What is Relatedness?

[Rick Mc Callister]

	What would the postulated 5 branches be?
	Would they be somthing like the following?
1. Scandinavian
2. Ingwaeonic [Anglo-Frisian]
3. Dutch/Low German [Saxon-Franconian?]
4. High German [Allemanic-Bavarian]
5. East Germanic [Gothic-Burgundian-Lombard]
	or are the differences between 2, 3 & 4 essentially the result of a
later sorting out?
	I'd like to see their arguments and some discussion of its merits

>Rick said:
>> How secure is East Germanic?
>> Why is it not just an early form of N. Germanic?

>W Walker Chambers & J R Wilkie "A short history of the German language"
>(1970) page 23 say "The older way of accounting to the development of these
>Germanic dialects was to assume the Primitive Germanic divided in to three
>branches:  North ... East ...  and West.   This family tree is is still
>useful as a classification of the Germanic dialects, but it cannot explain
>their growth."
>  They then go on to outline a theory - which they admit is not universally
>accepted - that Germanic should not be seen as a primitive unity which broke
>apart, but as a collection of at least five major groups which drew together
>as the common political and cultural life shifted and changed.

>The reality is that the various forms of Germanic are interrelated in
>complex ways, and a simple family tree does not do justice to the
>complexity.   Nonetheless, East Germanic cannot be seen as an early form of
>North Germanic - it shares too much with Allemanic and Bavarian, for a
>start.

>Peter

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701