Dutch. A linguistic history of Holland and Belgium

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Section 2 The Past
B. Historical grammar

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16 Dutch as a Germanic language

Within the branch of Indo-European^1. languages known as Germanic, Dutch occupies an important but often neglected position. In terms of number of speakers, it is the third largest Germanic language after English and German. Popularly speaking, one can say that its relationship to the other West Germanic languages is fraternal, whereas its relationship to the North Germanic or Scandinavian languages is more that of a cousin. The study of the historical grammar of Dutch sheds much light on identical or related developments in the other Germanic languages, particularly the other West Germanic languages. It is intended here to look at the phonological and morphological development of the language from the time of the break-up of Germanic into its present constituent parts. Only once this early historical development has been traced can one fully understand how and why Dutch emerged as a separate entity within the West Germanic branch. Of course socio-linguistic factors have also played a role in the emergence of Dutch as a separate language and these are dealt with in chapters 9-15.

Firstly, however, it is important to know what distinguishes a language as being Germanic i.e. what characteristics does Dutch share with the other members of the Germanic branch, both West and North, which the Romance, Celtic, Slavic and other divisions of Indo-European do not contain. The following phenomena are characteristic of all Germanic languages:

1	They have taken part in the First (German) Sound Shift.
2	With the exception^2. of certain prefixes and many foreign loan words, the stress has been fixed on the first syllable of a word.^3.
3	The imperfect indicative and the past participle of weak verbs are formed by the addition of a dental suffix (i.e. t or d).

The similarities with each other and the differences from other Indo-European languages do not stop here, but these three criteria are universal within Germanic and exclusive to it.

1. A synonym for Indo-European is Indo-Germanic. It is commonly used in (often older) Dutch and German literature. It too derives its name from the geographic extremities where these languages are spoken i.e. India (Hindi) and Iceland (Icelandic, a Germanic language).

2. Peculiar to Dutch is a shifting of stress away from the first syllable in certain compound and derived words (see p. 56).

3. Initial stress in Germanic languages nowadays contrasts with the stress on the final syllable in French and the penultimate syllable in Italian, whereas in Russian it is still free as in Indo-European.

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We will look here firstly at the Sound Shift, as it is only after the completion of this shift that we can talk of Germanic at all. The fixing of the stress on the first syllable is indirectly connected to the Sound Shift and will also be dealt with here before proceding to an analysis of the historical phonology of Dutch. The dental suffix of weak imperfects and past participles is discussed in the chapter on historical morphotogy (see p. 175).

Before looking at the details of the so-called First German Sound Shift, also known as Grimm's Law as Jakob Grimm was the first to formalise and logically describe what had occurred, it is perhaps useful to look briefly at what the possible causes of such sound shifts are. Historical phonology is based on the observation that over a certain period of time and/or geographical distance, the sounds of a given language or dialect are likely to change. Such changes may occur spontaneously but usually there are outside influences playing a role. The shifting of the point(s) of articulation can lead to the shifting of another sound in order to avoid a falling together of sounds, which can give rise to homonyms and disturb mutual understanding.^4. It is probably in this light that we should see the First Sound Shift.

When the Indo-European peoples began arriving (from the Caucasus?) on the European subcontinent from ± 2000 B.C., inevitably a proportion of them made their way into the Baltic basin, occupying the south of Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the southern Baltic coast. Others settled further south, covering all of Europe including the British Isles. Archeology tells us, however, that these regions were inhabited long before this wave of immigrants arrived - the Basques, the Finns^5. together with the Estonians and the Lapps, for example, could well be, at least as far as their languages are concerned, remnants of the pre-Indo-European aborigines of Europe. The original inhabitants of the western and southern Baltic basin, whether they were predecessors of the Lapps, the Finns or of other peoples that have since been wiped out or absorbed, adopted Indo-European speech, and in so doing, caused certain sounds, which were unknown or different in their language(s), to shift. It is the stops or plosives which were affected and which set off the chain reaction illustrated below. However the process occurred - one can only rely on hypotheses when discussing such prehistoric changes - the consonantal shift that had occurred in Indo-European speech in the Baltic region by ±500 B.C., occurred only there and enables us to lable that speech with its shifted consonants as Germanic.

4. An interesting modern example of this penomenon is the shifting of initial g to h in Flemish dialects (also in Zeeuws): thus the word geel (yellow) is pronounced heel (very, whole) and could lead to confusion, but in the dialects concerned initial h has been dropped, so heel (geel) contrasts with eel (very, whole).

5. Finno-Ugristik is the name given to the study of Finnish and Hungarian, the two main non-Indo-European languages of Europe; the Magyars of Hungary did not take up residence in Europe until the ninth century, however. Finnish has attracted the interest of Germanists because of its early contact with Germanic speech in the Baltic at a time before the fixing of stress on the first syllable and thus a time when the endings of words were better p̀reserved in Germanic. Finnish, also having no fixed stress on the first syllable, has often preserved these early loan words in a more original state than the Germanic languages themselves e.g. koning (king) - Finnish kuningas.

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1 The First German Sound Shift or Grimm's Law

The stops (plosives) of Indo-European were:

labial	dental	velar	labio-velar
p	t	k	kw
b	d	g	gw
bh^6.	dh^6.	gh^6.	gwh^6.

These stops became the following sounds in Primitive Germanic^7.:

f	þ^8.	h^9.	hw
p	t	k	kw
b	d	g

The shift of these sounds from Indo-European to Germanic can be schematically represented as follows:

1 Gmc.	f	þ	h	hw
	↑	↑	↑	↑
2 IE.	p	t	k	kw
Gmc.	↑	↑	↑	↑
3 IE.	b	d	g	gw
Gmc.	↑	↑	↑	↑
4 IE.	bh	dh	gh	gwh

Most of line 1 has, in fact, since shifted again in Dutch, a shift which occurred some time prior to 1100:

v	d	h		w
↑	↑	(unchanged)		↑
f	þ	h	←	hw

Together with the shift of f> v, s also shifted to z in Dutch; in other words, a voicing occurred e.g. voet (foot), denken (think), hond (hound), wat (what)^10., zeep (soap). In German in Anlaut v is often written, but is pronounced [f], whereas s is written, but is pronounced [z] e.g. Vater (father), Seife (soap).

It is line 2, the new p/t/k from IE. b/d/g, which later took part in the Second German Sound Shift (see p. 123).

What the above paradigm represents is the following: IE. p shifted to f. This left the position formerly filled by the phoneme p vacant. Consequently a further shift occurred where b moved in to fill the gap left by p i.e. it became a p in Germanic in

6. The h here represents aspiration which was phonemic in IE.

6. The h here represents aspiration which was phonemic in IE.

6. The h here represents aspiration which was phonemic in IE.

6. The h here represents aspiration which was phonemic in IE.

7. Also called Common Germanic or Oergermaans/Urgermanisch; it is the hypothetical language from which all Germanic dialects are descended cf. Indo-European.

8. This runic symbol, called thorn, is used to render unvoiced th.

9. Depending on the position in a word, this h can render either [h] or the voiceless fricative [X] i.e. hond but acht.

10. Here English shows a metathesis of the original hwat, still sometimes heard in hypercorrect pronunciation in England.

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all words where in IE. b was/is found. That, in turn, meant that the aspiration of bh, formerly of phonemic importance to distinguish it from b, could be dropped and bh could shift to b without any danger of homonyms occurring. And so the process was repeated simultaneously with the dentals and velars.

To give a few examples, the shift of p > f is illustrated when one compares the following Latin words with their cognates in any of the Germanic languages: piscis - fish (vis, Fisch), pater - father (vader, Vater), per - for (voor, für) etc. The shift of t > þ: tu - thou (du), tres - three (drie, drei), tenuis - thin (dun, dünn). The shift of k > h: octo - eight (acht), casa - house (huis, Haus), canis - hound (hond, Hund) etc. Such comparisons with cognate forms in other Indo-European groups are not always satisfactory as often changes have occurred within those groups which, in turn, are the reasons for those groups being recognisable as such e.g. five/vijf/fünf can't be compared with Latin quinque, where an internal change has taken place, but can be compared with Greek pente to reveal that here too is a case of IE. p > Gmc. f.

When the Germanic peoples began to move south away from the Baltic from about the time of Christ, they took with them this particular form of Indo-European speech to which we have given the name Germanic. Not all the Germanic peoples left the Baltic region in the period concerned and consequently those that stayed behind were to become the ancestors of the present-day North Germanic peoples, the Scandinavians. These migrations, which are discussed in detail in chapter 9, account for the occurrence of Germanic speech in Holland.

The fixing of stress on the first or main syllable of a word in Germanic is a development which occurred later than the above sound shift, as Verner's Law proves. Verner's Law is a complicated but important explanation of what seemed to be a discrepancy in the sound shift as the latter had been formalised by Jakob Grimm. Karl Verner, a Dane, postulated that IE. p/t/k did not shift to the voiceless fricatives f/þ/X, as Grimm's Law suggests, but rather to the corresponding voiced fricatives Ѣ/␢/ǥ (now found as v/d/g in Dutch) when the stress in the word did not immediately precede the sound in question, but followed in a later syllable.^11. For example:

IE.	*bhrā́ter	-	Goth.	brṓþar
IE.	*pәtḗr	-	Goth.	fáder (pron. ␢)

Although the Dutch cognates of the these two words both now contain d (broeder, vader), the different origin, the result of Verner's Law, is still to be seen in German (Bruder, Vater). A further example to help clarify this difficult concept is the word oog(eye - Germ. Auge). The Latin cognate, oculus, still contains the original IE.k sound, which, according to Grimm's Law, one would expect to find as h or X in Germanic; if the stress followed the plosive, however, one would find ǥ, not X, as is the case in Dutch and German.^12.

The alternation of voiced and unvoiced consonants in related words which is the result of Verner's Law is termed ‘grammatical change’. It explains the alternation of s and r, for example, where r has evolved via a process called rhotacism from a

11. Vocabulary of non-Germanic origin in English often preserves the floating stress of Indo-European e.g. éxercise/exért, absólve/ábsolute, contróversy or cóntroversy/controvérsial.

12. The fact that the g of Dutch oog is now voiceless and that it became a stop in German are secondary developments.

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former z i.e. voiced s e.g. was/waren (was/were), verliezen/verloren (to lose/lost - compare forlorn).

The Second or High German Sound Shift

The Second or High German Sound Shift, which only affected the dialects of central and southern Germany (plus Austria and Switzerland) does not, it may seem at first glance, warrant discussion in a book on the history of Dutch, but an understanding of what took place there helps to clarify how and why Dutch and German have evolved as separate languages, as well as to clearly identify certain German loan words in Dutch; in addition it can be used as a means of dating the borrowing of loan words from Greek and Latin into Dutch.

Germanic p/t/k, which, in accordance with Grimm's Law, had evolved from Indo-European b/d/g, underwent a further shift in central and southern Germany; depending on their position in a word, they shifted either fully to ff, ss, ch (i.e. fricatives) or only partially to pf, ts^13., kch (i.e. affricates) - compare Pfeffer (pepper - Dutch peper), essen (eat - Dutch eten), setzen (set - Dutch zetten), machen (make - Dutch maken). The affricate kch (e.g. Kchind - child, Dutch kind) is only found in the dialects of the far south and is not extant in standard German. This shift started in the fifth or sixth centuries in the extreme south of the German-speaking area and gradually made its way northwards, having less and less effect as it progressed. The shift of k > ch was the last to peter out. It is possible to draw a line across Continental Germania dividing the area where k shifted from that where it remained unchanged. Because the shift started in the mountainous south and left its mark clearer there, those dialects which contain shifted p/t/k are called High German. Later, because standard German would be based on those shifted dialects, High German or Hochdeutsch would become synonymous with standard German and people would put a sociological interpretation on the word ‘high’, where in origin it was but geographical.

But if the dialects of central and southern Germany are known as High German, then those of the north are called Low German i.e. of the low-lying plains and coastal belt where p/t/k were retained. Philologically speaking therefore, all the unshifted Germanic dialects of the north can be termed Low German i.e. also English, Dutch and the Scandinavian languages although the latter, being North Germanic dialects, have by definition not been in a position to be affected by the Second German Sound Shift.

The ultimate border between Low and High German is usually taken to be the Benrather Line (i.e. the maken/machen line) which is named after the small town near Düsseldorf where it crosses the Rhine. Only Kerkrade and Vaals in the far south-east of the Dutch province of Limburg lie south of this line and can thus formally be classified as High German. But although the Benrather Line marks the northern most extent of the Sound Shift in the east of Germany (i.e. near Berlin) and is regarded by the Germans to all intents and purposes as the border between

13. Modern German orthography uses the letter z to designate the affricate e.g. zehn (ten - Dutch tien).

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Low and High German, in the west the Uerdinger Line (named after the town of Uerdingen on the Rhine north of Krefeld) crosses into Holland near Venlo and most of Dutch and Belgian Limburg lies south of it; this is the line that divides ik/ook/-lijk forms from ich/auch/-lich. Thus, although one does not normally regard the dialects of Limburg as High German, the province does share some important phonological (and morphological) features with its eastern neighbour (see p. 16).

The following words, which are no longer regarded by speakers of Dutch as foreign, betray High German origins because they bear evidence of having taken part in the Second Sound Shift e.g. verschaffen (to procure), spies (spit), pech (bad luck), zich (himself), beitsen (to stain). Equally, the lack of the Sound Shift in some standard German words indicates a Low German or Dutch origin e.g. Flotte (fleet - Dutch vloot), Treppe (stairs - Dutch trap), Wappen (emblem - lit. weapon, Dutch wapen).

As mentioned previously, the High German Sound Shift also enables us to narrow down the time of borrowing into Dutch of particular Latin or Greek words which contain a p, t or k. Because, for example, German words such as Bischof (bishop - Dutch bisschop), Ziegel (tile - Dutch tegel) and Kelch (chalice - Dutch kelk), which are all loan words from Latin, contain shifted sounds, they must have been borrowed by German prior to the sixth century and therefore must also have been borrowed at that early time by Dutch. On the other hand, German loans from Latin such as Pilger (pilgrim - Dutch pelgrim) and Palast (palace - Dutch paleis), for example, indicate that they were borrowed after the Sound Shift had taken place in German and therefore they were undoubtedly borrowed at that later date by Dutch too. Because both bisschop and paleis still contain a p in Dutch, without resort to comparison with the shifted and unshifted forms respectively in High German, it would be impossible to determine the time of borrowing.

Also as a result of the High German Sound Shift, vowels in root syllables were often locked into closed syllables in German and could not lengthen when short vowels in open syllables were lengthened in the late MHG period. This lengthening which took place prior to the Middle Dutch period in Holland, was not impeded by such double consonants e.g. wapen (weapon) - Waffe, geroken (smelt) - gerochen, beten (bit) - bissen.

3 The importance of Gothic to the study of Germanic languages

A knowledge of Gothic is actually essential for the serious student of the historical grammar of any Germanic language. At Dutch universities all students of Dutch are required to follow a course in Gothic in their first year. Consequently all Dutch text books on the historical development of Dutch refer copiously to Gothic. A knowledge of Gothic is not as common at Anglo-Saxon universities and thus a word of explanation about its importance is perhaps wise at this point.

One can say that Gothic is to the student of Germanic languages what Latin is to the student of Romance languages, with one essential difference: whereas the student of French, for example, can regard Latin as being the legitimate predecessor of French, and thus the language from which French evolved via the Vulgar

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Latin of northern Gaul, the student of Dutch (or German or English) cannot draw such direct comparisons. Gothic merely represents the earliest recorded Germanic language that has come down to us, but as such it is several hundred years closer to Common or Proto-Germanic as spoken by all Germanen prior to their migration southwards; relative to the other Germanic languages it is consequently very conservative in its phonology and morphology and thus ideal for comparative study.

Who were the Goths? The Goths, whose original homeland was possibly in southern Sweden, were already living, however, on the southern Baltic coast before the time of Christ. By the middle of the second century they were moving in a south-easterly direction down the great rivers of eastern Europe to the Black Sea, thus forming the spearhead of the Great Migrations that were to reach their peak in the fifth century. By the beginning of the third century they had created a great Gothic empire on either side of the Dnjestr and a division had occurred into Ostro- and Visigoths.^14.

In 375 this empire was disturbed by the invading Huns and the Goths migrated further via the Balkans into Italy (Ostrogoths) and southern France and Spain (Visigoths). In Italy they were defeated and absorbed by the Eastern Roman Empire in 555 and in Spain, where they had lived since the middle of the fifth century, in 711 by the invading Moors.

At the time the Visigoths were in the Balkans, under the influence of Constantinople, they were converted to christianity and their bishop, Wulfila (311-382?), based in Moesia (present-day Serbia/Bulgaria), translated the Bible from Greek into his native Gothic for his mission. This Bible translation, of which only a very small amount of the Old Testament and not all the New Testament are preserved in manuscripts of somewhat more recent origin, forms the basis of our knowledge of the Gothic language. There are several other minor sources as well, however.

Philologists have been able to compile a reasonably complete grammar of Gothic on the basis of these sources and this grammar forms the basis of all comparative studies of the phonology and morphology of Germanic languages. Thus extensive reference is made to Gothic in standard Dutch works such as Van Loey's Schönfeld's Historische Grammatica van het Nederlands and De Vries' Nederlands Etymologisch Woordenboek. The following reservation must be kept in mind, however, when drawing comparisons with Gothic: it is not the language from which all other Germanic dialects are derived, which is the case with Latin and its offspring. In addition, the Gothic we have access to is also far enough removed in time and location from Common Germanic to have undergone certain changes and simplifications which can be misleading or unhelpful to the comparativist. Despite this handicap, however, Gothic remains invaluable to the student of Dutch and, although no thorough knowledge of it is presupposed in the following chapters on historical grammar, Gothic examples will occasionally be used to illustrate changes which have occurred within Dutch.

14. Ostrogoths = Eastern Goths; Visigoths, whose etymology is not clear, are commonly called Western Goths as this corresponds roughly to their geographic location at the time of the split and during later migrations.

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4 Periodisation of Dutch

It is traditional to regard the development of Germanic languages as falling into three distinct periods, or strictly speaking four if one includes the initial period common to all. The first period is that from the time that the First Sound Shift had occurred (± 500 B.C.) to the end of the Great Migrations (± 500 A.D.) - this is the period of Common Germanic, a prehistoric era in linguistic terms as there are no texts available in any West Germanic language from that time.^15. Reconstruction of original forms has indicated also that, with the possible exception of some slight dialectal differentiation, all forms of Germanic were still similar enough to be grouped together under the name Common or Proto-Germanic. Such reconstructed Common Germanic forms are often given for comparison in linguistic works, but are always, as are reconstructed Indo-European forms, accompanied by an asterisk to indicate that they are merely hypothetical forms.

By ± 500 A.D. the Germanic peoples had taken up residence more or less in the areas they occupy today (see p. 85 for details of Holland), the Second or High German Sound Shift (see p. 123) had taken place and the second stage in the periodisation had dawned. This is known as the ‘old’ period, the time of Old High German, Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon) and Old Dutch, known more specifically as Old West Low Franconian.^16. 1100 is traditionally regarded as the end of the old period as Dutch, German and English all share a phonological development which seems to have been completed by this date, namely the weakening of full vowels in unstressed syllables. In the case of Dutch, both this development as well as other classic Middle Dutch characteristics are present by 1100. Due to the definite fixing of stress on the first or main syllable of a word, the full a, e, i, o or u of (preceding or) following syllables were weakened to a schwa (ә), usually written e. This was to have tremendous implications in later stages of the development of these languages, because it was in the various vowels of the endings that case and stem classification of nouns and person and class of verbs were indicated; this would ultimately be the cause of a simplified morphology in all three languages - in fact in all modern Germanic languages except Icelandic - which is not evident in Gothic.

There are several other phonological developments in the Old West Low Franconian period which are complete by 1100 and are thus characteristic of the following period, the Middle Dutch period:

(a)

The Germanic þ and ␢ have become d, as occurred in all the continental Germanic languages (thus not in English and Icelandic) e.g. doorn (thorn), vader (father). This development, which started in the south of Germany and Austria first, took several centuries to reach the Netherlands and only conquered this area very late in the old period. Simultaneously initial s and f became voiced and are thus now written as z and v.

(b)

Due to the ‘thick’ pronunciation of l after a and o, the combination a + l +

15. Several brief runic inscriptions that predate the handwritten texts of early Christian Europe have been found, however.

16. Old East Low Franconian, the language of the Wachtendonk Psalms, is the Low Franconian on German soil i.e. the area around Cleves.

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	dental or o + /+ dental developed into ou + dental during the old period and is thus the only form found in Middle Dutch e.g. Germ. alt/Dutch oud, Germ. Gold/Dutch goud. A similar development is found in French too e.g. chaud (hot -It. caldo).
(c)	Original (i.e. Germanic) ô had been raised to û, but was and is usually still written oe; original û had been spontaneously palatalised to ŷ.
(d)	Finally the lengthening of short vowels in open syllables, a very important development which took place in High German only gradually during the middle period, was already complete in Dutch by the end of the old period; whereas the change from þ > > d had started at an early date in the south of continental Germania, the lengthening of short vowels in open syllables started in the north.

The student of English is fortunate enough to have texts in Old English dating from the late seventh century; German texts begin about the middle of the eighth century and texts in both languages become more and more frequent towards the end of the old period. In Dutch we are not so fortunate. With the exception of isolated Old West Low Franconian glosses in Latin texts, and quite a sizeable number of names in Latin documents^17., the only remnant of Dutch prior to 1170 - the approximate date of the first Middle Dutch literary text - which has been preserved, is an eleventh century sentence in West Flemish which was found in an English manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford in 1932. It reads: Hebban olla vogala nestas bigunnan hinase hi[c] (e)nda thu...^18.. De Vooys^19. renders this into Middle Dutch to illustrate the essential differences between Old and Middle Dutch which have been discussed above: Hebben alle vogele neste begonnen het en si ic ende du. Full vowels in unstressed syllables have all become e and th has become d.^20.

Note: M. Gysseling has produced, in the series Corpus van Middelnederlandse Teksten, a volume in which every tracé of Old Dutch, from runic inscriptions through glosses and the Wachtendonk Psalms to the closely related Old Saxon Heliand, has been collected. This collection of fragments includes every available text up to 1300 (see bibliography).

The period 1100-1500 is the period of Middle Dutch, Middle High German and Middle English. It is a term of convenience used by philologists but the unity of form the term may suggest is not present at all. There is no standard Dutch as such at this time and, what's more, certain characteristics of even a given Middle Dutch dialect may have been quite different in 1400 from what they had been in 1200. But nevertheless the term has gained a certain currency and is useful if this reservation is kept in mind.

The earliest Middle Dutch texts that have been preserved are written in Limburgs. By far the majority of the corpus is, however, in Flemish and Brabants. The division between the middle and the modern period, 1500, is based on a combination of factors, both linguistic and otherwise. The non-linguistic factors, such as

17. G. Mansion's Oud-Gentsche Naamkunde attempts to shed light on the earliest period of Dutch by analysing Low Franconian names in Latin documents from Ghent (see p. 91).

18. Literal translation: Have all birds begun nests except I and thou.

19. Vooys, C.G.N. Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse Taal, Wolters-Noordhoff, Groningen 1970, p. 25.

20. The weakening of those full vowels was already well underway in the old period.

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increasing standardisation due to the invention of printing, are discussed in chapter 12. The linguistic criteria for this division are the following: at the end of the Middle Ages, which are also regarded as having come to an end at round about 1500, a shift occurred almost simultaneously in Dutch, German and English in the long î and ŷ. In Dutch, î shifted to ij and ŷ to ui, although both modern spellings are already found in Middle Dutch texts; the present-day spelling of ij and ui is in fact a remnant of mediaeval tradition of writing an i (for j is merely a scribal variant of i) after a vowel to indicate it is long. The Middle Dutch text known as the Beatrijs should thus be read, strictly speaking, as Beatries, as it predates this diphthongisation which is so typical of Modern Dutch (called Nieuwnederlands in Dutch).

There are also certain morphological differences between Middle Dutch and Modern Dutch. As a result of the vowels in unstressed syllables having weakened to e, or even having dropped off by this stage, there was a great deal of falling together of forms. The distinction between masculine and feminine nouns had already broken down to a great extent and case was no longer applied as strictly as it had been earlier in the Middle Dutch period, also a result of the falling together or loss of endings.

Summary:	prior to 500	Common Germanic
	500 - 1100	Old West Low Franconian
	1100 - 1500	Middle Dutch
	1500 →	Modern Dutch

5 Ingwaeonisms

The word Ingwaeonic, borrowed from Pliny and Tacitus who used it to designate the Germanic tribes of the coast from the Rhine to the Weser (see p. 86), is now employed by modern dialectologists with a linguistic connotation in which case it is synonymous with North Sea Germanic. It is a somewhat vague, but nevertheless convenient label for certain linguistic phenomena, which, although not necessarily found exclusively in the North Sea Germanic languages par excellence, i.e. English and Frisian, are more frequent in the coastal dialects of Continental Germania and are not found at all in High German. Although it is a term which only really has currency in a West Germanic context, several of the characteristics are also found in the Scandinavian languages.

The following are generally considered to be Ingwaeonic or North Sea Germanic sound changes:

(1)	The unrounding of û (i.e. < Old Gmc. û + Umlaut) to i or e - compare Engl. fill/Dutch vullen, Engl. thin/Dutch dun.
(2)	Old Gmc. ai, which usually became ê in Dutch (occasionally ei, see p. 146) is found as â in some Ingwaeonic forms e.g. ladder, klaver (clover).
(3)	ie for ui (< uu) - compare Flem. Diets/Holl. Duits (see p. 4), lieden/lui (people).
(4)	Palatal j instead of g - compare Dutch jegens (towards) and German gegen.
(5)	Compensatory lengthening^21. (Ersatzdehnung) of a short vowel after the disappearance

21. Not all compensatory lengthening is Ingwaeonic; in certain instances even Gothic shows signs of this sound change e.g. þāhta (< þagkjan, where g had a nasal pronunciation) = Eng. thought/Dutch dacht.

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of a following n before fricatives - compare Eng. mouth, Dutch *muid (in place names such as Muiden)/Dutch mond, Germ. Mund; also Dutch vijf. Eng. five/Germ. fünf.

There are also certain morphological phenomena which are considered to be Ingwaeonic:

(1)	The general simplification of forms, particularly the falling together of masculine and feminine gender and a reduction in the number of personal endings in verbal conjugations.
(2)	Plurals in s, derived from the former masculine a-stems. One such form is even present in that West Flemish sentence which is generally considered to be the only remnant of Old West Low Franconian (see p. 127) - nestas, nowadays nesten in ABN.
(3)	Personal pronouns beginning with h - compare Germ. er/ihn/ihr/ihnen with Dutch hij/hem/haar/hun and Eng. he/him/her.
(4)	Jij/jou (Eng. you) versus Germ. du/dich. In addition there are various other items of vocabulary and word formation which can be considered Ingwaeonic.

Dutch cannot be called a North Sea Germanic language but it does contain some of the characteristics of same, more so at the level of dialect, however, than at that of the standard language. The same applies to the Low German of Niedersachsen and Schleswig-Holstein.

Bibliography

LOCKWOOD, W.B. An informal history of the German language. Andre Deutsch, London, 1976. Chapter 4 is a terse treatment of the High German Sound Shift.

LOCKWOOD, W.B. A panorama of Indo-European languages. Hutchinson, London, 1972. Chapter 7 contains a good, simple account of Germanic in general as well as a few paragraphs on each Germanic language in particular.

LOCKWOOD, W.B. Indo-European philology. Hutchinson, London, 1969. Chapter 8 contains quite a detailed synopsis of the phonology and morphology of Germanic.

BREE, C. van Leerboek voor de historische grammatica van het Nederlands. Wolters-Noordhoff, Groningen, 1977. This is an extremely detailed book on all aspects of Dutch historical grammar. Chapters 4-14 are a summary of Gothic grammar for neerlandici whereas chapter 15 deals with Dutch as a Germanic language, the periodisation and written sources.

WRIGHT, G. Grammar of the Gothic language. Oxford University Press, London, 1968. Although a very detailed book, it is a standard text for the English-speaking world. There are several authoritative Gothic grammars in German too, but none so lucid as this one in English.

VRIES, J. de Elementair Gotisch. Coutinho, Muiderberg, 1982. This simple little Gothic grammar is a welcome recent addition to texts on the subject. It contains little more that the basic paradigms with a short text plus word list, but often that is all one requires.