Proto-Germanic (PrGmc)

PrGmc refers to the putative ancestor of the Germanic language family, or to our reconstruction of it. It seems to have been spoken in north-west Europe in the later part of the first millennium BC, and is a descendant of Proto-Indo-European (PIE).

It is characterised by the following main phonological innovations:

"Centum" merger of possibly originally distinct series of palatal and velar stops in opposition to the labiovelar series (see PIE)
Development of PIE breathy-voiced stops ("voiced aspirated stops") to voiced fricatives (later sometimes giving voiced stops), thus PIE *bher- "to carry" > Gothic bairan, Old High German beran, Old Norse bera : Latin fero:, Greek phero:, Sanskrit bhara:mi
Development of PIE voiced stops to voiceless stops, thus PIE *duoh1 "two" > Old English twegen, Old Saxon twene, ON tveir : Gk duo, Old Irish da:
Development of PIE voiceless stops to voiceless fricatives, thus PIE *treies "three" > Goth threis, Old Frisian thre:, ON thri:r : Lat tre:s, OIr tri:, Old Church Slavonic trije (also frequent change of *kw > f, perhaps indicating an earlier change of *kw > *p, as in some parts of Celtic and Italic, e.g. PIE *kwetwo:r "four" > Goth fidwo:r, OE fe:ower, ON fjo:rir : Lat quattuor, Lithuanian keturi, Irish ceathair, Welsh pedwar)
These last three changes make up "Grimm's Law", which was followed by "Verner's Law", which turned voiceless fricatives (including PIE *s) into voiced fricatives (often later giving voiced stops, or r < z) when they followed a syllable which was unaccented in PIE
Development of PIE syllabic sonants to sequences of u + sonant, thus PIE *wlkwos "wolf" > Goth wulfs, OE wulf, ON ulfr : Skt vrkas, Gk lukos
Merger of PIE o and a as a, thus PIE *ghans- "goose" > OHG gans, ON ga:s : Skt hamsa, Lat anser; PIE *tod "that" > Goth thata "the", OS, ON that : Gk to "the"
Merger of PIE o: and a: as o: (cf. Celtic), thus PIE *bhra:ter "brother" > Goth bro:thar, OS bro:ther, ON bro:thir : Lat fra:ter
Merger of PIE ej and i: as i:
Monophthongisation of PIE e:j > e:
Lowering of PIE e: to ae:
Loss of PIE final -a -e -o eg. OE wa:t "I know, he knows", Gk. oida, oide
Loss of nasal in sequences /aNx iNx uNx/ (N represents a velar nasal) with compensatory lengthening of the vowel

Within the grammar, Germanic preserved the PIE vowel ablaut to mark distinctions of tense: original *e in the present tense root, *o in the perfect, and zero-grade (no vowel) in the past participle. These were realised within Germanic in seven verb classes, the so-called strong verbs, distinguished on the basis of the sound following the original root vowel.

eg.
Class   Present             Perfect             Past Participle  
I       i: (< PIE ej)       ai (< PIE oj)       i (< PIE zero + syllabic j)
II      eu (< PIE ew)       au (< PIE ow)       u (< PIE zero + syllabic w)
III     e + l/r/m/n	    a + l/r/m/n         u + l/r/m/n
        (<PIE e + l/r/m/n)  (<PIE o + l/r/m/n)  (<PIE zero + syll. l/r/m/n)   
etc.

The break-up of the PrGmc speech-community

Divisions may have appeared within Germanic around 100 AD.

The traditional classification of the Germanic family is as follows:

               	       	  Proto-Germanic
	     ___________________|____________________
            |                   |              	     |
   Proto-West Germanic     Proto-Norse         East Germanic
       _____|_____          ____|____________     (Gothic)
      |           |    	   |   	       	     |
  Ingvaeonic      |    West Norse        East Norse
    __|_____      |      __|__         	 ____|____
   |   	|   |     |    	|     |    	|    |    |
English | Dutch   | Icelandic |       Danish | Gutnish
        |         |	      |		     |
     Frisian    German    Norwegian       Swedish