Relative Chronology

The English language originated when Germanic tribes crossed the North Sea in the fifth and sixth centuries of our era. The question is: what can linguistics tell us about these migrations? The answer is based on a reconstruction of the prehistoric ancestor of the English language. This reconstruction is based on the comparative method in conjunction with the principle of relative chronology. The Latin word for ‘brother’ is frāter. In Greek we find the word phrātēr. In Sanskrit we find the word bhrātar. Since the Sanskrit form appears to combine the aspiration of Greek phrātēr with the voicedness found in Germanic, we may reconstruct an initial voiced aspirate bh- that lost its voicedness in Greek and Latin while it lost its aspiration in Germanic. This is the traditional reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European consonant system. There are several problems with this reconstruction. The alternative is to reconstruct plain voiced stops b, d, g for the proto-language and to explain the aspiration in Sanskrit and Greek as secondary. The traditional reconstruction of plain voiced b, d, g must then be revised. This is the basis of the so- called glottalic theory of Indo-European, which claims that the plain voiced stops were actually (pre)glottalized ’b, ’d, ’g. This glottalization is actually attested in six Indo-European languages, including English. Glottalization was well-established in upper-class English speech in the 19th century and must have been widespread in the standard language of that time. Earlier scholars did not reconstruct glottalization because it was an unwritten feature before the rise of modern dialectology. Conservative English dialects have best preserved the original sound structure. Anglo-Frisian can be defined as the variety of West Germanic where the reflex of Proto-Indo-European ē is a front vowel in comparison with the reflex of the Proto-Germanic diphthong ai whereas the converse holds for the German and Scandinavian languages. The early divergences between Anglian, West Saxon and Kentish are the result of a chronological difference between two waves of migration from the same dialectal area in northern Germany. We must distinguish between an earlier, “Saxon”, and a later, “Anglian” migration. The “Saxon” invasion yielded the conquest of Kent and Sussex in the fifth century, whereas the “Anglian” invasion can be connected with the subjugation of the north that started around the middle of the sixth century. The nice thing about this relative chronology is its perfect concord with the textual, archaeological and genetic evidence. The precise correspondences are the ultimate proof that a reconstruction of the early development of the English language allows us to arrive at a detailed understanding of the prehistoric migrations. This reconstruction is based on the comparative method in conjunction with the principle of relative chronology.