3.3.1. Ablaut

The most important feature of the system of Germanic vowels is the so-called Ablaut, or gradation, which is a spontaneous, positionally independent аlteration of vowels. The Germanic languages inherited ablaut from the common Indo-European period. Alteration of vowels occurred in the root, suffix or ending depending on the grammatical form or meaning of the word.

In Germanic languages ablaut takes the form: i – a – zero. Cf., for example, the alteration of vowels in Gothic strong verbs of the 2^nd class:

Infinitive Past tense sing. Past tense pl. Past participle

Kiusan kaus kusum kusans ‘выбирать’

If we ignore the common element u, there remains a series i – a – zero representing ablaut.

3.3.2. Umlaut (Germanic fracture)

Another phenomenon common for all Germanic languages was the tendency of phonetic assimilation of the root vowel to the vowel of the ending, the so-сalled Umlaut, or mutation. In certain phonetic conditions, namely before the nasal [n] and before [i] or [j] in the next syllable, the short [e], [i] and [u] remained or became close (i.e. appeared as [i] and [u]), while in the absence of these conditions the more open allophones were used: [e] and [o], respectively. For example:

Goth harjis OE here ‘army’

Goth dōmjan OE dēman ‘deem’

Goth kuni OE cynn ‘kin’

4. Basic Peculiarities of Grammar

4.1. A Change in the Word Structure

A change in the word structure was of great importance for the development of the Germanic morphological system. The common Indo-European notional word consisted of three elements: 1) the root, expressing the lexical meaning, 2) the inflexion or grammatical ending, showing the grammatical form, and 3) the stem-forming suffix, a formal indicator of the stem type. In Germanic languages the stem-forming suffix fuses with the ending, which makes the word structure a two-element one. The word was simplified. The original gram­matical ending, together with the stem-suffix formed a new ending:

STEM

Proto-Germanic

Old Germanic

languages

Root

stem- suffix

grammatical ending

Stem	grammatical ending

Fig. 1. A Change in the Structure of Germanic Word

This can be illustrated by the following examples, in which the restored Proto-Germanic archetypes are given:

PG *fisk-a-z Goth. fisks ‘fish’

PG *mak-ōj-an OE mac-ian, Past Tense mac-ode ‘ make, made’

(In Goth fisks the stem-suffix was dropped, in OE macian, macode it merged with the ending, preserving one of the sounds – [i] or [o].)

The simplification of the word structure and the loss of stem-suffixes as distinct components may have been caused by the heavy Germanic word stress fixed on the root.

4.2. The Noun

Germanic nouns had a well-developed case system with four cases (Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative) and two number forms (singular and plural). They also had the category of gender (feminine, masculine and neuter). Grammatical gender was not connected with the biological gender, like in Modern German, Russian, Ukrainian and some other languages. The division of all nouns into three genders was traditional.

Nouns fell into four groups according to the type of their stem (which originally ended either in a vowel or a consonant). Groups of nouns with different stem-suffixes made distinct types of declension. The original grammatical endings were alike for most nouns, e.g. Nom, sg -z, Dat. -i, Acc. -m. When these endings fused with different stem-suffixes, each group of nouns acquired a different set of endings. The division of nouns into declensions resting on the stem-suffixes is not peculiar to Germanic alone; it is also found in other IE languages (some types of declension in Germanic correspond to certain declensions in non-Germanic languages, e.g. ō-stems correspond to the first declension in Latin and Russian (their stem-suffix is -a: Germanic -ō has developed from IE -ā; Germanic a-stems correspond to the second declension in Latin and in Russian (o-stems in both these languages, since IE [o] became [a] in Germanic). In Old Germanic languages there were the following types of substantive stems:

1. vocalic stems: -a-, -ō-, -i-, -u- stems;

2. n-stems;

3. stems in other consonants: -s- and –r- stems;

4) root-stems.

Germanic languages preserved the old classification of nouns, added other distinctive features to the noun paradigms and, as a result, had a complicated system of noun declensions in the early periods of history.