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The Germanic substrate hypothesis is an attempt to explain the distinctive nature of the Germanic languages within the context of the Indo-European language family. It postulates that the elements of the common Germanic vocabulary and syntactical forms, which do not seem to have cognates in other Indo-European languages, suggest that Proto-Germanic may have been either a creole or contact language that subsumed a non-Indo-European substrate language, or a hybrid of two quite different Indo-European languages, from the Centum and Satem types respectively. The non-Indo-European substrate theory was first proposed by Sigmund Feist in 1932, who estimated that roughly a third of Proto-Germanic lexical items came from a non-Indo-European substrate and that the supposed reduction of the Proto-Germanic inflectional system was the result of pidginization with that substrate. Which culture or cultures may have contributed the substrate material is an ongoing subject of academic debate and study. Notable candidates for possible substrate culture(s) are the Maglemosian and Funnelbeaker culture but also older cultures of northern Europe like the Hamburgian or even the LRJ (Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician). Against the theories regarding substrata, a profound sound change in the Germanic languages known as Grimm's law has been put forward as evidence for the Germanic languages being ''non-substratic'' and having mutated of their own accord, away from other branches of Indo-European. Grimm's law affected all of the stops that were inherited from Proto-Indo-European. The Germanic languages also share common innovations in grammar as well as in phonology: The Germanic verb has been extensively remodelled, showing fewer grammatical moods, and markedly fewer inflections for the passive voice.〔Not all consider languages such as Sanskrit to be conservative. Prokosch (1939) wrote: "the common Indo-European element seems to predominate more definitely in the Germanic group than anywhere else."〕〔In regards to this issue, Polomé (1990) wrote: "Assuming 'pidginization' in Proto-Germanic on account of the alleged 'loss' of a number of features reconstructed by the Neogrammarians as part of the verbal system of Proto-Indo-European (...) is a rather specious argument. ... The fairly striking structural resemblance between the verbal system of Germanic and that of Hittite rather makes one wonder whether these languages do not actually represent a more archaic structural model than the further elaborated inflectional patterns of Old Icelandic and Hellenic."〕 ==Non-Indo-European influence== The non-Indo-European substrate hypothesis attempts to explain the anomalous features of proto-Germanic as a result of creolization between an Indo-European and a non-Indo-European language. 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 are an ancient culture identified by archaeology who have been proposed as candidates for the people who influenced Germanic with their non-Indo-European speech. However, this culture was spread through a wider range of regions across eastern and central Europe close or in contact already with areas inhabited by Indo-European speakers and the putative area of origin of these, and none of the proto-Indo-European languages produced so and their succeeding languages developed - whether Celto-Italic, Illyrian, Slavic, Baltic and others - along the much larger line of extension of the Boat-axe culture appear to have been affected by the same changes limited to the Proto-Germanic. 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. A number of root words for modern European words seem to limit the geographical origin of these Germanic influences, such as the root word for ash (the tree) and other environmental references suggest a limited root stream subset which can be localized to northern Europe.〔Cf. Vennemann (2003).〕 Kalevi Wiik, a phonologist, has put forward a hypothesis – generally rejected by specialists in the field, however – that the pre-Germanic substrate was of a non-Indo-European Finnic origin. Wiik claimed that there are similarities between mistakes in English pronunciation typical of Finnish speakers and the historical sound changes from Proto-Indo-European to proto-Germanic.〔Kalevi Wiik, ''Eurooppalaisten juuret'' ("Roots of Europeans"), 2002〕〔Kalevi Wiik, ''Suomalaisten juuret'' ("Roots of Finns"), 2004〕 Wiik's argument is based on the assumption that only three language groups existed in pre-Indo-European Europe, namely Uralic, Indo-European, and Basque, corresponding to three ice age refugia. Then, Uralic speakers would have been the first to settle most of Europe, and the language of the Indo-European invaders was influenced by the native Uralic population, producing the Germanic proto-language.〔〔 Existing evidence of languages outside the three refugia that he proposes (e. g., the Tyrsenian language family) creates a complication for Wiik's theory, meaning it relies upon an undemonstrated link between each of these languages and one of the three proto-languages he proposes. Moreover, his thinking relies on an interpretation of Indo-European origins different from the mainstream, and most damningly, an extremely improbable picture of the linguistic landscape of Neolithic Europe. Theo Vennemann has hypothesized a Basque substrate and a Semitic superstrate in Germanic;〔 however, his speculations, too, are generally rejected by specialists in the relevant fields. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Germanic substrate hypothesis」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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