Abstract
This paper puts forward a new division of the history of Germanic languages, taking into account the existence of three different historical periods (prehistoric, proto-historic, and literary) in the development from Common Germanic or Proto-Germanic to modern Germanic languages, analogously to the development of Romance or Romanic languages from Vulgar Latin (also called Proto-Romanic or Proto-Romance), in which three stages can be retraced: Vulgar Latin (prehistoric), Romance (proto-historic) and literary (historical). So far, only two stages have been considered in the linguistic history of Germanic languages, namely, the Common Germanic (not documented) and the literary Germanic languages (documented since the Middle Ages). Nevertheless, the history of both families of languages is similar in most aspects, so that the three aforementioned periods can be clearly recognized in both: a period of considerable linguistic unity, although poorly or not at all documented; a period of dissolution of this unity and fragmentation into several dialects not mutually intercomprehensible; and a period of full and intense literary production and official recognition of some of these dialects, now raised to the condition of culture languages. Due to this new historiographical division, the denomination Germance is proposed for the second of the three evolutionary stages of Germanic.
Highlights
The Romanic, Romance, or Neo-Latin languages descend directly from Vulgar Latin, in a constant evolution that has never undergone a break in its continuance, that is, a rupture of the system [1]
Germanic languages derive from an alleged primitive Germanic, Common Germanic, or even Proto-Germanic, which, hypothetical, since there is no written testimony of it, represents to Germanic languages the same role played by Vulgar Latin regarding Romance languages
The aim of this paper is to revise the traditional historiographical division of Germanic languages, as it is usually presented in handbooks and works of Germanic philology and linguistics, such as those of Meillet, Karsten and Paul, Streitberg and Krahe [2,3,4,5], among others
Summary
The Romanic, Romance, or Neo-Latin languages descend directly from Vulgar Latin ( called Proto-Romanic or Proto-Romance by Buchi and Schweickard), in a constant evolution that has never undergone a break in its continuance, that is, a rupture of the system [1]. According to the traditional conception, the history of these languages is divided into two basic periods: the prehistoric period, or primitive Germanic, and the historical period, or that of modern Germanic languages Such a division is not sufficiently specific to explain a good deal of the phenomena of phonetic evolution and lexical production of these languages, above all in what regards word loans of Latin and Romance origin
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