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The Germanic substrate hypothesis attempts to explain the purportedly distinctive nature of the
Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, Engl ...
within the context of the
Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...
. Based on the elements of Common Germanic vocabulary and syntax which do not seem to have cognates in other Indo-European languages, it claims that Proto-Germanic may have been either a creole or a
contact language Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for th ...
that subsumed a non-Indo-European substrate language, or a hybrid of two quite different Indo-European languages, mixing the centum and satem types. Which culture or cultures may have contributed the substrate material is an ongoing subject of academic debate and study.


Supporters

The non-Indo-European substrate hypothesis attempts to explain the anomalous features of Proto-Germanic as a result of
creolization Creolization is the process through which creole languages and cultures emerge. Creolization was first used by linguists to explain how contact languages become creole languages, but now scholars in other social sciences use the term to describe n ...
between an Indo-European and a non-Indo-European language. The non-Indo-European substrate theory was first proposed by
Sigmund Feist Sigmund Feist (Mainz, 12 June 1865 - Copenhagen, 23 March 1943) was a German Jewish pedagogue and historical linguist. He was the author of the Germanic substrate hypothesis as well as a number of important works concerning Jewish identity, Jewish ...
in 1910, who estimated that roughly a third of Proto-Germanic lexical items came from a non-Indo-European substrate and that the supposed reduction of the Proto-Germanic inflectional system was the result of
pidginization A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from s ...
with that substrate. Germanicist John A. Hawkins sets forth some modern arguments for a Germanic substrate. Hawkins argues that the Proto-Germans encountered a non-Indo-European speaking people and borrowed many features from their language. He hypothesizes that the first sound shift of
Grimm's law Grimm's law (also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift) is a set of sound laws describing the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stop consonants as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC. First systematically put forward by Jacob Gri ...
was the result of non-native speakers attempting to pronounce Indo-European sounds and that they resorted to the closest sounds in their own language in their attempt to pronounce them.
Kalevi Wiik Kaino Kalevi Wiik (2 August 1932, Turku — 12 September 2015, Turku) was a professor of phonetics at the University of Turku, Finland. He was best known for his controversial hypothesis about the effect of the Uralic contact influence on the c ...
, a phonologist, put forward a hypothesis that the pre-Germanic substrate was of a non-Indo-European Finnic origin. Wiik claimed that there are similarities between mistakes in English pronunciation typical of Finnish-speakers and the historical sound changes from Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic.Kalevi Wiik, ''Eurooppalaisten juuret'' ("Roots of Europeans"), 2002Kalevi Wiik, ''Suomalaisten juuret'' ("Roots of Finns"), 2004 Wiik's argument is based on the assumption that only three language groups existed in pre-Indo-European Europe: Uralic,
Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
and
Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...
, corresponding to three ice age refugia. Then, Uralic speakers would have been the first to settle most of Europe, and the language of the Indo-European invaders was influenced by the native Uralic population, producing Proto-Germanic. Existing evidence of languages outside the three refugia that he proposes (such as the proposed Tyrsenian language family or the undeciphered
Vinča symbols The Vinča symbols, sometimes known as the Danube script, Vinča signs, Vinča script, Vinča–Turdaș script, Old European script, etc., are a set of untranslated symbols found on Neolithic era (6th to 5th millennium BC) artifacts from the Vin� ...
) potentially creates a complication for Wiik's hypothesis that Uralic languages dominated the Proto-Germanic
urheimat In historical linguistics, the homeland or ''Urheimat'' (, from German '' ur-'' "original" and ''Heimat'', home) of a proto-language is the region in which it was spoken before splitting into different daughter languages. A proto-language is the ...
. Moreover, his thinking relies on an interpretation of
Indo-European origins The Proto-Indo-European homeland (or Indo-European homeland) was the prehistoric linguistic homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). From this region, its speakers migrated east and west, and went on to form the proto-communities of ...
that is different from the mainstream. On the other hand, the Germanic language family is believed to have dominated in southern
Scandinavia Scandinavia; Sámi languages: /. ( ) is a subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. In English usage, ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, Norway, and Swed ...
for a time before spreading south. This would place it geographically close to the Finnic group during its earliest stages of differentiation from other Indo-European languages, which is consistent with Wiik's theory.
Theo Vennemann Theo Vennemann genannt Nierfeld (; born 27 May 1937 in Oberhausen-Sterkrade) is a German historical linguist known for his controversial theories of a " Vasconic" and an "Atlantic" stratum in European languages, published since the 1990s. He ...
hypothesized in 2003 the subsumption of a "Vasconic" substrate ancestral to Basque by a Semitic
superstrate In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for "layer") or strate is a language that influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or sup ...
to form Proto-Germanic.Cf. Vennemann (2003). However, his speculations were dismissed by linguists
Philip Baldi Philip Baldi (born 1946) is an American linguist and classical scholar specializing in Indo-European studies. He is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Classics at Pennsylvania State University. Biography Baldi was born in Scranton, Pennsylv ...
and B. Richard Page in a review in ''
Lingua Lingua (Latin, 'tongue') may refer to: * ''Lingua'' (journal), a peer-reviewed academic journal of general linguistics * ''Lingua'' (sculpture), by Jim Sanborn * ''Lingua'' (play), a 17th-century play attributed to Thomas Tomkis * Project Lingu ...
''.


Possible substrate cultures

Archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscape ...
has identified candidates for possible substrate culture(s), including the Maglemosian,
Nordwestblock The Nordwestblock ( German, "Northwest Block") is a hypothetical Northwestern European cultural region that some scholars propose as a prehistoric culture in the present-day Netherlands, Belgium, northern France, and northwestern Germany, in an ...
and
Funnelbeaker culture The Funnel(-neck-)beaker culture, in short TRB or TBK (german: Trichter(-rand-)becherkultur, nl, Trechterbekercultuur; da, Tragtbægerkultur; ) was an archaeological culture in north-central Europe. It developed as a technological merger of lo ...
but also older cultures of northern Europe like the Hamburgian or even the
Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician (LRJ) was a culture or technocomplex (industry) dating to the beginning Upper Paleolithic, about 43,000 years ago. It is characterised by leaf points made on long blades, which are thought to have been made by th ...
culture. The
battle-axe people The Battle Axe culture, also called Boat Axe culture, is a Chalcolithic culture that flourished in the coastal areas of the south of the Scandinavian Peninsula and southwest Finland, from circa 2800 BC to circa 2300 BC. The Battle Axe culture w ...
have also been proposed as candidates for the people who influenced Germanic with their non-Indo-European speech. Alternatively, in the framework of the
Kurgan hypothesis The Kurgan hypothesis (also known as the Kurgan theory, Kurgan model, or steppe theory) is the most widely accepted proposal to identify the Proto-Indo-European homeland from which the Indo-European languages spread out throughout Europe and par ...
, the battle-axe people may be seen as an already "kurganized" culture, built on the substrate of the earlier
Funnelbeaker culture The Funnel(-neck-)beaker culture, in short TRB or TBK (german: Trichter(-rand-)becherkultur, nl, Trechterbekercultuur; da, Tragtbægerkultur; ) was an archaeological culture in north-central Europe. It developed as a technological merger of lo ...
. The Battle Axe culture was spread through a wider range of regions across Eastern and Central Europe, already close to or in contact with areas inhabited by Indo-European speakers and their putative area of origin, and none of the Indo-European proto-languages thus produced or their succeeding languages developed along the much larger line of extension of the battle-axe people (Celto-Italic, Illyrian, Slavic, Baltic and others) appear to have been affected by the same changes that are limited to the Proto-Germanic.


Objections


Controversial non-etymologies

Many of Hawkins's purported non-etymologies are controversial. One obvious way to refute the Germanic substrate hypothesis is to find Indo-European etymologies for the words on Hawkins's list. The process continues, but several cited as examples by Hawkins can likely be eliminated. For example, it is generally agreed that ''helmet'' represents IE 'to hide, conceal' (cf.
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the la ...
'shelter, cover',
Thracian The Thracians (; grc, Θρᾷκες ''Thrāikes''; la, Thraci) were an Indo-European speaking people who inhabited large parts of Eastern and Southeastern Europe in ancient history.. "The Thracians were an Indo-European people who occupied t ...
'hide'). ''East'' relates to IE 'dawn'. Some of the words may have Indo-European derivations that are simply not well preserved in other Indo-European languages. For example, it has been suggested that ''wife'' is related to
Tocharian B Kuchean (also known as Tocharian B or West Tocharian) was a Western member of Tocharian branch of Indo-European languages, extinct from ninth century. Once spoken in the Tarim Basin in Central Asia. Tocharian B shows an internal chronological de ...
'shame, vulva', from a reconstructed root . Other possible etymologies include: *ebb: from 'off, away' *north: from which is in turn from 'under, left', north being to one's left when facing the rising sun. *south: from *''sunþera-'' which is in turn from *''sunnōn'' 'the sun', from the oblique stem of *''sóh₂wl̥'' *west: from *''westera-'' which is in turn from *''wes-'', reduced form of *''wespero'' 'evening' *shield: from *''skel-'' 'to cut' *stork: from *''str̥go-'' which is the zero-grade form of *''ster-'' 'stiff' *bear: 'the brown one' (a taboo avoidance term, or tabooistic formation) from *''bʰerH-'' 'bright, brown'; or directly from *''ǵʰwer-'' 'wild animal' *drink: from *''dʰrénǵe-'', presentive of *''dʰreǵ-'' 'to draw, pull' *groom (as in bridegroom): from *''(dʰ)gʰm̥on'' which is the zero-grade suffixed form of *''dʰgʰom-'' 'earth'. The word ''bridegroom'' derives from Middle English and
Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...
, a compound of ''brȳd'' 'bride' and ''guma'' 'man'. The intrusive ''r'' in Modern English ''bridegroom'' is due to contamination with the word ''groom'' (of different meaning), the origin of which is unknown. *ship: from *''skei-'', a root originally meaning 'to cut' (cf. En ''shift'', ON 'to regulate, control'), or compare
Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
(σκάπτω) 'I dig', referring to a
dugout boat A dugout canoe or simply dugout is a boat made from a hollowed tree. Other names for this type of boat are logboat and monoxylon. ''Monoxylon'' (''μονόξυλον'') (pl: ''monoxyla'') is Greek – ''mono-'' (single) + '' ξύλον xylon'' (t ...
. *strand: from *''ster-'', meaning 'wide, flat'. *king, Old English ''cyning'': The ''cyn-'' part is cognate with Modern English 'kin' and related to Latin , etc., from *''ǵenh1-'' 'beget, engender'. Even the derivation has IE parallels, such as Hittite 'king' from ''ḫāš-'', ''ḫašš-'' 'engender'.
Calvert Watkins Calvert Watkins ( /ˈwɒtkɪnz/; March 13, 1933 – March 20, 2013) was an American linguist and philologist, known for his book ''How to Kill a Dragon''. He was a professor of linguistics and the classics at Harvard University and after retireme ...
's 1969 appendix of Indo-European roots in the ''
American Heritage Dictionary American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...
'' listed several roots that were believed to be unique to Germanic at the time. More recent editions have substantially reduced the number of roots claimed to be uniquely Germanic.


Grimm's law

Against the theories regarding substrata, a profound sound change in the Germanic languages,
Grimm's law Grimm's law (also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift) is a set of sound laws describing the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stop consonants as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC. First systematically put forward by Jacob Gri ...
, has been put forward as evidence for the Germanic languages being ''non-substratic'' and having changed, by their own accord, away from other branches of Indo-European. Grimm's law affected all of the
stops Stop may refer to: Places *Stop, Kentucky, an unincorporated community in the United States * Stop (Rogatica), a village in Rogatica, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina Facilities * Bus stop * Truck stop, a type of rest stop for truck dri ...
that were inherited from Proto-Indo-European. The Germanic languages also share common innovations in
grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domain ...
as well as in
phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
: the Germanic
verb A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...
has been extensively remodelled and shows fewer
grammatical mood In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used for signaling modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying (for example, a statement of ...
s and markedly fewer inflections for the
passive voice A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the ''theme'' or '' patient'' of the main verb – that is, the person or thing ...
.


Current scholarship

In the 21st century, treatments of Proto-Germanic tend to reject or simply omit discussion of the Germanic substrate hypothesis. For instance, Joseph B. Voyles' ''Early Germanic Grammar'' makes no mention of the hypothesis. On the other hand, the substrate hypothesis remains popular with the Leiden school of historical linguistics. This group influenced the 4-volume Dutch dictionary (2003-2009) — the first etymological dictionary of any language that systematically took the hypothesis into its discussions. Guus Kroonen brought up the so-called "Agricultural Substrate Hypothesis", based on the comparison of presumable Pre-Germanic and Pre-Greek substrate lexicon (especially agricultural terms without clear IE etymologies). Kroonen links that substrate to the gradual spread of agriculture in Neolithic Europe from Anatolia and the Balkans, and associates the Pre-Germanic agricultural substrate language with the
Linear Pottery culture The Linear Pottery culture (LBK) is a major archaeological horizon of the European Neolithic period, flourishing . Derived from the German ''Linearbandkeramik'', it is also known as the Linear Band Ware, Linear Ware, Linear Ceramics or Inc ...
. The prefix ''*a-'' and the suffix ''*-it-'' are the most apparent linguistic markers by which a small group of "Agricultural" substrate words - i.e. ''*arwīt'' ("pea") or ''*gait'' ("goat") - can be isolated from the rest of the Proto-Germanic lexicon. According to Aljoša Šorgo, there are at least 36 Proto-Germanic lexical items very likely originating from the "agricultural" substrate language (or a group of closely related languages). It is proposed by Šorgo that the Agricultural substrate was characterized by a four-vowel system of */æ/ */ɑ/ */i/ */u/, the presence of pre-nasalized stops, the absence of a semi-vowel */j/, a mobile stress accent, and reduction of unstressed vowels.''Šorgo, Aljoša.'' 2020
Characteristics of Lexemes of a Substratum Origin in Proto-Germanic.
In Romain Garnier (ed.): Loanwords and substrata: proceedings of the colloquium held in Limoges, 5th-7th June 2018. Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck: Innsbruck. Pages 427—472


See also

*
Ancient Belgian language Ancient Belgian is a hypothetical extinct Indo-European language, spoken in Belgica (northern Gaul) in late prehistory. It is often identified with the hypothetical Nordwestblock. While it remains a matter of controversy, the linguist Maurits G ...
*
Haplogroup I-M170 Haplogroup I (M170) is a Human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup, Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup. It is a subgroup of haplogroup IJ (Y-DNA), haplogroup IJ, which itself is a derivative of the Haplogroup IJK (Y-DNA), haplogroup IJK. Subclades Haplogroup ...
*
Pitted Ware culture The Pitted Ware culture ( 3500 BC– 2300 BC) was a hunter-gatherer culture in southern Scandinavia, mainly along the coasts of Svealand, Götaland, Åland, north-eastern Denmark and southern Norway. Despite its Mesolithic economy, it ...
*
Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherer In archaeogenetics, the term Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherer (SHG) is the name given to a distinct ancestral component that represents descent from Mesolithic hunter-gatherers of Scandinavia. Genetic studies suggest that the SHGs were a mix of W ...
*
Funnelbeaker culture The Funnel(-neck-)beaker culture, in short TRB or TBK (german: Trichter(-rand-)becherkultur, nl, Trechterbekercultuur; da, Tragtbægerkultur; ) was an archaeological culture in north-central Europe. It developed as a technological merger of lo ...
*
Germanic parent language In historical linguistics, the Germanic parent language (GPL) includes the reconstructed languages in the Germanic group referred to as Pre-Germanic Indo-European (PreGmc), Early Proto-Germanic (EPGmc), and Late Proto-Germanic (LPGmc), spoken in ...
*
Goidelic substrate hypothesis The Goidelic substrate hypothesis refers to the hypothesized language or languages spoken in Ireland before the Iron Age arrival of the Goidelic languages. Hypothesis of non-Indo-European languages Ireland was settled, like the rest of northern ...
*
Language shift Language shift, also known as language transfer or language replacement or language assimilation, is the process whereby a speech community shifts to a different language, usually over an extended period of time. Often, languages that are perceiv ...
*
Neolithic Europe The European Neolithic is the period when Neolithic (New Stone Age) technology was present in Europe, roughly between 7000 BCE (the approximate time of the first farming societies in Greece) and c.2000–1700 BCE (the beginning of the Bronze Age ...
*
Nordwestblock The Nordwestblock ( German, "Northwest Block") is a hypothetical Northwestern European cultural region that some scholars propose as a prehistoric culture in the present-day Netherlands, Belgium, northern France, and northwestern Germany, in an ...
*
Old European hydronymy Old European (german: Alteuropäisch) is the term used by Hans Krahe (1964) for the language of the oldest reconstructed stratum of European hydronymy (river names) in Central and Western Europe.Hans Krahe, ''Unsere ältesten Flussnamen'', Wies ...
*
Pre-Indo-European languages The Pre-Indo-European languages are any of several ancient languages, not necessarily related to one another, that existed in Prehistoric Europe and Southern Asia before the arrival of speakers of Indo-European languages. The oldest Indo-Europea ...
*
Theo Vennemann Theo Vennemann genannt Nierfeld (; born 27 May 1937 in Oberhausen-Sterkrade) is a German historical linguist known for his controversial theories of a " Vasconic" and an "Atlantic" stratum in European languages, published since the 1990s. He ...
, Atlantic (Semitic) languages


References


Sources

* Robert S. P. Beekes (1995), ''Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction''. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. * John A. Hawkins (1990), "Germanic Languages", ''The Major Languages of Western Europe'', ed. Bernard Comrie. London: Routledge, pp. 58-66. * Guus Kroonen (2013). ''Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic''. Leiden: Brill. * Yury Kuzmenko (2011). ''Early Germanic tribes and their neighbours. Linguistics, archaeology and genetics.''
in Russian
. Saint Petersburg. * Edgar C. Polomé (1990), "Types of Linguistic Evidence for Early Contact: Indo-Europeans and Non-Indo-Europeans", ''When Worlds Collide: The Indo-Europeans and the Pre-Indo-Europeans'', eds. T.L. Markey & J.A.C. Greppin. Ann Arbor (Mich): Karoma. pp. 267-89. * Eduard Prokosch (1939), ''A Comparative Germanic Grammar''. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, Linguistic Society of America. * Orrin W. Robinson (1992), ''Old English and its Closest Relatives: A Survey of the Earliest Germanic Languages''. Stanford: Stanford University Press. *
Theo Vennemann Theo Vennemann genannt Nierfeld (; born 27 May 1937 in Oberhausen-Sterkrade) is a German historical linguist known for his controversial theories of a " Vasconic" and an "Atlantic" stratum in European languages, published since the 1990s. He ...
(2003), "Languages in prehistoric Europe north of the Alps", ''Languages in Prehistoric Europe'', eds. Alfred Bammesberger & Theo Vennemann. Heidelberg: C. Winter, pp. 319-332. * Joseph B. Voyles (1992), ''Early Germanic Grammar''. San Diego, Cal.: Academic Press. * Calvert Watkins. ed. (1985), ''The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots''. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. * Calvert Watkins, ed. (2000), ''The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots'', 2nd edn. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. * Kalevi Wiik (2002), ''Eurooppalaisten juuret'' (in Finnish; "Roots of Europeans"). * Kalevi Wiik (2004), ''Suomalaisten juuret'' (in Finnish; "Roots of Finns"). {{Eurasian languages Germanic philology Pre-Indo-Europeans Indo-European linguistics Linguistic strata 1932 in science