The evolution of Proto-Germanic from its ancestral forms, beginning with its ancestor
Proto-Indo-European, began with the development of a separate common way of speech among some geographically nearby speakers of a prior language and ended with the dispersion of the proto-language speakers into distinct populations with mostly independent speech habits. Between the two points, many sound changes occurred.
Theories of phylogeny Solutions Phylogeny as applied to
historical linguistics involves the evolutionary descent of languages. The phylogeny problem is the question of what specific tree, in the
tree model of language evolution, best explains the paths of descent of all the members of a language family from a common language, or proto-language (at the root of the tree) to the attested languages (at the leaves of the tree). The
Germanic languages form a tree with Proto-Germanic at its root that is a branch of the Indo-European tree, which in turn has
Proto-Indo-European at its root. Borrowing of lexical items from contact languages makes the relative position of the Germanic branch within Indo-European less clear than the positions of the other branches of Indo-European. In the course of the development of historical linguistics, various solutions have been proposed, none certain and all debatable. In the evolutionary history of a language family, philologists consider a genetic "tree model" appropriate only if communities do not remain in effective contact as their languages diverge. Early Indo-European had limited contact between distinct lineages, and, uniquely, the Germanic subfamily exhibited a less treelike behaviour, as some of its characteristics were acquired from neighbours early in its evolution rather than from its direct ancestors. The internal diversification of West Germanic developed in an especially non-treelike manner. Proto-Germanic is generally agreed to have begun about 500 BC. Its hypothetical ancestor between the end of Proto-Indo-European and 500 BC is termed Pre-Proto-Germanic. Whether it is to be included under a wider meaning of Proto-Germanic is a matter of usage.
Winfred P. Lehmann regarded
Jacob Grimm's "First Germanic Sound Shift", or Grimm's law, and
Verner's law, (which pertained mainly to consonants and were considered for many decades to have generated Proto-Germanic) as pre-Proto-Germanic and held that the "upper boundary" (that is, the earlier boundary) was the fixing of the accent, or stress, on the root syllable of a word, typically on the first syllable. Proto-Indo-European had featured a moveable
pitch-accent consisting of "an alternation of high and low tones" as well as stress of position determined by a set of rules based on the lengths of a word's syllables. The fixation of the stress led to sound changes in unstressed syllables. For Lehmann, the "lower boundary" was the dropping of final or in unstressed syllables; for example, post-PIE >
Gothic , 'knows'.
Elmer H. Antonsen agreed with Lehmann about the upper boundary but later found
runic evidence that the was not dropped: , 'I, Wakraz, … wrote (this)'. He says: "We must therefore search for a new lower boundary for Proto-Germanic." Antonsen's own scheme divides Proto-Germanic into an early stage and a late stage. The early stage includes the stress fixation and resulting "spontaneous vowel-shifts" while the late stage is defined by ten complex rules governing changes of both vowels and consonants.
Phonological stages from Proto-Indo-European to end of Proto-Germanic The following changes are known or presumed to have occurred in the history of Proto-Germanic in the wider sense from the end of Proto-Indo-European up to the point that Proto-Germanic began to break into mutually unintelligible dialects. The changes are listed roughly in chronological order, with changes that operate on the outcome of earlier ones appearing later in the list. The stages distinguished and the changes associated with each stage rely heavily on Ringe, who in turn summarizes standard concepts and terminology.
Pre-Proto-Germanic (Pre-PGmc) This stage began with the separation of a distinct speech, perhaps while it still formed part of the Proto-Indo-European dialect continuum. It contained many innovations that were shared with other Indo-European branches to various degrees, probably through areal contacts, and mutual intelligibility with other dialects would remain for some time. It was nevertheless on its own path, whether dialect or language.
Early Proto-Germanic This stage began its evolution as a dialect of
Proto-Indo-European that had lost its laryngeals and had five long and six short vowels as well as one or two overlong vowels. The consonant system was still that of PIE minus palatovelars and laryngeals, but the loss of syllabic resonants already made the language markedly different from PIE proper. Mutual intelligibility might have still existed with other descendants of PIE, but it would have been strained, and the period marked the definitive break of Germanic from the other Indo-European languages and the beginning of Germanic proper, containing most of the sound changes that are now held to define this branch distinctively. This stage contained various consonant and vowel shifts, the loss of the contrastive accent inherited from PIE for a uniform accent on the first syllable of the word root, and the beginnings of the reduction of the resulting unstressed syllables.
Late Proto-Germanic By this stage, Germanic had emerged as a distinctive branch and had undergone many of the sound changes that would make its later descendants recognisable as Germanic languages. It had shifted its consonant inventory from a system that was rich in plosives to one containing primarily fricatives, had lost the PIE mobile pitch accent for a predictable stress accent, and had merged two of its vowels. The stress accent had already begun to cause the erosion of unstressed syllables, which would continue in its descendants. The final stage of the language included the remaining development until the breakup into dialects and, most notably, featured the development of nasal vowels and the start of
umlaut, another characteristic Germanic feature.
Lexical evidence in other language varieties Loans into Proto-Germanic from other (known) languages or from Proto-Germanic into other languages can be dated relative to each other by which Germanic sound laws have acted on them. Since the dates of borrowings and sound laws are not precisely known, it is not possible to use loans to establish absolute or calendar chronology.
Loans from adjoining Indo-European groups Most loans from
Celtic appear to have been made before or during the
Germanic Sound Shift. For instance, one specimen 'ruler' was borrowed from Celtic 'king' (stem ), with
g →
k. It is clearly not native because PIE * → is typical not of Germanic but Celtic languages. Another is 'foreigner; Celt' from the Celtic tribal name
Volcae with
k →
h and
o →
a. Other likely Celtic loans include 'servant', 'mailshirt', 'hostage', 'iron', 'healer', 'lead', 'Rhine', and 'fortified enclosure'. These loans would likely have been borrowed during the Celtic
Hallstatt and early
La Tène cultures when the Celts dominated central Europe, although the period spanned several centuries. From
East Iranian came 'hemp' (compare
Khotanese ,
Ossetian 'flax'), 'hops' (compare Ossetian ), 'sheep' (compare
Persian 'yearling kid'), 'tunic' (cf. Osset 'shirt'), 'cottage' (compare Persian 'house'), 'cloak', 'path' (compare
Avestan , gen. ), and 'work' (compare Avestan ). The words could have been transmitted directly by the
Scythians from the
Ukraine plain, groups of whom entered Central Europe via the Danube and created the
Vekerzug Culture in the
Carpathian Basin (sixth to fifth centuries BC), or by later contact with
Sarmatians, who followed the same route. Unsure is 'horse', which was either borrowed directly from
Scytho-Sarmatian or through Celtic mediation.
Loans into non-Germanic languages Numerous loanwords believed to have been borrowed from Proto-Germanic are known in the non-Germanic languages spoken in areas adjacent to the Germanic languages. The heaviest influence has been on the
Finnic languages, which have received hundreds of Proto-Germanic or pre-Proto-Germanic loanwords. Well-known examples include PGmc 'warlord' (compare Finnish ), (later ) 'ring' (compare Finnish , Estonian ), 'king' (Finnish ), ==Phonology==
Transcription The following conventions are used in this article for transcribing Proto-Germanic reconstructed forms: • Voiced obstruents appear as
b,
d,
g; this does not imply any particular analysis of the underlying phonemes as plosives , , or fricatives , , . In other literature, they may be written as
graphemes with a
bar to produce
ƀ,
đ,
ǥ. • Unvoiced fricatives appear as
f,
þ,
h (perhaps , , ). may have become in certain positions at a later stage of Proto-Germanic itself. Similarly for , which later became or in some environments. • Labiovelars appear as
kw,
hw,
gw; this does not imply any particular analysis as single sounds (e.g. , , ) or clusters (e.g. , , ). • The yod sound appears as
j . Note that the normal convention for representing this sound in
Proto-Indo-European is
y; the use of
j does not imply any actual change in the pronunciation of the sound. • Long vowels are denoted with a macron over the letter, e.g.
ō. When a distinction is necessary, and are transcribed as
ē¹ and
ē² respectively.
ē¹ is sometimes transcribed as
æ or
ǣ instead, but this is not followed here. •
Overlong vowels appear with circumflexes, e.g.
ô. In other literature they are often denoted by a doubled macron, e.g.
ō̄. • Nasal vowels are written here with an
ogonek, following Ringe's usage, e.g.
ǫ̂ . Most commonly in literature, they are denoted simply by a following n. However, this can cause confusion between a word-final nasal vowel and a word-final regular vowel followed by , a distinction which was phonemic. Tildes (
ã,
ĩ,
ũ...) are also used in some sources. • Diphthongs appear as
ai,
au,
eu,
iu,
ōi,
ōu and perhaps
ēi,
ēu. However, when immediately followed by the corresponding semivowel, they appear as
ajj, aww, eww, iww.
u is written as
w when between a vowel and
j. This convention is based on the usage in . • Long vowels followed by a non-high vowel were separate syllables and are written as such here, except for
ī, which is written
ij in that case.
Consonants The table below lists the consonantal phonemes of Proto-Germanic, ordered and classified by their reconstructed pronunciation. The slashes around the phonemes are omitted for clarity. When two phonemes appear in the same box, the first of each pair is voiceless, the second is voiced. Phones written in parentheses represent
allophones and are not themselves independent phonemes. For descriptions of the sounds and definitions of the terms, follow the links on the column and row headings. Notes: • was an allophone of before velar obstruents. • was an allophone of before labiovelar obstruents. • only appeared after . • , and were allophones of , and in certain positions (see below). • The phoneme written as
f was probably still realised as a bilabial fricative () in Proto-Germanic. Evidence for this is the fact that in Gothic, word-final
b (which medially represents a voiced fricative) devoices to
f and also Old Norse spellings such as
aptr , where the letter
p rather than the more usual
f was used to denote the bilabial realisation before .
Grimm's and Verner's law Grimm's law as applied to pre-proto-Germanic is a
chain shift of the original Indo-European
plosives. Verner's Law explains a category of exceptions to Grimm's Law, where a voiced fricative appears where Grimm's Law predicts a voiceless fricative. The discrepancy is conditioned by the placement of the original Indo-European word accent.
p,
t, and
k did not undergo Grimm's law after a fricative (such as
s) or after other plosives (which were shifted to fricatives by the Germanic spirant law); for example, where Latin (with the original
t) has
stella 'star' and
octō 'eight', Middle Dutch has
ster and
acht (with unshifted
t). This original
t merged with the shifted
t from the voiced consonant; that is, most of the instances of came from either the original or the shifted . (A similar shift on the consonant inventory of Proto-Germanic later generated
High German. McMahon says:Grimm's and Verner's Laws ... together form the First Germanic Consonant Shift. A second, and chronologically later Second Germanic Consonant Shift ... affected only Proto-Germanic voiceless stops ... and split Germanic into two sets of dialects,
Low German in the north ... and
High German further south) Verner's law is usually reconstructed as following Grimm's law in time, and states that unvoiced fricatives: , , , are voiced when preceded by an unaccented syllable. The
accent at the time of the change was the one inherited from Proto-Indo-European, which was free and could occur on any syllable. For example, PIE > PGmc. 'brother' but PIE > PGmc. 'mother'. The voicing of some according to Verner's Law produced , a new phoneme.The resulting or were reduced to and in word-initial position. Many of the consonants listed in the table could appear lengthened or prolonged under some circumstances, which is inferred from their appearing in some daughter languages as doubled
letters. This phenomenon is termed
gemination. Kraehenmann says:Then, Proto-Germanic already had long consonants ... but they contrasted with short ones only word-medially. Moreover, they were not very frequent and occurred only intervocally almost exclusively after short vowels. The voiced phonemes , , and are reconstructed with the pronunciation of stops in some environments and fricatives in others. The pattern of allophony is not completely clear, but generally is similar to the patterns of voiced obstruent allophones in languages such as Spanish. The voiced fricatives of
Verner's law, which only occurred in non-word-initial positions, merged with the fricative allophones of , , and . Older accounts tended to suggest that the sounds were originally fricatives and later "hardened" into stops in some circumstances. However, Ringe notes that this belief was largely due to theory-internal considerations of older phonological theories, and in modern theories it is equally possible that the allophony was present from the beginning. Each of the three voiced phonemes , , and had a slightly different pattern of allophony from the others, but in general stops occurred in "strong" positions (word-initial and in clusters) while fricatives occurred in "weak" positions (post-vocalic). More specifically: • Word-initial and were stops and . • A good deal of evidence, however, indicates that word-initial was , subsequently developing to in a number of languages. This is clearest from developments in
Anglo-Frisian and other
Ingvaeonic languages.
Southern varieties of
Modern Dutch (e.g. speakers from Limburg, Brabant, Southern Gelderland, as well as most Flemish speech varieties) still preserve the sound of in this position. (However, in most other Western and Northern Dutch varieties like the mainstream
Randstad dialect, the
historically distinct phonemes ⟨g⟩ [ɣ] and ⟨ch⟩ [x] have merged into the
hard g (), i.e. a
voiceless uvular fricative [χ].) • Plosives appeared after
homorganic nasal consonants: , , , . This was the only place where a voiced labiovelar could still occur. • When geminate, they were pronounced as stops , , . This rule continued to apply at least into the early West Germanic languages, since the
West Germanic gemination produced geminated plosives from earlier voiced fricatives. • was after or . Evidence for after is conflicting: it appears as a plosive in Gothic 'word' (not , with devoicing), but as a fricative in Old Norse . hardened to in all positions in the
West Germanic languages. • In other positions, fricatives occurred singly after vowels and diphthongs, and after non-nasal consonants in the case of and .
Labiovelars Labiovelars were affected by the following additional changes: • The PIE
boukólos rule continues to operate as a
surface filter in Proto-Germanic; in newly generated environments where a labiovelar occurred next to , it was immediately converted to a plain velar. This caused alternations in certain verb paradigms, e.g. 'to sing' versus 'they sang'. Apparently, this delabialization also occurred with labiovelars following , showing that the language possessed a labial allophone as well. In this case the entire clusters , and are delabialized to , and . • (Early) Proto-Germanic knew at least three different outcomes: after , it was preserved (e.g. 'song'); next to and before in initial positions it was delabialized to (e.g. 'god', 'to grind'); in all other positions usually became (e.g. 'warm', 'snow', 'kidney'). Evidence for a sound change > in initial positions is slim. These various changes often led to complex alternations, e.g. 'to see', 'they saw' (indicative), 'they saw' (subjunctive), which were reanalysed and regularised differently in the various daughter languages.
Consonant gradation Kroonen posits a process of
consonant mutation for Proto-Germanic, under the name
consonant gradation. (This is distinct from the consonant mutation processes occurring in the neighboring
Samic and
Finnic languages, also known as
consonant gradation since the 19th century.) The Proto-Germanic consonant gradation is not directly attested in any of the Germanic dialects, but may nevertheless be reconstructed on the basis of certain dialectal discrepancies in root of the
n-stems and the
ōn-verbs. Diachronically, the rise of consonant gradation in Germanic can be explained by
Kluge's law, by which geminates arose from stops followed by a nasal in a stressed syllable. Since this sound law only operated in part of the paradigms of the
n-stems and
ōn-verbs, it gave rise to an alternation of geminated and non-geminated consonants in the same paradigms. These were largely regularized by various ways of analogy in the Germanic daughter languages. Although this idea remains popular, it does not explain why many words containing geminated stops do not have "expressive" or "intensive" semantics. The idea has been described as "methodically unsound", because it attempts to explain the phonological phenomenon through psycholinguistic factors and other irregular behaviour instead of exploring regular sound laws. The origin of the Germanic geminate consonants remains a disputed part of historical linguistics with no clear consensus at present. The reconstruction of
grading paradigms in Proto-Germanic explains root alternations such as Old English 'star' • All nasal vowels except , , and only occurred word-finally, and of these, only also occurred word-finally. Word-internal nasal vowels only occurred before , and derived from their earlier respective short vowels (, , and ) followed by . 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 and , or perhaps and . Their timbres then differentiated by raising (and perhaps rounding) the long vowel to . 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 later emerges in Gothic as (that is, ). 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: > > > Gothic . A new
ā was formed following the shift from
ā to
ō when intervocalic 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 (Modern English
-er in words such as
baker or
teacher) was likely borrowed from Latin around or shortly after this time.
Diphthongs The following diphthongs are known to have existed in Proto-Germanic: • Short: , , , (from i-umlaut of ) before or • Long: , , (possibly , ) Note the change > before or in the same or following syllable. This removed (which became ) but created from earlier . 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 was not lost in ('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 ).
Overlong vowels Proto-Germanic had two overlong or trimoraic long vowels
ô and
ê , the latter mainly in adverbs (cf. '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. 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. → → Gothic '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 'eagle' ← PIE * just as Lith 'stone', OSl
kamy ← ← PIE *. Contrast: • contraction after loss of laryngeal: gen.pl. 'wolves' ← ← pre-Gmc ← PIE *; ō-stem gen.pl. * ← pre-Gmc * ← PIE *. • contraction of short vowels: a-stem nom.pl. 'wolves' ← PIE *. But vowels that were lengthened by laryngeals did not become overlong. Compare: • ō-stem nom.sg. *
-ō ← *
-ā ← PIE *; • ō-stem acc.sg. *
-ǭ ← *
-ān ← *
-ām (by
Stang's law) ← PIE *; • ō-stem acc.pl. *
-ōz ← *
-āz ← *
-ās (by
Stang's law) ← PIE *; 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 in general 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 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 ) in early North and West Germanic, with a later raising to
u (the sixth century
Salic law still has 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) (PGmc. ) 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 'here' ← late PGmc. ). 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 , 'ham', Goth 'side, flank' ← PGmc ← ← PIE *-. •
ea: The preterite of
class 7 strong verbs with
ai,
al or
an plus a consonant, or
ē₁; e.g. OHG 'to plow' ← vs. preterite
iar,
ier ← •
iz, after loss of -
z: OEng , OHG 'reward' (vs. OEng , Goth ) ← PGmc ← ← PIE *. • Certain pronominal forms, e.g. OEng , OHG 'here' ← PGmc , derivative of - 'this' ← PIE * 'this' • 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: The distinct reflexes of nasal
-ǭ versus non-nasal
-ō are caused by the Northwest Germanic raising of final
-ō to , 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 (later ) while
-ǭ became (later ). 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, 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: • 'shark' , but > > . Therefore, the
Anglo-Frisian brightening must necessarily have occurred very early in the history of the Anglo-Frisian languages, before the loss of final
-ą. The outcome of final vowels and combinations in the various daughters is shown in the table below: Some Proto-Germanic endings have merged in all of the literary languages but are still distinct in runic
Proto-Norse, e.g. vs. ( 'three daughters' in the
Tune stone vs. the name in the
Gallehus horns). ==Morphology==