Germanic substrate hypothesis

The Germanic substrate hypothesis attempts to explain the purportedly distinctive nature of the

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 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.^{[citation needed]}

The battle-axe people 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 battle-axe people may be seen as an already "kurganized" culture, built on the substrate of the earlier Funnelbeaker culture.^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]}

Objections

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Grimm's law

Against the theories regarding substrata, a profound sound change in the Germanic languages,

In the 21st century, treatments of Proto-Germanic tend to reject or simply omit discussion of the Germanic substrate hypothesis.^[citation needed] 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)^[10] — 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 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.^[11] 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.^[12]

See also

• Ancient Belgian language
• Haplogroup I-M170
• Pitted Ware culture
• Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherer
• Funnelbeaker culture
• Germanic parent language
• Goidelic substrate hypothesis
• Language shift
• Neolithic Europe
• Nordwestblock
• Old European hydronymy
• Pre-Indo-European languages
• Theo Vennemann, Atlantic (Semitic) languages
• Pre-Finno-Ugric substrate

References