Interpretation of the proto-germanic consonant shift

Some scholars believed that the Germanic peoples had some peculiarities of speech, and this caused a shift in articulation. According to another theory, the changes in articulation were caused by word stress, and this in turn modified the articulation of consonants, making them more forceful.

In the 20th century, the theory of linguistic substratum appeared, and so the consonant shift, as well as many other changes, were attributed to the influence of the speech of those who had occupied the territories of the Germanic settlement before.

Other scholars believed that the Proto-Germanic Consonant Shift was caused by internal requirements of the language system. There was a need for more precise phonemic distinction reliable in all phonetic conditions, just as previously the shift in the opposition of voiced and voiceless plosives was neutralized before [s]. The new oppositionofconsonantsresulted in a change of “fricatives to plosives”. As language is a balanced system, the changes continued to restore the balance.

MORPHOLOGY

Grammatical forms in the Germanic languages were built by means of inflections, sound interchange and suppletion.

Inflection is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories. In the Germanic languages, inflections were the principal means of form building. The inflections of OG correspond to those in other IE languages, but they shortened and weakened, leading to the appearance of homonyms.

Verb Forms	Gothic.	Old English	Modern English
Past. sing.	bar	bær	bore
Infinitive	bairan	beran	bear
Past. pl	berum	bæron
Part. II	baúrans	boren	born

Sound interchange was a characteristic of all Indo-European languages; in the Germanic languages vowel interchange (ablaut, or regular vowel variation which accompanies a change in grammatical function) prevailed. Vowels were variable in root morphemes, and as a result a root morpheme was a set of variants. The first examples of vowel interchange were observed in the system of Germanic verbs. This vowel interchange was independent – it didn’t depend on any phonetic conditions. It reflects the IE vowel interchange, but the vowels in Germanic roots differ from those with other Indo-European roots due to phonetic changes. Vowel gradation was used for word and form-building, and it is believed to be one of the reasons that inflections were losing their significance. It is important to note that this vowel interchange shouldn’t be confused with later vowel interchange, which appeared due to phonetic changes: foot – feet, keep – kept.

The principal gradation in IE languages was e – o, which is qualitative. We can observe it in Russian, for example: умереть – мор . In addition, there was also quantitativeablaut: short vowel – long vowel – zero. Due to vowel changes in OG languages, the gradation series was modified:

	INFINITIVE	PAST SING.	PAST PL.	PART. II
IE	e	o	zero	zero
PG	e/i	a	zero	zero

The most significant sphere where ablaut was used is the system of strong verbs. They were called strong as they had a significant variety of forms. Ablaut was a means of building their principal forms – Infinitive, Past singular, Past plural and Past participle.

Class 1: i – a – zero; Class 2: i – a – zero; Class 3 i – a – zero, while [u] developed from [n]. So we see that the OG gradation i / a / zero corresponds to the IE gradation e / o / zero.

Gothic Strong Verbs						NE
Class I	reisan	rais	risum	risans	rise
Class II	kiusan	kaus	kusum	kusans	choose
Class III	bindan	band	bundum	bundans	bind

Vowel gradation can also be found in grammatical endings, or inflections:

Present Tense	Gothic	OE
2nd person singular	-is	-est
3d person singular	-iþ	-iþ
plural	-and	-að

Suppletion – a suppletive way of form-building – the forms of one and the same word are built from different roots or stems:

R : иду –шел, хороший – лучше, я – меня

In Proto-Germanic, suppletion was restricted to some personal pronouns, verbs and adjectives. This way of form-building comes from Old IE and can be observed in other IE languages, practically in the same words.

Latin	Russian	Gothic.	Old English	Modern English
ego	я	ik	ic	I
mei	меня	meina	mīn	my, mine
mini	мне	mis	mē	me