GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. The Teutonic lan guages have, perhaps, more than any other Indo Germanic languages, developed striking special characteristics which differentiate them from the remaining languages of the family. These concern vocalism, consonantism, declension, and conjugation. As regards vocalization the Teu tonic treatment of ablaut (q.v.) is peculiar. In the common Indo-Germanic period ablaut was a purely phonetic phenomenon, but in the Teutonic languages, owing to the prevailing loss of the reduplication (q.v.) in the perfect of the verb. and the reduction or loss of endings, ablaut has been adapted to a quasi-grammatical prop erty. Thus the changes of the root vowel in Greek diptcopai, &dolma, itipaKou, are identical with those in German ?verde, ward. gewordcu, but in the Greek the vocalic changes are not associated consciously with the changes of tense. On the other hand, in the German ward the vowel a carries the preterite sense of the verb. Even more clearly the vowels have become gram matical in English sing, sang, sung, and many similar sets. The prominence of the ablaut has also contributed to analogical spread, and n considerable degree of generalization which has resulted in the six so-called ablaut-series which comprise the majority of the so-called strong verbs. Some of the types of these series in Gothic are: Leith, bait, bitnm, 'to bite;' kiusa, lotus, kusum, 'to choose;' Linda, band, bundam, 'to bind.' The phenomenon known as umlaut (q.v.), that is, the assimilation of a given vowel to the vowel of a neighboring syllable, although it rests upon a universal phonetic tendency, is also specially prominent in all periods of the history of Teutonic speech. Thus, in Old High German it changes to c before i in a following syllable; singular Iamb, 'lamb,' but plural lent bit- (New High German Lamm and /Am mer) ; or u changes to ii (ui)before i in a fol lowing syllable ; singular chrat, 'weed.' but plural ehriuter, ehriutir (New High German Kraut and Krituter). Umlaut has also been adapted to grammatical distinction, as in German .((anti, Milliner, and English man, men; in the latter case, owing to the loss of endings the umlaut of men has become the sole sign of the plural.
Very characteristic is the treatment of the Indo-Germanic lingual and nasal vowels in all Teutonic languages, as in+ lingual or nasal, giving the groups tic, ul, um, and tin; e.g. Indo Germanic "ulgos, Skt. crka, 'wolf,' appears in Gothic as muff, and Indo-Germanic *ktiitom, Skt. aatam, 'hundred,' appears in Gothic as hund.
The most characteristic of all Teutonic phe nomena is the series of changes which has taken place in the original Indo-Germanic stop con sonants, the so-called shift or 'rotation' of con sonants, known as Grimm's law (q.v.). A group
of exceptions concerning the continuance in Teu tonic of the Indo-Germanic tenues, both aspirate and non-aspirate, as either surd or sonant frica tives, according to the position of the word accent, was explained by Karl Verner. See VERNER'S LAW.
In the domain of noun-declension the most im portant Teutonic phenomenon is the spread of the n-stems, giving rise to the important dis tinction between the weak declension (n-declen sion) and the strong declension (decleniions without it). Especially, every adjective may be inflected according to the weak or n-declension, being then used as the so-called definite form of the adjective in connection with the definite arti cle, in distinction from the indefinite adjective with the indefinite article. The starting point for this is prehistoric. Already in Indo-Ger manic times adjectives were substantivized by transition to the it-declension. A parallel to the double adjective is found in the Balto-Slavic languages, which have produced a 'definite' ad jective by compounding the 'indefinite' with the pronominal stem fo-.
The most important feature of the Teutonic languages in the field of conjugation is the dis tinction between strong and weak verbs, based in the main upon the different treatment of the perfect. The strong verbs were originally pri mary; they employed the non-thematic, and very largely reduplicated, perfect of Indo-Germanic times; as Gothic present wairpa, 'I become,' perfect wart.. The weak verbs were mostly secondary or denominative present stems, which supplied their perfect by a periphrastic form made by fusion of the verb-stem with a preterite form of the root dla7, 'to set,' as Gothic present nasja, 'I save,' perfect nasida. Especially in the later periods of Teutonic speech the historical limits of the two classes are effaced. The old type of preterite-presents, which are presents in function, also associate with themselves the weak perfect, so that German Iteiss, 'know' (Gothic wait, Greek ol&a) forms the weak perfect wusste, 'knew.' Consult: Grimm, Deutsche Grammatik (new ed., Berlin and Giltersloh, 1870-97) ; Streitherg, Urgermanisebe Grammatik (Heidelberg, 1896) ; Dieter, Lout- mid For:nen lchre der altgernianischey Dialektie (Leipzig, 1898 et seq.) ; Paul, Orundriss der germanise/wit Philologic (2d ed., Stra*sburg, 1901 et seq.). See also the articles on the various languages of the Teutonic group and the bibliographies there given.