Introduction

Lecture 6 Proto-Germanic Languages

Theprotolanguage without grammar

The holistic protolanguage described above is a self-supporting, stable edifice, whose constraints would stifle its own further evolution, perhaps for thousands of generations: specific naming is unsustainable; without naming, declaratives have almost no purpose; without declaratives, information exchange is largely impeded; this minimizes technological and cultural innovation, rendering naming unimportant. It is possible to imagine how the combination of strong social hierarchies, themselves very well served by holistic utterances, and this stranglehold on referential expression, could considerably postpone the breakthrough into full human language, relative to the independent evolution of our modern cognitive and intellectual abilities.

References.

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PGL (often abbreviated PGmc.), or Common Germanic, as it is sometimes known, is the unattested, reconstructed common ancestor (proto-language) of all the Germanic languages such as modern English, Frisian, Dutch, Afrikaans, German, Luxembourgish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, and Swedish

The Proto-Germanic language is not directly attested by any surviving texts but has been reconstructed using the comparative method. However, a few surviving inscriptions in a runic script from Scandinavia dated to c. 200 are thought to represent a stage of Proto-Norse or, according to Bernard Comrie, Late Common Germanic immediately following the "Proto-Germanic" stage. Proto-Germanic is itself descended from Proto-Indo-European (PIE).