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Proto-Germanic language

Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.

Further information: Germanic peoples § Proto-Germanic, and Germania

Proto-Germanic

Germanic languages

North-western Europe

c. 500 BC–200 AD

Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic branches during the fifth century BC to fifth century AD: West Germanic, East Germanic and North Germanic.[1] The latter of these remained in contact with the others over a considerable time, especially with the Ingvaeonic languages (including English), which arose from West Germanic dialects, and had remained in contact with the Norse.[2]


A defining feature of Proto-Germanic is the completion of the process described by Grimm's law, a set of sound changes that occurred between its status as a dialect of Proto-Indo-European and its gradual divergence into a separate language. The end of the Common Germanic period is reached with the beginning of the Migration Period in the fourth century AD.


The alternative term "Germanic parent language" may be used to include a larger scope of linguistic developments, spanning the Nordic Bronze Age and Pre-Roman Iron Age in Northern Europe (second to first millennia BC) to include "Pre-Germanic" (PreGmc), "Early Proto Germanic" (EPGmc) and "Late Proto-Germanic" (LPGmc).[3] While Proto-Germanic refers only to the reconstruction of the most recent common ancestor of Germanic languages, the Germanic parent language refers to the entire journey that the dialect of Proto-Indo-European that would become Proto-Germanic underwent through the millennia.


The Proto-Germanic language is not directly attested by any coherent surviving texts; it has been reconstructed using the comparative method. However, there is fragmentary direct attestation of (late) Proto-Germanic in early runic inscriptions (specifically the c.1st/2nd-century CE Svingerud Runestone and Vimose inscriptions, and the 2nd-century BCE Negau helmet inscription. Another inscription of interest is the Meldorf fibula, dated to c.50 CE),[4] and in Roman Empire-era transcriptions of individual words (notably in Tacitus' Germania, c. AD 90[note 1]).

Voiced obstruents appear as b, d, g; this does not imply any particular analysis of the underlying phonemes as plosives /b/, /d/, /ɡ/ or fricatives /β/, /ð/, /ɣ/. In other literature, they may be written as with a bar to produce ƀ, đ, ǥ.

graphemes

Unvoiced fricatives appear as f, þ, h (perhaps /ɸ/, /θ/, /x/). /x/ may have become /h/ in certain positions at a later stage of Proto-Germanic itself. Similarly for /xʷ/, which later became /hʷ/ or /ʍ/ in some environments.

Labiovelars appear as kw, hw, gw; this does not imply any particular analysis as single sounds (e.g. /kʷ/, /xʷ/, /ɡʷ/) or clusters (e.g. /kw/, /xw/, /ɡw/).

The yod sound appears as j /j/. Note that the normal convention for representing this sound in is y; the use of j does not imply any actual change in the pronunciation of the sound.

Proto-Indo-European

Long vowels are denoted with a macron over the letter, e.g. ō. When a distinction is necessary, /ɛː/ and /eː/ are transcribed as ē¹ and ē² respectively. ē¹ is sometimes transcribed as æ or ǣ 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, e.g. ō̄.

Nasal vowels are written here with an , following Don Ringe's usage, e.g. ǫ̂ /õːː/. 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 /n/, a distinction which was phonemic. Tildes (ã, ĩ, ũ...) are also used in some sources.

ogonek

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 Ringe 2006.

[38]

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.

In the person-and-number endings of verbs, which were voiceless in weak verbs and voiced in strong verbs.

Between different grades of strong verbs. The voiceless alternants appeared in the present and past singular indicative, the voiced alternants in the remaining past tense forms.

Between strong verbs (voiceless) and causative verbs derived from them (voiced).

Between verbs and derived nouns.

Between the singular and plural forms of some nouns.

Pre-Indo-European (disambiguation)

Holtzmann's law

Suebi

Bennett, William Holmes (1980). An Introduction to the Gothic Language. New York: Modern Language Association of America.

(1959). Old English Grammar. London: Oxford University Press.

Campbell, A.

& Konrad Badenheuer (2021). Sprache und Herkunft der Germanen. Abriss des Frühurgermanischen vor der Ersten Lautverschiebung [Language and Origin of the Germanic Peoples: Compendium of the Early Proto-Germanic Language prior to the First Sound Shift], 2nd edn., Berlin – London: Inspiration Un, 271p., in German with English summary ISBN 978-3-945127-278.

Euler, Wolfram

(1972). "Indo-European ē in Germanic". Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung. 86 (1): 104–110.

Cercignani, Fausto

(1973). "Indo-European eu in Germanic". Indogermanische Forschungen. 78: 106–112.

Cercignani, Fausto

(1979). "Proto-Germanic */i/ and */e/ Revisited". Journal of English and Germanic Philology. 78 (1): 72–82.

Cercignani, Fausto

Fulk, R. D. A Comparative Grammar of the Early Germanic Languages. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2018.

Green, Dennis Howard (2000). . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Language and history in the early Germanic world

Harðarson, Jón Axel (2018). "The Morphology of Germanic". In Jared Klein; Brian Joseph; Matthias Fritz (eds.). Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics. Vol. 2. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter. pp. 913–954.

Hartmann, Frederik: Germanic Phylogeny (Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics), Oxford University Press, 2023.  978-0-198-87273-3.

ISBN

Kapović, Mate, ed. The Indo-European Languages, 2nd edn. London: Routledge, 2017.  978-0-415-73062-4.

ISBN

Krahe, Hans & Wolfgang Meid. Germanische Sprachwissenschaft, 2 vols. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1969.

Kroonen, Guus (2013). . Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series, 11. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-18340-7.

Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic

Mallory, J.P. (1989), In Search of the Indo-Europeans, Thames and Hudson

Orel, Vladimir (2003). . Leiden; Boston: Brill.

A Handbook of Germanic Etymology

Plotkin, Vulf (2008). The Evolution of Germanic Phonological Systems: Proto-Germanic, Gothic, West Germanic, and Scandinavian. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen.

(1992). Lippi-Green, Rosina (ed.). Recent Developments in Germanic Linguistics. John Benjamins Publishing. ISBN 978-90-272-3593-0.

Polomé, Edgar C.

; Fee, Christopher R.; Leeming, David Adams (2006). "Germanic mythology". In Leeming, David Adams (ed.). The Oxford Companion to World Mythology. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199916481. Retrieved 3 January 2020.

Polomé, Edgar Charles

Ringe, Donald A. (2006). From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic. Linguistic history of English, v. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  0-19-955229-0.

ISBN

Ringe, Donald A. (2017). From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic. Linguistic history of English, v. 1 (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.  978-0-19-955229-0.

ISBN

Voyles, Joseph B. (1992). Early Germanic Grammar. San Diego: Academic Press.  0-12-728270-X.

ISBN

Summarizing Germanic sound shifts

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)

Another dictionary of Proto-Germanic

Charles Prescott. Archived 2012-02-22 at the Wayback Machine

"Germanic and the Ruki Dialects"

: Germanic & PIE -ia and -ja stems compared across reference sources

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