'' raising, points to an early difference in the articulation height of the two vowels that was not present in North Germanic. It could be seen as evidence that the lowering of ''ē'' to ''ā'' began in West Germanic at a time when final vowels were still long, and spread to North Germanic through the late Germanic dialect continuum, but only reaching the latter after the vowels had already been shortened.
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'', 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'':
''ēi'' - Old High German ''fiara'' (side).
The preterite of class VII strong verbs with ''ai'', ''al'' or ''an'' plus a consonant, or ''ē¹''.
''iz'' - Old English ''mēd'', Old High German ''miata'' (reward) versus Ancient Greek ''μισθός'' (misthos).
Certain pronomial forms, e.g. Old English ''hēr'' (here).
Words borrowed from Latin ''ē'' or ''e'' in the root syllable after a certain period (older loans also show ''ī'').
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 ''-at'' remained as ''-a'' in the nominative/accusative singular of adjectives (from which Gothic ''ƕa'' "what" by analogy). 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:
Plosive + ''l'': ''pl'', ''kl'', ''fl'', ''hl'', ''sl'', ''bl'', ''gl'', ''wl''
Plosive + ''r'': ''pr'', ''tr'', ''kr'', ''fr'', ''þr'', ''hr'', ''br'', ''dr'', ''gr'', ''wr''
Non-labial obstruent + ''w'': ''tw'', ''dw'', ''kw'', ''þw'', ''hw'', ''sw''
Velar + nasal, ''s'' + nasal: ''kn'', ''hn'', ''sm'', ''sn''
It allowed the following clusters in medial position only:
''tl''
Liquid + ''w'': ''lw'', ''rw''
Geminates: ''pp'', ''tt'', ''kk'', ''ss'', ''bb'', ''dd'', ''gg'', ''mm'', ''nn'', ''ll'', ''rr'', ''jj'', ''ww''
Consonant + ''j'': ''pj'', ''tj'', ''kj'', ''fj'', ''þj'', ''hj'', ''zj'', ''bj'', ''dj'', ''gj'', ''mj'', ''nj'', ''lj'', ''rj''
It allowed the following clusters in medial and final position only:
Fricative + obstruent: ''ft'', ''ht'', ''fs'', ''hs'', ''zd''
Nasal + obstruent: ''mp'', ''mf'', ''ms'', ''mb'', ''nt'', ''nk'', ''nþ'', ''nh'', ''ns'', ''nd'', ''ng'' (however ''nh'' was simplified to ''h'', with nasalisation and lengthening of the previous vowel, in late Proto-Germanic)
''l'' + consonant: ''lp'', ''lt'', ''lk'', ''lf'', ''lþ'', ''lh'', ''ls'', ''lb'', ''ld'', ''lg'', ''lm''
''r'' + consonant: ''rp'', ''rt'', ''rk'', ''rf'', ''rþ'', ''rh'', ''rs'', ''rb'', ''rd'', ''rg'', ''rm'', ''rn''
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 and had been lost, and had merged with 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 long-stemmed words and then Old High German lost them in many short-stemmed ones as well, by analogy.
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 to 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''. Therefore, the Anglo-Frisian brightening must necessarily have occurred very early in the history of the Anglo-Frisian languages, before the loss of final ''-aN''.
The outcome of final vowels and combinations in the various daughters is shown in the table below:
| ! Ending(s)
|
! PG
|
! Goth
|
! NGm
|
! ON
|
! WGm
|
! OHG
|
! OE
|
| a-stem masculine accusative singular
|
aN
|
-
|
a
|
-
|
|
|
|
| a-stem masculine nominative singular
|
az
|
s
|
az
|
r
|
| i-stem masculine accusative singular
|
iN
|
-
|
i?
|
-
|
|
|
|
| i-stem nominative singular
|
iz
|
s
|
iz
|
r
|
| u-stem accusative singular
|
uN
|
u
|
u?
|
-
|
|
|
|
| u-stem nominative singular
|
uz
|
us
|
uz
|
r
|
| 1st person singular present of verbs
|
ō
|
|
o > u
|
-
|
o > u
|
| ō-stem adjective accusative singular
|
ōN
|
ō
|
a
|
|
|
|
| ō-stem accusative plural
|
ōz
|
ōs
|
ōz
|
ar
|
| 3rd person singular past of weak verbs
|
ē
|
|
e > i
|
|
e > a
|
| a-stem dative singular
|
ai
|
ē
|
ē
|
e
|
e
|
| short ja-stem neuter nominative singular
|
jaN
|
i
|
ja
|
-
|
|
|
|
| short ja-stem masculine nominative singular
|
jaz
|
is > jis
|
jaz
|
r
|
| i-stem nominative plural
|
īz
|
|
īz
|
|
|
| long ja-stem masculine nominative singular
|
ijaz
|
ijaz
|
| long ja-stem neuter nominative singular
|
ijaN
|
|
ija
|
|
| 3rd person singular past subjunctive
|
ī
|
ī
|
| adverb suffix
|
ô
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| genitive plural
|
ôN
|
| ō-stem nominative plural
|
ôz
|
ōs
|
|
|
| u-stem genitive singular
|
auz
|
aus
|
| adverb suffix
|
ê
|
ē
|
ā
|
a
|
ā
|
a
|
e
|
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.
|
|
!style="text-align:center;" colspan="2" |
!width="80px">Singular!!width="80px" | Plural!!width="80px" >Singular!!width="80px" | 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.
|
|
| !style="text-align:center;" colspan="6" |
!style="text-align:center;" colspan="2">Masculine!!style="text-align:center;" colspan="2" | Feminine!!style="text-align:center;" colspan="2" >Neuter!!style="text-align:center;" rowspan="2" | Singular!!style="text-align:center;" rowspan="2" | Plural |
| Singular!!width="80px" | Plural!!width="80px" >Singular!!width="80px" | Plural!!width="80px" | Singular!!width="80px" | 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 underlies the English determiners ''the'' and ''that''. In the North and West Germanic languages (but not in Gothic), a second demonstrative with proximal semantics (i.e. "this" as opposed to "that") evolved by appending ''-si'' to the Proto-Germanic demonstrative, with complex subsequent developments in the various daughter languages. This new demonstrative underlies the English determines ''this'', ''these'' and ''those''. (Originally, ''those'' was masculine plural ''this'' and ''these'' was feminine plural ''this''.)
|
|
Masculine!!style="text-align:center;" colspan="2" |
| 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
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, Donald Ringe assumes for Proto-Germanic an early loss of the PIE imperfect aspect (something that also occurred in most other branches), followed by merging of the aspectual categories present-aorist and the mood categories indicative-subjunctive. (This assumption allows him to account for cases where Proto-Germanic has present indicative verb forms that look like PIE aorist subjunctives.)
However, many of the tenses of the other languages (e.g. future, future perfect, pluperfect, Latin imperfect) are not cognate with each other and represent separate innovations in each language. For example, the Greek future uses an /s/ ending, apparently derived from a desiderative construction that in PIE was part of the system of derivational morphology (not the inflectional system); the Sanskrit future uses an /sy/ ending, from a different desiderative verb construction and often with a different ablaut grade from Greek; while the Latin future uses endings derived either from the PIE subjunctive or from the PIE verb "to be". Similarly, the Latin imperfect and pluperfect stem from Italic innovations and are not cognate with the corresponding Greek or Sanskrit forms; and while the Greek and Sanskrit pluperfect tenses appear cognate, there are no parallels in any other Indo-European languages, leading to the conclusion that this tense is either a shared Greek-Sanskrit innovation or separate, coincidental developments in the two languages. In this respect, Proto-Germanic can be said to be characterized by the failure to innovate new synthetic tenses as much as the loss of existing tenses. Later Germanic languages did innovate new tenses, derived through periphrastic constructions, with Modern English likely possessing the most elaborated tense system ("Yes, the house will still be being built a month from now").
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:
''*bītanaN'' (I) "to bite" → ''*baitijanaN'' "to bridle, yoke, restrain", i.e. "to make bite down"
''*rīsanaN'' (I) "to rise" → ''*raizijanaN'' "to raise", i.e. "to cause to rise"
''*beuganaN'' (II) "to bend" → ''*baugijanaN'' "to bend (transitive)"
''*brinnanaN'' (III) "to burn" → ''*brannijanaN'' "to burn (transitive)"
''*frawerþanaN'' (III) "to perish" → ''*frawardijanaN'' "to destroy", i.e. "to cause to perish"
''*nesanaN'' (V) "to survive" → ''*nazjanaN'' "to save", i.e. "to cause to survive"
''*ligjanaN'' (V) "to lie down" → ''*lagjanaN'' "to lay", i.e. "to cause to lie down"
''*faranaN'' (VI) "to travel, go" → ''*fōrijanaN'' "to lead, bring", i.e. "to cause to go"
''*faranaN'' (VI) "to travel, go" → ''*farjanaN'' "to carry across", i.e. "to cause to travel" (an archaic instance of the ''o''-grade ablaut used despite the differing past-tense ablaut)
''*grētanaN'' (VII) "to weep" → ''*grōtijanaN'' "to cause to weep"
''*lais'' (I, preterite-present) "(s)he knows" → ''*laizijanaN'' "to teach", i.e. "to cause to know"
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).
| rowspan="2" colspan="2" | |
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
|
|
| Present Participle
|
|
| Past Participle
|
|
Pronouns
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
:
''Proto-Germanic'', with grammar and vocabulary modernised
:
''English''
:
See also
Pre-Germanic
Holtzmann's Law
Suebi
Notes
References
Cercignani, Fausto, ''Indo-European ē in Germanic'', in «Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung», 86/1, 1972, pp. 104–110.
Cercignani, Fausto, ''Indo-European eu in Germanic'', in «Indogermanische Forschungen», 78, 1973, pp. 106–112.
Cercignani, Fausto, ''Proto-Germanic */i/ and */e/ Revisited'', in «Journal of English and Germanic Philology», 78/1, 1979, pp. 72–82.
Krahe, Hans and Meid, Wolfgang. ''Germanische Sprachwissenschaft'', 2 vols., de Gruyter, Berlin (1969).
Ramat, Anna Giacalone and Paolo Ramat (Eds.) (1998). ''The Indo-European Languages''. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-06449-X.
External links
W.P. Lehmann & J. Slocum (eds.) ''A Grammar of Proto-Germanic'' (Online version)
Proto-Germanic nominal and pronominal paradigms
A dictionary of Proto-Germanic (in German)
Orel, V. (2003) A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, London: Brill
Charles Prescott. "Germanic and the Ruki Dialects"
Table: Germanic & PIE ''-ia'' and ''-ja'' stems compared across reference sources
Category:Germanic languages
Category:Pre-Roman Iron Age
Germanic
Category:Pre-Viking Scandinavia
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