Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 19.djvu/198

* TEUTONIC LANGUAGES. 13S TEUTONIC RACE. verbs. Some of the types of these series in Gothic are: bcita, hait, bittim, 'to bite:' kiusa, Icaits, kiisiim, 'to choose;' hindu, hand, hunduni, '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 a changes to e before i in a following syllable; singular lamb, 'lamb,' but plural lembir (New High German Lamm and Liim- mer) ; or « changes to « (ni) before ) in a fol- lowing syllable; singular chrut. 'weed.' but plural chriuter, chriutir (New High German Kninl and Kriiutcr). Umlaut has also been adapted to grammatical distinction, as in German Miinii, Manner, and English mayi, men; in the latter case, owing to the loss of endings the vimlaut of men has become the sole sign of the plural. Very characteristic is the treatment of the IndoGermanic lingual and nasal vowels in all Teutonic languages, as u -- lingual or nasal, giving the groups ur, ul, urn, and un; e.g. Indo- Germanic *]flqos, Skt. vrka, 'wolf,' appears in Gothic as imdf, and Indo-Germanic *knitom, Skt. ^atam, 'hundred,' appears in Gothic as hand. 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 (/i-declen- sion) and the strong declension (declensions without n). 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 n-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 jo-. 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 wairp a, '1 become,' perfect warp. 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 dhe, 'to set,' as Gothic present •nasja, 'I save,' perfect nasida. Especially in the Jater periods of Teutonic speech the historical limits of the two classes are effaced. Tlie old type of preterite-presents, which are presents in function, also associate with themselves the weak perfect, so that German veiss, 'know' (Gothic wait, Greek oUol) ' forms the weak perfect icusste, 'knew.' Consult: Grimm, Deutsche Orammatik (new ed., Berlin and Gutersloh, 1870-97); Streitberg, Vryermanische Orammatik (Heidelberg, ISOG) ; Dieter, Laut- und Formen- lehre der altgermanischen Dialekte (Leipzig, 1898 et seq. ) ; Paul, Orundriss der germanischen I'hiloloc/ie (2d ed., Strassburg, 1901 et .se(i. ). See also the articles on the various languages of the Teutonic group and the bibliographies there given. TEUTONIC RACE. The name applied to a division of the European peoples, comprising nearly the whole or the bulk of the population of the German Empire, the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands. Great Britain, Switzerland, the United States. Canada, Newfoundland. Australia, New Zealand, and Cape Colony, about two-thirds of the inhabitants of Cisleithan Austria, and half the population of Belgium ( Flemings ) . It is also represented by large numbers in Hungary and in the Baltic Provinces, Finland, and other parts of Russia, and is found scattered over the whole world. They have long heads and faces, very light hair, blue eyes, tall stature, and narrow, aquiline noses. The oldest traceable home of the Teutons seems to have been in the region be- tween the middle and lower courses of the rivers Elbe and Oder. Adjacent tracts, reaching to the river Vistula in the east, to the Harz Mountains and the Thuringian forest in the south, from the Elbe to the Rhine in the West, and across Den- mark to the Scandinavian peninsula in the north, were all occupied by Teutons about the second century B.C. Pliny and Tacitus men- tion the Basteniie, or Bastarnas (q.v.), who appear on tlie Black Sea about n.c. 200. Next of the Germanic races to force their way south- ward were the Cimbri (q.v.), who came down about 2000 years ago from their northern home in the Cimbrian (Danish) peninsula, were joined by the Helvetian Teutones. and penetrated as far as L'pper Italy, only to be destroyed by Marius in B.C. 102-101. Caesar, bent upon con- quering Gaul, clashed with anotlier German tribe, the Suevi (Swabians). The defeat of Ariovistus in B.C. 58, and the subsequent in- vasions of Gernumy by the Roman legions, pre- vented the Germanization of Gaul, and confined the Germans within the Rhine. Several cen- turies after Christ came the later migrations. Of these the principal ones were those of the Burgundians, Vandals, and Goths, from Eastern Germany southward toward the Danube, and thence westward into Italy. Gaul. Spain, and Africa, and the conquest of the Celtic Britain by the Saxons, Jutes ( Danes ), and Angles. Later followed the piratical Viking raids of the Norse Danes and Norwegians into the northern islands of Europe, into France ( Normandy ), and the Mediterranean coast. Simultaneously with these movements occurred the colonization of Ice- land, followed by the settlement of Greenland. Afterwards came* the Norman conquest of Eng- land and of Southern Italy and Sicily. The original home of the Burgundiiins (q.v.) was on the west side of the upper course of the river Vistula. In the third century a.d. they mi- grated to the region of the Lower Danube. At