Proto-Germanic language

Map of the Nordic Bronze Age culture, ca. 1200 BC

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

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

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

Evolution of Proto-Germanic

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

Archaeological contributions

Map of the Pre-Roman Iron Age culture(s) associated with Proto-Germanic, c. 500 BC-50 BC. The magenta-colored area south of Scandinavia represents the Jastorf culture

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.^[3] The region was certainly populated before then; the lack of names must indicate an Indo-European settlement so ancient and dense that the previously assigned names were completely replaced. If archaeological horizons are at all indicative of shared language (not a straightforward assumption), the Indo-European speakers are to be identified with the much more widely ranged Cord-impressed ware or Battle-axe culture and possibly also with the preceding Funnel-necked beaker culture developing towards the end of the Neolithic culture of Western Europe.^[4][5]

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

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

Evidence in other languages

In some non-Germanic languages spoken in areas adjacent to Germanic speaking areas, there are loanwords believed to have been borrowed from Proto-Germanic. Some of these words are (with the reconstructed form in P-N): rõngas (Estonian) / rengas (Finnish) < *hrengaz (ring), kuningas (Finnish) < *kuningaz (king),^[2] ruhtinas (Finnish) < *druhtinaz (lord), silt (Estonian) < *skild (tag, token), märk/ama (Estonian) < *mērke (to spot, to catch sight of), riik (Estonian) < *rik (state, land, commonwealth), väärt (Estonian) < *vaērd (worth), kapp (Estonian) / "kaappi" (Finnish) < *skap (chest of drawers; shelf)

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 "Germanic Parent Language", "pre-Proto-Germanic" or more commonly "pre-Germanic."^[7] By 250 BC, Proto-Germanic had branched into five groups of Germanic (two each in the West and the North, and one in the East).^[6]

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.^[8] One of the problems with the node^[6] is that it implies the existence of a fixed language in which all the laws defining it apply simultaneously. Proto-Germanic, however, must be regarded as a diachronic sequence of sound changes, each law or group of laws only becoming operant after previous changes.^[9]

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.^[10]

W. P. Lehmann considered that Jacob Grimm's "First Germanic Sound Shift", or Grimm's Law and Verner's Law,^[11] 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.^[12] Proto-Indo-European had featured a moveable pitch accent comprising "an alternation of high and low tones"^[13] 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^[14] 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."^[15]

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.^[16]

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.^[17] An example of a Celtic loan is *rīk "wealthy" from Celtic *rīgos "king", with g > k.^[18] It was not borrowed from Latin (rex) because Celtic alone has -ī-. Another is *walhaz "foreigner; Celt" from the Celtic tribal name Volcae, with c > h. Other likely Celtic loans include *ambahtaz 'servant', *brunjōn 'mailshirt', *Rīnaz 'Rhine', and *tūnaz, tūnan 'fortified enclosure'.^[19][20] These loans would likely have been borrowed during the Celtic hegemony of the Hallstatt Culture, although the period spanned several centuries.

From East Iranian have come *hanapiz 'hemp' (cf. Persian kanab), *humalaz, humalōn 'hops' (cf. Ossete xumællæg), *keppōn, skēpan 'sheep' (cf. Pers čapiš 'yearling kid'), *kurtilaz 'tunic' (cf. Ossete k^wəræt 'shirt'), *kutan 'cottage' (cf. Pers kad 'house'), *paidō 'cloak',^[21] *pathaz 'path' (cf. Avestan pantā, g. pathō), and *wurstwa 'work' (cf. Av vərəštuua).^[22][23] These words were surely transmitted by either the Scythians or later groups such as the Sarmatians from the Ukraine plain where Germanic peoples and Iranians had protracted interaction. 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.^[24]

Phonology

Consonants

The table below^[6] lists the consonantal phonemes of Proto-Germanic classified by reconstructed pronunciation. The slashes around the phonemes are omitted for clarity. 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.^[25]

Grimm's law

Grimm's law as applied to pre-proto-Germanic is a chain shift of the original Indo-European stop consonants:

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).^[28] 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 ...."^[29]

Verner's law

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. For example, PIE *bhrátēr > PGmc. *brōþēr "brother" but PIE *mātér > PGmc. *mōðēr "mother." The law states that unvoiced fricatives: /s/, /f/, /θ/, /x/ are voiced when preceded by an unaccented syllable, but the accent system is the PIE one in Pre-Proto-Germanic. Verner's Law therefore follows Grimm's Law in time and precedes the Proto-Germanic stress accent. The voicing of some /s/ according to Verner's Law produced /z/, a new phoneme.^[6]

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."^[30]

The double letters in the phonemes of the table represent consonants that have been lengthened or prolonged under some circumstances, appearing in some daughter languages as geminated graphemes. The phenomenon is therefore termed gemination. Kraehenmann says:^[31] "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."^[32] 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].
• 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),^[33] four or five long vowels (ī, ū, ē, ō and perhaps ǣ), and at least one "overlong" or "trimoric" vowel (ô). 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. At the time of the merger, the vowels probably were [ɒ] and [ɒː] before their timbres differentiated into maybe [ɑ] and [ɔː].
• 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,^[34] 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 [eː]-like phonemes is supported by the existence of two e-like Elder Futhark runes, Ehwaz and Eihwaz.
• Proto-Germanic had at least one "overlong" vowel ô (possibly also ê).^[35] This occurred in the last syllable of a word, and possibly elsewhere as well. ô is distinguished from ō by the fact that reflexes of the former show up as long vowels while reflexes of the latter are short vowels. There has been a great deal of debate over both the nature of this sound in Proto-Germanic and its origin. Older theories claimed that ô and ō were both long but were distinguished in that ô had a circumflex accent while ō had an acute accent, and asserted that this distinction was inherited from PIE. Newer theories claim that ô was greater in length than ō, and originated mostly through the contraction of directly adjacent vowels, e.g. plural *wulfôz "wolves" < pre-Germanic *wl̥po-es.
• 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.
• Vowels could also be nasalized or non-nasal. 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), and 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/-ũ/-un in *fehu "livestock" vs. *nahtũ "night (acc.)" vs. tehun "ten". However, since final -ũ comes from earlier -un while final -un comes from earlier -und, it could be claimed that Proto-Germanic actually had an underlying phonemic contrast -u/-un/-und and that the development of phonemic nasality occurred only after Proto-Norse split off.

Transcription

The following conventions are used 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 /b/, /d/, /g/ or fricatives /β/, /ð/, /ɣ/.
• Unvoiced fricatives appear as f, þ, h (perhaps /f/, /θ/, /x/).
• Labiovelars appear as kw, hw, gw; this does not imply any particular analysis as single sounds (e.g. /kʷ/, /xʷ/, /gʷ/) or clusters (e.g. /kw/, /xw/, /gw/).
• Long vowels appear as e.g. ō /oː/.
• Nasal vowels appear as e.g. oN /õ/.
• Overlong vowels appear as e.g. ô /oːː/.
• Nasal overlong vowels appear as e.g. ôN /õːː/.
• The "yod" sound appears as j /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.
• Diphthongs appear as ai, au, eu, iu.^[36] However, when immediately followed by the corresponding semivowel, they appear as ajj, aww, eww, iww. This convention is based on the usage in Don Ringe's recent book From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic.

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), two voices (active, passive < PIE middle). This is quite similar to the state of Latin, Greek, and Middle Indo-Aryan of c. 200 AD.

Nouns and adjectives were declined in (at least) six cases: vocative, nominative, accusative, dative, instrumental, genitive. 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.

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.

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

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 (for instance Modern English) have a more elaborated tense system, derived through periphrastic constructions.
• PIE may have had as few as three "tenses" (present, aorist, perfect), which had primarily aspectual value, with secondary tensal values. The future tense was probably rendered using the optative and/or desiderative verbs. 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/ one form of verb "be"; reinterpretation of subjunctive and desiderative formations as the future; analogical formations).

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 affix -éy- 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 -ey-) 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 -ey- 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).

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:^[37]

Awiz ehwaz-uh: awiz, hwesja wulno ne ist, spehet ehwanz, ainan krun wagan wegantun, ainan-uh mekon boran, ainan-uh gumonun ahu berontun. Awiz nu ehwamaz weuhet: hert agnutai meke witantei, ehwans akantun weran. Ehwaz weuhant: hludi, awi! kert aknutai uns wituntmaz: mannaz, foþiz, wulnon awjan hwurneuti sebi warman wistran. Awjan-uh wulno ne isti. þat hehluwaz awiz akran bukeþ.

See also

• Pre-Germanic
• Holtzmann's Law
• Suebi

Notes

References

• Bennett, William Holmes (1980). An Introduction to the Gothic Language. New York: Modern Language Association of America. 
• Campbell, A. (1959). Old English Grammar. London: Oxford University Press. 
• 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).
• Plotkin, Vulf (2008). The Evolution of Germanic Phonological Systems: Proto-Germanic, Gothic, West Germanic, and Scandinavian. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen. 
• Ramat, Anna Giacalone and Paolo Ramat (Eds.) (1998). The Indo-European Languages. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-06449-X.
• Ringe, Don (2008). From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic. Oxford: OUP. ISBN 0-19-955229-0. 
• Voyles, Joseph B. (1992). Early Germanic Grammar. San Diego: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-728270-X. 
• Guus, Kroonen (Expected October 2010). Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic. Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series, 11. Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-18340-7. http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=24855. 

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"