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Germanic substrate hypothesis


The Germanic substrate hypothesis is an attempt to explain the distinctive nature of the Germanic languages within the context of the Indo-European language family. It postulates that the elements of the common Germanic vocabulary and syntactical forms, which do not seem to have cognates in other Indo-European languages, suggest that Proto-Germanic may have been either a creole or contact language that subsumed a non-Indo-European substrate language, or a hybrid of two quite different Indo-European languages, from the Centum and Satem types respectively.

The non-Indo-European substrate theory was first proposed by Sigmund Feist in 1932, 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 with that substrate. Which culture or cultures may have contributed the substrate material is an ongoing subject of academic debate and study. Notable candidates for possible substrate culture(s) are the Maglemosian and Funnelbeaker culture but also older cultures of northern Europe like the Hamburgian or even the LRJ (Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician).

Against the theories regarding substrata, a profound sound change in the Germanic languages known as Grimm's law has been put forward as evidence for the Germanic languages being non-substratic and having mutated of their own accord, away from other branches of Indo-European. Grimm's law affected all of the stops that were inherited from Proto-Indo-European. The Germanic languages also share common innovations in grammar as well as in phonology: The Germanic verb has been extensively remodelled, showing fewer grammatical moods, and markedly fewer inflections for the passive voice.


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