11. West germanic languages

11.1 Historical background

The West Germanic tribes are referred to by ancient historiographers as the Ingaevones, Istaevones and Herminones.

The Ingaevones included the Angles, the Frisians, the Jutes and the Saxons who inhabited the coastal area of the present-day Netherlands, western part of Germany and the south of Denmark. These tribes gave rise to modern English and Frisian.

The Istaevones were represented by the Low, Middle and High Franks (Franconians), who inhabited the lower basin of the Rhine and later spread up the Rhine. In the early Middle Ages, especially under Clovis, their renowned king, the Franks became powerful. In the 8^th century their kingdom was one of the largest in Western Europe. Under Charlemagne (768-814) the Holy Roman Empire of the Franks stretched from France and half of Italy to the North and Baltic Sea. In the 9^th century its western part, the East Franconian Empire, comprised Swabia, Bavaria, East Franconia, Saxony, to which later were added Lorraine and Friesland. The Franconian dialects developed into modern Dutch and Flemish.

The Herminones inhabited the southern part of Germanic territory. The High Germans included the Alemanians, the Swabians, the Bavarians, the Thuringians and some others. They gave rise to modern German.

11.2 Peculiarities of West-Germanic subgroup

West Germanic languages have 12 common features that are listed below:

1.The formation of the WGmc preterite form of the 2^nd p.sg corresponds to the IE aorist form, whereas EGmc and NGmc preterite of the 2^nd p.sg originates from the IE perfect form.

2. WGmc weak verbs of Class III ending in -e correspond to EGmc and NGmc weak verbs of Class IV ending in -na/-no.

3.WGmc generalizes oblique cases ending in -r in the words which initially belonged to the heteroclitic declension.

4. WGmc gemination ‘short vowel + j’, more rarely short vowel + sonorant, brings about two phonetic patterns:

a) long vowel + short consonant (OS bokia);

2. short vowel + long consonant (OS huttia ‘hut’)

Any borrowing had to subordinate to this rule: Lat. puteus ‘well’ corresponds to OE pytt.

5.WGmc occlusion  > d (in OHG d>t according to the Second Consonant shift: Go. faar, OE fæder.

6. In WGmc in the combination of a back consonant and u(w) the labial element is dropped: Go.siggwan, OE sinƷan. This peculiarity was of late occurrence, because even in the first century AD we still have WGmc Ingaevones.

7.WGmc gerund declined as -j-stem with gemination.

8.New forms of the present tense of ‘to be’.

9.a: < e:, as in Scandinavian (arguments against see in 5.3.6 of the present edition).

10.WGmc «and» forms trace back to Sanskrit atha ‘then, after that’ (OHG anti, enti, inti, unti, OE and, end), whereas EGmc preserved an IE particle -(u)h (Go. jah = Gmc ja + particle h).

11.WGmc subordination is expressed by a demonstrative particle the with a parallel use of an adverb there;.in Gothic subordination is expressed by ei (Greek ei ‘if’, Slavic ‘u’).

12. In WGmc dativus absolutus is formed with the help of a preposition be/bi; in EGmc and NGmc a preposition at is used:

Go. At andanahtja wauranamma «at night»

OE be m bre er lif endum ‘when brother is alive’.