Map of the Nordic Bronze Age culture, ca 1200 BC

Map of the Pre-Roman Iron Age culture(s) associated with Proto-Germanic, c. The Nordic Bronze Age (also Northern Bronze Age) is the name given by Oscar Montelius to a period and a Bronze Age culture in Scandinavian The Pre-Roman Iron Age of Northern Europe ( 5th / 4th century BC - 1st century BC) designates the earliest part of the Iron Age in Scandinavia 500 BC-50 BC. The magenta-colored area south of Scandinavia represents the Jastorf culture

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 such as modern English, Dutch, German, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Swedish. The Jastorf culture is an Iron Age Material culture in what is now north Germany, spanning the 6th to 1st centuries BC forming the southern part of the A proto-language is a Language which was the common ancestor of related languages that form a Language family. The Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European (IE Language family. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States Dutch ( is a West Germanic language spoken by around 24 million people 22 million of which are from the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname The German language (de ''Deutsch'') is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. Danish ( d̥ænsɡ̊ is one of the North Germanic languages (also called Scandinavian languages a sub-group of the Germanic branch of the Norwegian ( norsk) is a North Germanic Language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is an official language Icelandic ( is a North Germanic language, the language of Iceland. Swedish ( is a North Germanic language spoken by more than nine million people predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the ^[1] The Proto-Germanic language is not directly attested by any surviving texts but has been reconstructed using the comparative method. Linguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of the unattested ancestor ( Proto-language) of one or more given languages The comparative method (in Comparative linguistics) is a technique used by linguists to demonstrate genetic relationships between Languages It aims to prove However, a few surviving inscriptions in a runic script from Scandinavia dated to c. Terminology and usage As a cultural term "Scandinavia" has no official definition and is subject to usage by those who identify with the culture in question as well 200 are thought to represent a stage of Proto-Norse or Late Common Germanic immediately following the "Proto-Germanic" stage. Proto-Norse (also Proto-Scandinavian, Primitive Norse, Proto-Nordic, Ancient Nordic, Old Scandinavian and Proto-North Germanic ^[2] 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. Finnish ( or suomen kieli) is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland (92% As of 2006) and by ethnic Finns outside Estonian (; ˈeːsti ˈkeːl is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1 ^[2]

Proto-Germanic is itself descended from Proto-Indo-European (PIE).

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

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. "Sverige" redirects here For other uses see Sweden (disambiguation and Sverige (disambiguation. This article is about the region of Denmark. For the World War I naval battle see Battle of Jutland. Urheimat ( German: ur- Original, Ancient; Heimat Home, Homeland) is a linguistic term denoting the The Germanic peoples are a historical group of Indo-European -speaking peoples originating in Northern Europe and identified by their use of the Germanic The Nordic Bronze Age (also Northern Bronze Age) is the name given by Oscar Montelius to a period and a Bronze Age culture in Scandinavian The 25th century BC is a Century which lasted from the year 2500 BC to 2401 BC 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. The Corded Ware culture, alternatively characterized as the Battle Axe culture or Single Grave culture is an enormous European Archaeological horizon that Old Europepng|350px|right|thumb|Ca 3500 BC map of Europe showing an approximation of the Funnelbeaker culture in green and a number of important contemporary cultures see Vinca, The Neolithic (from Greek νεολιθικός — neolithikos from νέος neos, "new" + λίθος lithos ^[4]

Proto-Germanic then evolved from the Indo-European spoken in the Urheimat region. Urheimat ( German: ur- Original, Ancient; Heimat Home, Homeland) is a linguistic term denoting the 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). ^[5]

Linguistic definitions

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. "^[6] By 250 BC, Proto-Germanic had branched into five groups of Germanic (two each in West and North, and one in East). ^[5]

For more details on this topic, see Germanic languages. The Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European (IE Language family.

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. Historical linguistics (also called diachronic linguistics) is the study of language change In Historical linguistics, the Tree Model (German Stammbaumtheorie) is a model of language change in which Daughter languages are genetically ^[7] One of the problems with the node^[5] 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. ^[8]

W. P. Lehmann considered that Jacob Grimm's "First Germanic Sound Shift", or Grimm's Law and Verner's Law,^[9] 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. Winfred P Lehmann (born 23 June, 1916 in Surprise Nebraska &ndash died 1 August, 2007 in Austin Texas) was a historical Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm ( Hanau, January 4, 1785 &ndash September 20, 1863 in Berlin) German Philologist Grimm's law (also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift or the Rask's-Grimm's rule) named for Jacob Grimm, is a set of statements describing Verner's law, stated by Karl Verner in 1875 describes a historical Sound change in the Proto-Germanic language whereby voiceless fricatives * ^[10] Proto-Indo-European had featured a moveable pitch accent comprising "an alternation of high and low tones"^[11] 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 boundary^[12] 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. "^[13]

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. ^[14]

Other Indo-European loans

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 Celtic appear to have been made before the First Grimm Shift. The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic" a branch of the greater Indo-European Language family. ^[15] An example of a Celtic loan is *rīk-, "king", Celtic *rīg-, with g>k. ^[16] 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 Hallstatt, but it spans several centuries. The Hallstatt culture was the predominant

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 Germanic substrate hypothesis is an attempt to explain the distinctive nature of the Germanic languages within the context of the Indo-European language family In Contact linguistics, a substratum ( lat sub: under + stratum: layer → lower layer) is a Language 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. Sigmund Feist ( Mainz, June 12, 1865 - Copenhagen, March 23, 1943) was a German Jewish pedagogue and historical ^[17]

Phonology

Phonology is the study of phonemes, which are represented in linguistics by placing them between slashes: /p/. Phonology ( Greek φωνή (phōnē voice sound + λόγος (lógos word speech subject of discussion is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning The phoneME project is Sun Microsystems reference implementation of Java virtual machine and associated libraries of Java ME with source licensed under the GNU Linguistics is the scientific study of Language, encompassing a number of sub-fields 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. Phonetics (from the Greek φωνή ( phonê) "sound" or "voice" is the study of the physical sounds of human speech In Phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds ( Phones that belong to the same Phoneme. 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. In Articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a Speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper Vocal tract, the upper vocal In Phonetics, a vowel is a Sound in spoken Language, such as English ah! or oh!, pronounced with an open Vocal tract

For more details on this topic, see International Phonetic Alphabet, Proto-Indo-European language. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA is a system of phonetic notation based on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic

Consonants

The consonant inventory was generated by the action of Grimm's Law and Verner's Law on the PIE consonants of Pre-Proto-Germanic.

Consonant inventory

The table below^[5] 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. ^[18]

Grimm's law

Main article: Grimm's Law

Grimm's law as applied to pre-proto-Germanic is a chain shift of the original Indo-European stop consonants (with slashes around the phonemes omitted for clarity, like in the table above):

p, t, and 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). In Articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a Speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper Vocal tract, the upper vocal Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips ( bilabial articulation or with the lower lip and the upper teeth ( labiodental articulation Coronal consonants are articulated with the flexible front part of the Tongue. Voice or voicing is a term used in Phonetics and Phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a Consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the Vocal tract. Voice or voicing is a term used in Phonetics and Phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless Fricatives are Consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together Voice or voicing is a term used in Phonetics and Phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless A nasal consonant (also called nasal stop or nasal continuant) is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth allowing air to escape freely through the A sibilant is a type of Fricative or Affricate Consonant, made by directing a jet of air through a narrow channel in the Vocal tract towards Liquid consonants, or liquids, are Approximant Consonants that are not classified as Semivowels (glides because they do not correspond phonetically Semivowels — also known as glides or non-syllabic vowels —are Vowels that form Diphthongs with full syllabic vowels Grimm's law (also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift or the Rask's-Grimm's rule) named for Jacob Grimm, is a set of statements describing Grimm's law (also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift or the Rask's-Grimm's rule) named for Jacob Grimm, is a set of statements describing In the study of Historical linguistics and phonetic change a chain shift is a type of sound shift in which a group of sounds all change at about the same time A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a Consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the Vocal tract. ^[21] 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 similar shift on the consonant inventory of Proto-Germanic later generated High German. The High German languages (in German, Hochdeutsch) are any of the varieties of standard German, Luxembourgish and 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 . Low German or Low Saxon (in Germany: Plattdüütsch or Nedderdüütsch; in Netherlands: Nedersaksisch or Nederduuts . . and High German further south . The High German languages (in German, Hochdeutsch) are any of the varieties of standard German, Luxembourgish and . . . "^[22]

Verner's law

Main article: Verner's law

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. Verner's law, stated by Karl Verner in 1875 describes a historical Sound change in the Proto-Germanic language whereby voiceless fricatives * " 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. In Linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain Syllables in a word 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. ^[5]

The 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. "^[23]

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. In Typography, a grapheme is the fundamental unit in written language. The phenomenon is therefore termed gemination. In Phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken Consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short Consonant. Kraehenmann says:^[24] "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. "^[25] 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:

• Stops appeared after homorganic nasal consonants (had the same place of articulation); for example, n produced a following [d]. In Articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a Consonant is the point of contact where an Obstruction
• Gemination produced [b], [d], [g].
• Word-initial /b/ and /d/ were or became [b] and [d].
• /d/ was [d] after l or z.

Vowels

• Proto-Germanic had four short vowels (i, u, e, a), and four or five long vowels (ī, ū, ē, ō and perhaps æ). A front vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far forward A central vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between A back vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as A close vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in many spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as A mid vowel is a Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an A near-open vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a near-open vowel is that the tongue is positioned similarly An open vowel is a Vowel sound of a type used in most spoken Languages The defining characteristic of an open vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far as The exact phonetic quality of the vowels is uncertain.
• PIE a and o merge into Proto-Germanic a, PIE ā and ō merge into Proto-Germanic ō (similar mergers happened in the Slavic languages, but in the opposite direction). The Slavic languages (also called Slavonic languages) a group of closely related Languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages At the time of the merge, the vowels probably were [ɒ] and [ɒ:] before their timbres differentiated into maybe [ɑ] and [ɔ:].
• ǣ and ē are also transcribed as 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). Krahe treats ē₂ (secondary ē) as identical with ī. It probably continues PIE ei or ēi, and it may have been in the process of transition from a diphthong to a long simple vowel in the Proto-Germanic period. Gothic makes no orthographic and therefore presumably no phonetic distinction between ē₁ and ē₂. The existence of two Proto-Germanic [e:]-like phonemes is supported by the existence of two e-like Elder Futhark runes, Ehwaz and Eihwaz. The Elder Futhark (or Elder Fuþark, Older Futhark, Old Futhark) is the oldest form of the Runic alphabet, used by Germanic tribes *Ehwaz is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name of the Elder Futhark e Rune, meaning " Horse " (cognate to Latin Eiwaz or Eihaz (reconstructed *īhaz / *ēhaz or *īwaz / *ēwaz) was a Proto-Germanic word for " yew "
• 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. This is reflected to the least extent in Proto-Norse, with steadily greater reduction in Gothic, Old High German, Old English, Modern German and Modern English. Proto-Norse (also Proto-Scandinavian, Primitive Norse, Proto-Nordic, Ancient Nordic, Old Scandinavian and Proto-North Germanic Gothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. New High German (NHG is the term used for the most recent period in the history of the German language. Modern English is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift, completed in roughly 1550

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 out that Germanic languages have a highly reduced system of inflections as compared with Greek, Latin or Sanskrit. Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Sanskrit (sa संस्कृता वाक् saṃskṛtā vāk, for short sa संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam) is a historical 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.

General morphological features

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. The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three traditional branches of the Germanic family of Languages and include languages such as English

Verbs and pronouns had three numbers: singular, dual and plural. Dual is a Grammatical number that some languages use in addition to singular and Plural. Plural is a Grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the Referent in the real world 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. The Middle Indo-Aryan ( Middle Indic) languages are the early medieval dialects of the Indo-Aryan languages, the descendants of the Old Indo-Aryan dialects such as 200 AD.

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), or nouns of relationship (ending in /er/), and neuter nouns in /z/ (this class was greatly expanded in German). The German language (de ''Deutsch'') is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. 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.

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. The German language (de ''Deutsch'') is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. In the proto-language, as in Gothic, such terms have no relevance. Gothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. 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.

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.

Verbs

Proto-Germanic had only two tenses (preterite and present), compared to the six or seven in Greek, Latin and Sanskrit. The Ancient Greek language is the historical stage in the development of the Hellenic language family spanning the Archaic (c Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Sanskrit (sa संस्कृता वाक् saṃskṛtā vāk, for short sa संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam) is a historical Some of this difference is due to deflexion, featured by a loss of tenses present in Proto-Indo-European, for example the perfect tense. Deflexion is a linguistic process related to Inflectional languages 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.

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:

• Later Germanic languages (especially Modern English) have a more elaborated tense system, derived through periphrastic constructions. Modern English is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift, completed in roughly 1550 In Linguistics, periphrasis is a device by which a grammatical category or relationship is expressed by a Free morpheme (typically one or more Function
• PIE may have had as few as three "tenses" (present, aorist, perfect), which had primarily aspectual value, with secondary tensal values. Present Tense is the first Sagittarius album released in 1968 by Columbia Records. The perfect aspect is variously considered either an aspect or tense which calls a listener's attention to the consequences generated by an action rather than the The future tense was probably rendered using the subjunctive and/or desiderative verbs. In Linguistics, a desiderative form is one that has the meaning of "wanting to X" Other tenses were derived in the history of the individual languages through various means (originally periphrastic constructions, such as the augment /e-/ of Greek and Sanskrit and the /-b-/ forms of Latin, derived from the PIE verb /bʱuː/ "be"; reinterpretation of subjunctive and desiderative formations as the future; analogical formations).
• The Germanic past tense contains forms deriving from both the PIE aorist and perfect; this is similar to the Latin perfect tense.

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. August Schleicher ( February 19, 1821 – December 6, 1868) was a German linguist born in Meiningen ( Duchy Schleicher's fable (avis akvāsas ka is an artificial text composed in the reconstructed language Proto-Indo-European (PIE published by August Schleicher in Below is a rendering of this fable into Proto-Germanic:^[26]

Awiz exʷaz-ux: awiz, xʷesja wulno ne ist, spexet exʷanz, ainan krun waǥan weǥantun, ainan-ux mekon ƀoran, ainan-ux ǥumonun axu ƀerontun. Awiz nu exʷamaz weuxet: xert aǥnutai meke witantei, exʷans akantun weran. Exʷaz weuxant: xluđi, awi! kert aknutai uns wituntmaz: mannaz, foþiz, wulnon awjan xʷurneuti seƀi warman wistran. Awjan-ux wulno ne isti. þat xexluwaz awiz akran ƀukeþ.

Notes

References

• Bennett, William H. (1980). "An Introduction to the Gothic Language". New York: Modern Language Association of America.
• Campbell, A. (1959). "Old English Grammar". London: Oxford University Press.
• 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.
• Joseph B. Voyles, Early Germanic Grammar (Academic Press, 1992) ISBN 0-12-728270-X

See also

• Holtzmann's Law
• Suebi

External links

• [W.P. Lehmann & J. Slocum (eds.) A Grammar of Proto-Germanic (Online version)]