Northwest Germanic is a proposed grouping of the Germanic languages, representing the current consensus among Germanic historical linguists. It does not challenge the late 19th-century tri-partite division of the Germanic dialects into North Germanic, West Germanic and East Germanic, but proposes additionally that North and West Germanic (i.e. all surviving Germanic languages today) remained as a subgroup after the southward migration of the East Germanic tribes, only splitting into North and West Germanic later. Whether this subgroup constituted a unified proto-language, or simply represents a group of dialects that remained in contact and close geographical proximity, is a matter of debate, but the formulation of Ringe and Taylor probably enjoys widespread support:
There is some evidence that North and West Germanic developed as a single language, Proto–Northwest Germanic, after East Germanic had begun to diverge. However, changes unproblematically datable to the PNWGmc period are few, suggesting that that period of linguistic unity did not last long. On the other hand, there are some indications that North and West Germanic remained in contact, exchanging and thus partly sharing further innovations, after they had begun to diverge, and perhaps even after West Germanic had itself begun to diversify.
History and terminology
Kuhn (1955) Though not yet using the term "Northwest Germanic", this grouping was proposed by Hans Kuhn in 1955/56 as an alternative to the older view of a Gotho-Nordic versus West Germanic division. Instead, Kuhn used the term ′Spätgemeingermanisch′ (Late Common Germanic):
In dem Zeitraum, da sich dieser [der ostgermanische] Ast vom großen Stamme [des Germanischen] löste, bildete sich die Sprache der Nord- und Westgermanen ebenso wie bisher noch fast ganz einheitlich fort. […]. Die Älteren urnordischen Inschriften enthalten noch kaum etwas, das sie als nordisch und nicht auch vorwestgermanisch verrät, aber dem Gotischen ist ihr Lautstand ferngerückt. Ich habe diese Stufe ‚Spätgemeingermanisch' genannt (Anz. 63, 8). Das Gotische wirkt ihm gegenüber in manchem fast wie vorgermanisch. Dies währte, von einzelnen Sonderungen, die erkennbar werden, abgesehn, bis um die Mitte des 1. Jahrtausends. Erst dann zerbrach diese Einheit. During the period when this [East Germanic] branch broke away from the main [Germanic] Stamme [trunk], the language of the North and West Germanic peoples continued to develop in a manner that was, as before, almost entirely uniform. [...]. The older Proto-Norse inscriptions contain almost nothing that identifies them as Norse rather than Pre-West Germanic, yet their phonology has already diverged significantly from that of Gothic. I have termed this stage 'Late Common Germanic' (Anz. 63, 8). In comparison, Gothic appears in some respects almost pre-Germanic. This unity persisted, apart from certain peculiarities that become discernible, until around the middle of the 1st millennium. Only then did this unity break down.
Erst nach der Mitte des 1. Jahrtausends nach Christus, […], begann, soweit die Runeninschriften erkennen lassen, das Nordische sich mit eigenen Neuerungen spürbar vom Westgermanischen abzuheben. It was not until after the middle of the first millennium A.D., [...], that, as far as the runic inscriptions indicate, the Nordic language began markedly to silhouette from West Germanic through its own innovations.
(The older view was represented by mid 20th-century proposals to assume the existence by 250 BC of five general groups to be distinguishable: North Germanic in Southern Scandinavia excluding Jutland; North Sea Germanic along the middle Rhine and Jutland; Rhine-Weser Germanic; Elbe Germanic; and East Germanic. The Northwest Germanic theory challenges these proposals, since it is strongly tied to runic inscriptions dated from AD 200 onwards.)
Antonsen (1965) Some years after Kuhn, Elmer H. Antonsen in 1965 proposed the term 'Northwest Germanic':
From the evidence above, it is clear that the vowel systems outlined in Tables 4 and 5 represent a stage of development which, in its entirety, is common to the North and West Germanic languages and foreign to Gothic. It therefore seems appropriate to give this intermediate stage between Proto-Germanic and the later North and West Germanic languages the simple yet clear designation "Northwest Germanic (NwGmc.)". The demarcation of the boundary between Proto-Germanic and Northwest Germanic is then a function of a bundle of isoglosses: (1) the reassignment of [į] > /e/ and of [ẹ] > /i/, (2) the phonemicization of [o] > /o/, (3) the lowering of /ē1/ > /ā/, and (4) the appearance of /ē2/. Later Antonsen restricted his these that Northwest Germanic is the predecessor of all the West and North Germanic Languages to these that it is only the predecessor of all the Ingvaeonic (i.e., North Sea Germanic) and North Germanic Languages:
If the archeological datings are approximately correct, it will be seen that EG and WG are distinct from NwG already at 200 A.D., while NwG continues on until approximately 550. This chronology might seem to be a contradiction in terms. It might be argued that if NwG is a parent of (Ingv.) WG, then the two could not coexist from 200–550. Such an assumption is clearly faulty, since it would mean that Dutch no longer exists, since Afrikaans has now become a distinct linguistic entity. NwG underwent a restriction in its geographic distribution after the splitting off of Ingv. WG, but the linguistic features of that part of the NwG area which did not undergo the WG changes remained essentially the same and the language lived on. Therefore, even though Ingv. WG split off by 200 A.D., it is still possible to say that the language of later NwG inscriptions reflect a parent stage of Ingv. WG.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
