| Germanic Substrate Hypothesis |
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DISTINCT LANGUAGE GROUP That the Germanic languages form a markedly distinct group within Indo-European is beyond question. s featured in more conservative languages such as Sanskrit or Lithuanian are not present in Germanic. (However, other Indo-European languages attested much earlier than the Germanic languages, such as Hittite , also have a reduced inventory of noun cases. It is not certain whether Germanic and Hittite have lost them, or whether they never shared in their acquisition.) The Germanic Verb has also been extensively remodelled, showing fewer Grammatical Mood s, and markedly decreasing the inflections in use for the Passive Voice . Hybridization as conjectured cause
Germanic has some words which seem to ignore Grimm's Law : NON-INDO-EUROPEAN INFLUENCE The Germanic substrate hypothesis attempts to explain these features as a result of creolization with a non-Indo-European language. Writing an introductory article to the Germanic languages in ''The Major Languages of Western Europe'', Germanicist John A. Hawkins sets forth the 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. The Battle-axe People is an ancient culture identified by Archaeology who have 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 . Proponents of the theory sometimes call the alleged non-Indo-European element in Germanic ''Folkish'', on the assumption that the Germanic root ''folk'' is not an Indo-European word. Some people claim to have found Germanic or Old Norse words taken from Saamic (= Lapp ish) languages which were spoken in the area before speakers of Indo-European Languages came, ''e.g.'' Old Norse ''eld'' = "fire" from Saamic ''aalte-ke-sse''. WORDS DERIVED FROM NON-INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES Hawkins moreover asserts that more than one third of the native Germanic Lexicon is of non-Indo-European origin, and again points to the hypothetical substrate language as the cause. Certain lexical fields are dominated by non-Indo-European words according to Hawkins. Seafaring terms, Agricultural terms, words about War and Weapon s, Animal and Fish names, and the names of communal and social institutions are centers of non-Indo-European words according to Hawkins. Some English Language examples given by Hawkins include: CONTROVERSY
As such, more recent treatments of Proto-Germanic tend to reject or simply omit discussion of the Germanic substrate hypothesis. Joseph B. Voyles 's ''Early Germanic Grammar'' makes no mention of the hypothesis, nor do most other recent publications on the Germanic language family. Nonetheless, the hypothesis remains popular in some circles, such as the Leiden school of historical linguistics. The first etymological dictionary of any language to take the hypothesis into its discussions systematically is the new Dutch dictionary influenced by the thinking of the Leiden group, which is currently under production: Marlies Philippa et al (ed), ''Etymologisch woordenboek van het Nederlands'', Amsterdam University press, vol 1 2003, remaining volumes due to appear by 2009. REFERENCES
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