Indo-European Family of languages
Proto-Language. The Evolution of Proto-Germanic
The history of the Germanic branch begins with the formation of Proto-Germanic which split from IE parent language (Proto-Indo-European) in 15-10th cent. BC.
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PG) is the unattested, reconstructed common ancestor (proto-language) of all the Germanic languages such as modern English, Dutch, Afrikaans, German, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, Swedish, etc. The Proto-Germanic language is not directly attested by any surviving texts but has been reconstructed using the comparative method, the data of phonological and morphological systems being based on the sound correspondences between related elements in Germanic languages.
The term “proto-language” is applied to a language which was the common ancestor of related languages that form a language family. It is an abstract unity of restored forms, a theoretical interpretation of summarized peculiarities of related languages and at the same it is a real system existing in time and territory.
The archaeological investigations suggest that before the language differentiated into the individual Germanic branches the Proto-Germanic speakers lived in southern Scandinavia and along the coast from the Netherlands in the west to the Vistula in the east around 750 BC.
The evolution of Proto-Germanic began with the separation of a common way of speech among some geographically close speakers of a prior language and ended with the dispersion of the proto-language speakers into distinct populations practicing their own speech habits.
There are 2 main stages in the development of PG:
Early Proto-Germanic, which is the epoch since the disintegration of Proto-Indo-European language up to the stabilization of Germanic Proto-language.
The period is characterized by the mobility of word-stress (free movable accent), the autonomy of syllables: stressed or unstressed position of a syllable did not influence the quality of vowels; similar behaviour of vowels in stressed and unstressed syllables; three types of correlation in the system of plosives: weak voiced fricatives, weak voiced stops, strong voiceless aspirated stops.
Late Proto-Germanic (Common Germanic), which is the epoch of stabilization of Common Germanic language and splitting it into groups of dialects.
It is characterized by a fixed dynamic stress falling on the 1st / root syllable, the weakening of unstressed syllables, tendency towards monophthongization of diphthongs, the formation of system of short and long vowels, the rise of new phonemes, voiceless fricatives.
The transition from Early Proto-Germanic to Late Proto-Germanic was stipulated by the change of the type of the stress from the inherited from PIE musical pitch tone to a dynamic fixed stress. The transformation of the word stress resulted in a series of other sound changes. The specific phonetic, morphological and lexical features of Proto-Germanic are described below in detail.