Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Germanic languages.
A defining feature of Proto-Germanic is the completion of the process described by Grimm's law (also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift), a set of sound changes that occurred during its gradual divergence from Proto-Indo-European.
The Proto-Germanic language is not directly attested and has been reconstructed using the comparative method with other more archaic and earlier attested Indo-European languages, extremely early Germanic loanwords in Baltic and Finnish languages (for example, Finnish kuningas 'king'), early runic inscriptions (specifically the Vimose inscriptions in Denmark, dated to the 2nd century CE), and in Roman Empire era transcriptions of individual words (notably in Tacitus's Germania, ). The non-runic Negau helmet inscription, dated to the 2nd century BCE, has also been argued by some to represent the earliest attestation of Grimm's law.
Archaeology and early historiography
Proto-Germanic developed out of pre-Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age of Northern Europe. According to the Germanic substrate hypothesis, it may have been influenced by non-Indo-European cultures, such as the Funnelbeaker culture, but the sound change in the Germanic languages known as Grimm's law points to a non-substratic development away from other branches of Indo-European. Proto-Germanic itself was likely spoken after , and Proto-Norse, from the second century AD and later, is still quite close to reconstructed Proto-Germanic, but other common innovations separating Germanic from Proto-Indo-European suggest a common history of pre-Proto-Germanic speakers throughout the Nordic Bronze Age.
The Proto-Germanic language developed in southern Scandinavia (Denmark, south Sweden and southern Norway) and the northern-most part of Germany in Schleswig Holstein and northern Lower Saxony, the (original home) of the Germanic tribes. It is possible that Indo-European speakers first arrived in southern Scandinavia with the Corded Ware culture in the mid-3rd millennium BC, developing into the Nordic Bronze Age cultures by the early second millennium BC. In contrast, according to Mallory, Germanicists "generally agree" that the Urheimat ('original homeland') of the Proto-Germanic language, the ancestral idiom of all attested Germanic dialects, was primarily situated in an area corresponding to the extent of the Jastorf culture in what is now Germany.
Early Germanic expansion in the Pre-Roman Iron Age (fifth to first centuries BC) placed Proto-Germanic speakers in contact with the Continental Celtic La Tène horizon. A number of Celtic loanwords in Proto-Germanic have been identified. By the first century AD, Germanic expansion reached the Danube and the Upper Rhine in the south and the Germanic peoples first entered the historical record. At about the same time, extending east of the Vistula (Oksywie culture, Przeworsk culture), Germanic speakers came into contact with early Slavic cultures, as reflected in early Germanic loans in Proto-Slavic.
By the third century, Germanic speakers had expanded over significant distance, from the Rhine to the Dniepr spanning about .
The earliest attested stage of the Germanic languages is known as Proto-Norse, variably dated to the 2nd century AD, around 300 AD or the first century AD in runic inscriptions (such as the Tune Runestone).
The first coherent text recorded in a Germanic language is the Gothic Bible, written in the later fourth century in the East Germanic variety of the Thervingi Gothic Christians, who had escaped persecution by moving from Scythia to Moesia in 348. Early West Germanic text is available from the fifth century, beginning with the Frankish Bergakker runic inscription.
Evolution The evolution of Proto-Germanic from its ancestral forms, beginning with its ancestor Proto-Indo-European, began with the development of a separate common way of speech among some geographically nearby speakers of a prior language and ended with the dispersion of the proto-language speakers into distinct populations with mostly independent speech habits. Between the two points, many sound changes occurred.
Theories of phylogeny
Solutions Phylogeny as applied to historical linguistics involves the evolutionary descent of languages. The phylogeny problem is the question of what specific tree, in the tree model of language evolution, best explains the paths of descent of all the members of a language family from a common language, or proto-language (at the root of the tree) to the attested languages (at the leaves of the tree). The Germanic languages form a tree with Proto-Germanic at its root that is a branch of the Indo-European tree, which in turn has Proto-Indo-European at its root. Borrowing of lexical items from contact languages makes the relative position of the Germanic branch within Indo-European less clear than the positions of the other branches of Indo-European. In the course of the development of historical linguistics, various solutions have been proposed, none certain and all debatable.
In the evolutionary history of a language family, philologists consider a genetic "tree model" appropriate only if communities do not remain in effective contact as their languages diverge. Early Indo-European had limited contact between distinct lineages, and, uniquely, the Germanic subfamily exhibited a less treelike behaviour, as some of its characteristics were acquired from neighbours early in its evolution rather than from its direct ancestors. The internal diversification of West Germanic developed in an especially non-treelike manner.
Proto-Germanic is generally agreed to have begun about 500 BC. Its hypothetical ancestor between the end of Proto-Indo-European and 500 BC is termed Pre-Proto-Germanic. Whether it is to be included under a wider meaning of Proto-Germanic is a matter of usage.
Winfred P. Lehmann regarded Jacob Grimm's "First Germanic Sound Shift", or Grimm's law, and Verner's law, (which pertained mainly to consonants and were considered for many decades to have generated Proto-Germanic) as pre-Proto-Germanic and held that the "upper boundary" (that is, the earlier boundary) was the fixing of the accent, or stress, on the root syllable of a word, typically on the first syllable. Proto-Indo-European had featured a moveable pitch-accent consisting of "an alternation of high and low tones" as well as stress of position determined by a set of rules based on the lengths of a 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 or in unstressed syllables; for example, post-PIE > Gothic , 'knows'. Elmer H. Antonsen agreed with Lehmann about the upper boundary but later found runic evidence that the was not dropped: , 'I, Wakraz, … wrote (this)'. He says: "We must therefore search for a new lower boundary for Proto-Germanic." That presentation also summarizes Lehmann's view.
Antonsen's own scheme divides Proto-Germanic into an early stage and a late stage. The early stage includes the stress fixation and resulting "spontaneous vowel-shifts" while the late stage is defined by ten complex rules governing changes of both vowels and consonants.
Phonological stages from Proto-Indo-European to end of Proto-Germanic The following changes are known or presumed to have occurred in the history of Proto-Germanic in the wider sense from the end of Proto-Indo-European up to the point that Proto-Germanic began to break into mutually unintelligible dialects. The changes are listed roughly in chronological order, with changes that operate on the outcome of earlier ones appearing later in the list. The stages distinguished and the changes associated with each stage rely heavily on , who in turn summarizes standard concepts and terminology.
Pre-Proto-Germanic (Pre-PGmc) This stage began with the separation of a distinct speech, perhaps while it still formed 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 remain for some time. It was nevertheless on its own path, whether dialect or language.
Allophonic colouring of adjacent to laryngeal consonants: > — > — > — 'eagle' > > > — 'flower' > > Merging of PIE "palatovelar" and "velar" plosives ("centumization"): > — 'hundred' > > > — 'work' > > > — 'to go, walk' > > The actual pronunciation of the "palatovelar" and "velar" series is not reconstructible; it may be that the "palatovelars" were actually plain velars, and the "velars" were pronounced even farther back (post-velar or uvular) so it may be more accurate to say that, for example, > . Some also claim that the two series may not even have been distinct in PIE. See centum and satem languages.Epenthesis of before the syllabic sonorants: > — 'hundred' > > > — 'inside' > > 'among' > — 'wolf' > > > — 'worm' > > An epenthetic was inserted already in PIE after dental consonants when they were followed by a suffix beginning with a dental. This sequence now becomes > > — Geminate consonants are shortened after a consonant or a long vowel — 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 — Laryngeals are lost before vowels — 'is' > > Laryngeals are lost after vowels but lengthen the preceding vowel: > — 'seeds' > Two vowels that come to stand in hiatus because of that change contract into an overlong vowel — 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 — Vocalisation of remaining laryngeals: > — Velars are labialised by following : 'horse' > > > Labiovelars are delabialised next to (or ) or before : > — 'night' > > > — ~ 'step, act of walking' > > > 'coming, arrival' > — ~ 'killing' > > > 'battle' This rule continued to operate into the Proto-Germanic period.
Early Proto-Germanic This stage began its evolution as a dialect of Proto-Indo-European 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 with other descendants of PIE, but it would have been strained, and the 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 the contrastive accent inherited from PIE for a uniform accent on the first syllable of the word root, and the beginnings of the reduction of the resulting unstressed syllables.
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 — (not , showing that loss occurred before Verner's law)Grimm's law: Chain shift of the three series of plosives. Voiced plosives had already been devoiced before a voiceless obstruent prior to this stage. Labiovelars were delabialised before .