The earliest period of Germanic history. Proto-Germanic (PG).

 

PG is the parent-language of the Germanic group. It is supposed to have split

from related IE tongues sometime between the 15^th and 10^th c. BC. The ancient Germans settled on the southern coast of the Baltic sea. Then they extended over a larger territory and the common period of their history came to an end.

The tri-partite division of the Germanic languages proposed bu the 19^th c.

philologists corresponds, with a few ajustments, to Pliny’s grouping of the Teutonic tribes. According to this division PG split into:

East Germanic (Vindili in Pliny’s classification), North Germanic (Hillevones), and West Germanic (Ingveones, Istævones and Herminones).

The first mentions of Germanic tribes was made by Pitheas, a Greek historian and geographer of the 4^th c BC. In the 1^st c. BC in Commentaries to the Gallic War Julius Caesar described some militant Germanic tribes.

In the 1^st c. AD Pliny the Elder in Natural History made a classified list of Germanic tribes. A few decades later Tacitus compiled a detailed descrition of the life and customs of the ancient Teutons and reproduced Pliny’s classification. F. Engels’ work “On the History of Ancient Germans” deascribes the evolution of the economic and social structure of the Teutons and analyses Pliny’s classification Of the teutonic tribes.

Germanic Languages

 

	East Germanic	North Germanic	West Germanic
Old Gemsnic languages (with dates of the earliest records)	Gothic (4^th c.) Vandalic Burgundian	Old Norse or Old Scandinavian (2nd-3rd c.) Old Icelandic (12th c.) Old Norwegian (13th c.) Old Danish (13th c.) Old Swedish (13th c.)	Anglian, Frisian, Jutish, Saxon, Franconian, High German (Alemanic,Thuringian, Swayian, Bavarian) Old English (7th c.) Old Saxon (9th c.) Old High German (8th c.) Old Dutch (12th c.)
Modern Germanic languages	No living lan- guages	Icelandic Norwegian Danish Swedish Faroese	English German Netherlandish Afrikaans Yiddish Frisian

 

Linguistic features of Germanic languages.

1) Phonetics.

The peculiar Germanic system of word accentuation.

In IE there existed two ways og accntuation: musical pitch and force stress. The position of the stress was free and movable.

Both these properties changed in PG. Force stress became the only type of stress used. In early PG the stress was movable, in late PG its position in the word stabilised The stress was now fixed on the first syllable and could not move in form- or word-building.

This played an important role in the development of Germanic languages: in the development of stressed and unstressed vowels, in the development of unstressed grammatical endings and suffixes.

Vowels.

Vowels underwent qualitattive, quantitative, positional and spontaneous changes. Differentiation of long and short vowels is regarded as an important characteristic of the Germanic group.

 

Independent Vowel Changes in Proto-Germanic

Change illustrated	Examples
PIE	PG	Non-Germanic	Germanic
			Old	Modern
o	a	L nox, Ir nochd, R ночь R могу; мочь	Gt nahts, O Icel nátt, OHG naht Gt magan, OE maзan, mæз O Icel mόðir, OE mōdor Gt broþar, O Icel brόðir, OE brōðor	Sw natt, G Nacht Sw må, NE may Sw moder, NE mother Sw broder, NE brother
a:	o:	L mater, R мать   O Ind bhrāta, L frater, R брат

 

Mutation of Vowels in Late PG

 

Change illustrated	Examples
Non-Germanic	Germanic
	Old	Modern
РIE e u	{   {	G i     e   u   o	L ventus, R ветер   L edit, R ест L edere, R есть   Lith sunus, R сын Celt hurman	Gt winds, 0 Icel vindr, OE wind OHG izit, OE iteþ, O Icel eta, OE etan O Icel sunr, OE sunu O Icel, OE horn	Sw vind, NE wind G iβt, NE eats, G essen, NE eat   Sw son, NE son     NE horn, Sw horn

2) Consonants

The first consonant shift, or Grimm’s law.