User:Chrysophylax/Skājamāl/Phonology

Vowels

Proto-Germanic had four short vowels five or six long vowels, and at least one "overlong" or "trimoric" vowel. The exact phonetic quality of the vowels is uncertain.

Oral vowels Front Back short long overl. short long overl. Close i iː u uː Close-mid e eː Open-mid ɛː ɛːː ɔː ɔːː Open ɑ ɑː

Nasal vowels Front Back short long overl. short long overl. Close ĩ ĩː ũ ũː Close-mid Open-mid ɔ̃ː ɔ̃ːː Open ɑ̃ ɑ̃ː

Notes:

1. /e/ could not occur in unstressed syllables except before /r/, where it may have been lowered to /ɑ/ already in late Proto-Germanic times.
2. All nasal vowels except /ɑ̃ː/ and /ũː/ occurred word-finally. The long nasal vowels /ɑ̃ː/, /ĩː/ and /ũː/ occurred before /x/, and derived from earlier short vowels followed by /nx/.

PIE ə a o merged into PGmc a; PIE ā ō merged into PGmc ō. At the time of the merger, the vowels probably were [ɑ] and [ɑː], or perhaps [ɒ] and [ɒː]. Their timbres then differentiated by raising (and perhaps rounding) the long vowel to [ɔː]Template:Fix. It is known that the raising of ā to ō can not have occurred earlier than the earliest contact between Proto-Germanic speakers and the Romans. This can be verified by the fact that Latin Rōmānī later emerges in Gothic as Rumoneis (that is, Rūmōnīs). It is explained by Ringe that at the time of borrowing, the vowel matching closest in sound to Latin ā was a Proto-Germanic ā-like vowel (which later became ō). And since Proto-Germanic therefore lacked a mid(-high) back vowel, the closest equivalent of Latin ō was Proto-Germanic ū: Rōmānī > *Rūmānīz > *Rūmōnīz > Gothic Rumoneis.

A new ā was formed following the shift from ā to ō when intervocalic /j/ was lost in -aja- sequences. It was a rare phoneme, and occurred only in a handful of words, the most notable being the verbs of the third weak class. The agent noun suffix *-ārijaz (Modern English -er) was likely borrowed from Latin around or shortly after this time.

Diphthongs

The following diphthongs are known to have existed in Proto-Germanic:

• Short: /ɑu/, /ɑi/, /eu/, /iu/
• Long: /ɔːu/, /ɔːi/, (possibly /ɛːu/, /ɛːi/)

Note the change /e/ > /i/ before /i/ or /j/ in the same or following syllable. This removed /ei/ (which became /iː/) but created /iu/ from earlier /eu/.

Diphthongs in Proto-Germanic can also be analysed as sequences of a vowel plus an approximant, as was the case in Proto-Indo-European. This explains why /j/ was not lost in *niwjaz ("new"); the second element of the diphthong iu was still underlyingly a consonant and therefore the conditioning environment for the loss was not met. This is also confirmed by the fact that later in the West Germanic gemination, -wj- is geminated to -wwj- in parallel with the other consonants (except /r/).

Overlong vowels

Proto-Germanic had two overlong or trimoraic long vowels ô [ɔːː] and ê [ɛːː], the latter mainly in adverbs (cf. *hwadrê "whereto, whither"). None of the documented languages still include such vowels. Their reconstruction is due to the comparative method, particularly as a way of explaining an otherwise unpredictable two-way split of reconstructed long ō in final syllables, which unexpectedly remained long in some morphemes but shows normal shortening in others. (See below.)

Trimoraic vowels generally occurred at morpheme boundaries where a bimoraic long vowel and a short vowel in hiatus contracted, especially after the loss of an intervening laryngeal (-VHV-). One example, without a laryngeal, includes the class II weak verbs (ō-stems) where a -j- was lost between vowels, so that -ōja → ōa → ô (cf. *salbōjaną → *salbôną → Gothic salbōn "to anoint"). However, the majority occurred in word-final syllables (inflectional endings) probably because in this position the vowel could not be resyllabified. Additionally, Germanic, like Balto-Slavic, lengthened bimoraic long vowels in absolute final position, perhaps to better conform to a word's prosodic template; e.g., PGmc *arô "eagle" ← PIE *h₃érō just as Lith akmuő "stone", OSl kamy ← *aḱmō̃ ← PIE *h₂éḱmō). Contrast:

• contraction after loss of laryngeal: gen.pl. *wulfǫ̂ "wolves'" ← *wulfôn ← pre-Gmc *wúlpōom ← PIE *wĺ̥kʷoHom; ō-stem nom.pl. *-ôz ← pre-Gmc *-āas ← PIE *-eh₂es.
• contraction of short vowels: a-stem nom.pl. *wulfôz "wolves" ← PIE *wĺ̥kʷoes.

But vowels that were lengthened by laryngeals did not become overlong. Compare:

• ō-stem nom.sg. *-ō ← *-ā ← PIE *-eh₂;
• ō-stem acc.sg. *-ǭ ← *-ān ← *-ām (by Stang's law) ← PIE *-eh₂m;
• ō-stem acc.pl. *-ōz ← *-āz ← *-ās (by Stang's law) ← PIE *-eh₂ns;

Trimoraic vowels are distinguished from bimoraic vowels by their outcomes in attested Germanic languages: word-final trimoraic vowels remained long vowels while bimoraic vowels developed into short vowels. Older theories about the phenomenon claimed that long and overlong vowels were both long but differed in tone, i.e., ô and ê had a "circumflex" (rise-fall-rise) tone while ō and ē had an "acute" (rising) tone, much like the tones of modern Scandinavian languages, Baltic, and Ancient Greek, and asserted that this distinction was inherited from PIE. However, this view was abandoned since languages do not combine distinctive intonations on unstressed syllables with contrastive stress and vowel length. Modern theories have reinterpreted overlong vowels as having superheavy syllable weight (three moras) and therefore greater length than ordinary long vowels.

By the end of the Proto-Germanic period, word-final long vowels were shortened to short vowels. Following that, overlong vowels were shortened to regular long vowels in all positions, merging with originally long vowels except word-finally (because of the earlier shortening), so that they remained distinct in that position. This was a late dialectal development, because the end result was not the same in all Germanic languages: word-final ē shortened to a in East and West Germanic but to i in Old Norse, and word-final ō shortened to a in Gothic but to o (probably [o]) in early North and West Germanic, with a later raising to u (the 6th century Salic law still has maltho in late Frankish).

The shortened overlong vowels in final position developed as regular long vowels from that point on, including the lowering of ē to ā in North and West Germanic. The monophthongization of unstressed au in Northwest Germanic produced a phoneme which merged with this new word-final long ō, while the monophthongization of unstressed ai produced a new ē which did not merge with original ē, but rather with ē₂, as it was not lowered to ā. This split, combined with the asymmetric development in West Germanic, with ē lowering but ō raising, points to an early difference in the articulation height of the two vowels that was not present in North Germanic. It could be seen as evidence that the lowering of ē to ā began in West Germanic at a time when final vowels were still long, and spread to North Germanic through the late Germanic dialect continuum, but only reaching the latter after the vowels had already been shortened.

ē₁ and ē₂

ē₂ is uncertain as a phoneme, and only reconstructed from a small number of words; it is posited by the comparative method because whereas all provable instances of inherited (PIE) *ē (PGmc. *ē₁) are distributed in Gothic as ē and the other Germanic languages as *ā, all the Germanic languages agree on some occasions of ē (e. g., Goth./OE/ON hēr "here" ← PGmc. *hē₂r). Gothic makes no orthographic and therefore presumably no phonetic distinction between ē₁ and ē₂, but the existence of two Proto-Germanic long e-like phonemes is supported by the existence of two e-like Elder Futhark runes, Ehwaz and Eihwaz.

Krahe treats ē₂ (secondary ē) as identical with ī. It probably continues PIE ēi, and it may have been in the process of transition from a diphthong to a long simple vowel in the Proto-Germanic period. Lehmann lists the following origins for ē₂:

• ēi: Old High German fiara, fera "ham", Goth fera "side, flank" ← PGmc *fē₂rō ← *pēi-s-eh₂ ← PIE *(s)peh₁i-.
• The preterite of class VII strong verbs with ai, al or an plus a consonant, or ē₁.
• iz: OEng mēd, OHG miata "reward" (vs. OEng meord, Goth mizdō) ← PIE *misdʰós.
• Certain pronominal forms, e. g. OEng hēr "here".
• Words borrowed from Latin ē or e in the root syllable after a certain period (older loans also show ī).

Nasal vowels

Proto-Germanic developed nasal vowels from two sources. The earlier and much more frequent source was word-final -n (from PIE -n or -m) in unstressed syllables, which at first gave rise to short -ą, -į, -ų, long -į̄, -ę̄, -ą̄, and overlong -ę̂, -ą̂. -ę̄ and -ę̂ then merged into -ą̄ and -ą̂, which later developed into -ǭ and -ǫ̂. Another source, developing only in late Proto-Germanic times, was in the sequences -inh-, -anh-, -unh-, in which the nasal consonant lost its occlusion and was converted into lengthening and nasalisation of the preceding vowel, becoming -ą̄h-, -į̄h-, -ų̄h- (still written as -anh-, -inh-, -unh- in this article).

In many cases, the nasality was not contrastive and was merely present as an additional surface articulation. No Germanic language that preserves the word-final vowels has their nasality preserved. Word-final short nasal vowels do not show different reflexes compared to non-nasal vowels. However, the comparative method does require a three-way phonemic distinction between word-final *-ō, *-ǭ and -ōn, which each has a distinct pattern of reflexes in the later Germanic languages:

Proto-Germanic	Gothic	Old Norse	Old High German	Old English
-ō	-a	-u > -	-u / -	-u / -
-ǭ	-a	-a	-a	-e
-ōn	-ōn	-a, -u	-ōn	-an

The distinct reflexes of nasal -ǭ versus non-nasal -ō are caused by the Northwest Germanic raising of final -ō /ɔː/ to /oː/, which did not affect -ǭ. When the vowels were shortened and denasalised, these two vowels no longer had the same place of articulation, and did not merge: -ō became /o/ (later /u/) while -ǭ became /ɔ/ (later /ɑ/). This allowed their reflexes to stay distinct.

The nasality of word-internal vowels (from -nh-) was more stable, and survived into the early dialects intact.

Phonemic nasal vowels definitely occurred in Proto-Norse and Old Norse. They were preserved in Old Icelandic down to at least 1125 AD, the earliest possible time for the creation of the First Grammatical Treatise, which documents nasal vowels. The PG nasal vowels from -nh- sequences were preserved in Old Icelandic as shown by examples given in the First Grammatical Treatise. For example:

• há̇r "shark" < *hą̄haz < PG *hanhaz
• ǿ̇ra "younger" < *jų̄hizô < PG *junhizô (cf. Gothic jūhiza)

The phonemicity is evident from minimal pairs like ǿ̇ra "younger" vs. ǿra "vex" < *wor-, cognate with English weary. The inherited Proto-Germanic nasal vowels were joined in Old Norse by nasal vowels from other sources, e.g. loss of *n before s. Modern Elfdalian still includes nasal vowels that directly derive from Old Norse, e.g. gą̊s "goose" < Old Norse gás (presumably nasalized, although not so written); cf. German Gans, showing the original consonant.

Similar surface (possibly phonemic) nasal/non-nasal contrasts occurred in the West Germanic languages down through Proto-Anglo-Frisian of 400 AD or so. Proto-Germanic medial nasal vowels were inherited, but were joined by new nasal vowels resulting from the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law, which extended the loss of nasal consonants (only before -h- in Proto-Germanic) to all environments before a fricative (thus including -mf-, -nþ- and -ns- as well). The contrast between nasal and non-nasal long vowels is reflected in the differing output of nasalized long *ą̄, which was raised to ō in Old English (modern oo) whereas non-nasal *ā appeared as fronted ǣ. Hence:

• goose < Old English gōs < Anglo-Frisian *gą̄s < Proto-Germanic *gans
• tooth < Old English tōþ < Anglo-Frisian *tą̄þ < Proto-Germanic *tanþ-
• brought < Old English brōhte < Anglo-Frisian *brą̄htæ < Proto-Germanic *branhtē.