C. Changes in the system of vowels in the Germanic languages

B. Word Stress

The peculiar Germanic system of word accentuation is one of the most important distinguishing features of the group. It is known that in ancient Indo-European, prior to the separation of Germanic, there existed two ways of word accentuation: musical pitch and force stress. The position of the stress was free and movable, which means that it could fall on any syllable of the word – a root-morpheme, an affix or an ending – and could be shifted both in form-building and word-building.

Both these properties of the word accent were changed in Proto-Germanic. Force and expiratory stress became the only type of stress used. In Early Proto-Germanic word stress was still as movable as in ancient Indo-European but in Late Proto-Germanic its position in the word was stabilized. The stress was now fixed on the first syllable, which was usually the root of the word and sometimes the prefix; the other syllables – suffixes and endings – were unstressed. The stress could no longer move either in form-building or word-building.

These features of word accent were inherited by the German languages, and despite later alterations are observed today. In Modern English there is a sharp contrast between accented and unaccented syllables due to the force of stress. The main accent commonly falls on the root-morpheme, and is never shifted in building grammatical forms.

The following English words illustrate its fixed position in grammatical forms and derived words: become, becoming, overcome; lover, loving, beloved. It would be interesting to compare these native words with words of foreign origin which move the stress in derivation, though never in form-building: exhibit, exhibition.

The heavy fixed word stress inherited from Proto-Germanic has played an important role in the development of Germanic languages, and especially in phonetic and morphological changes. Due to the difference in the force of articulation the stressed and unstressed syllables underwent widely different changes: accented syllables were pronounced with great distinctiveness and precision, while unaccented ones became less distinct and were phonetically weakened. Since the stress was fixed on the root, the weakening and loss of sounds mainly affected the suffixes and grammatical endings.

Ablaut

Distinctive characteristics shared by the Germanic languages can be found in the system of vowels. Strict differentiation of long and short vowels is commonly regarded as an important characteristic of the Germanic group. The contrast of short and long vowels is supported by the different directions of their changes.

In all Indo-European languages there is a system of vowel change which is known as ablaut. The term is introduced by Jacob Grimm. “ Ab ” means reducing, “ laut ” – sound. Ablaut is an independent vowel interchange unconnected with any phonetic conditions; different vowels appear in the same environment, surrounded by the same sounds thus indicating a corresponding modification of function or meaning (sing-sang-sung, write-wrote-written). Ablaut can also be called vowel gradation. While long vowels generally tended to become closer and diphthongise, short vowels, on the contrary, often changed into more open sounds.

Proto-Indo-European had a general ablaut system that contrasted the following vowels in the same root. Indo-European short [o] changed in Germanic into a more open vowel [a]. The merging of long vowels proceeded in the opposite direction: Indo-European long [a:] was narrowed to [o:]. The examples illustrate the resulting correspondences of vowels in parallels from Germanic and non-Germanic languages:

Change illustrated	Examples
PIE	PG	Non-Germanic	Germanic
			Old	Modern
a:	o:	L mater R мать	O Iceladnic m ó ðir OE mōdor	Swedish moder NE mother

From an early date the treatment of vowels was determined by the nature of word stress. In accented syllables the oppositions of vowels were carefully maintained and new distinctive features were introduced, so that the number of stressed vowels grew. In unaccented positions the original contrasts between vowels was neutralized so that by the age of writing the long vowels in unstressed syllables had been shortened. As for originally short vowels, they tended to be reduced to a neutral sound and were often dropped in unstressed final syllables.

Vowel gradation did not reflect any phonetic changes but it was used as a special independent device to differentiate between words and grammatical forms built from the same root. The principal gradation series used in the IE languages – [e~o] – can be shown in Russian examples: нести~ноша Russian “воз” – “везу”, “брать” – “беру”.

Umlaut [ˈüm-ˌlau̇t]

Umlaut (also called mutation or metaphony) is the modification of a root vowel sound under the influence of another vowel (e.g., u, or especially i) in the following syllable, the modifying vowel being generally lost or altered.

The phenomenon is a variety of so-called regressive assimilation (это-эти) where the first vowel in эти anticipates the closer articulation of the second vowel.

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