Ingvaeonic Languages - Characteristics

Characteristics

Linguistic evidence for Ingvaeonic are common innovations observed in Old Frisian, Old English and Old Saxon such as the following:

• The so-called Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law, which (e.g.) converted *munþ "mouth" (cf. Old High German mund) into *mūþ (cf. Old English mūþ).
• The loss of the Germanic reflexive pronoun
• The reduction of the three Germanic verbal plural forms into one form ending in -þ
• The development of Class III weak verbs into a relic class consisting of four verbs (*sagjan "to say", *hugjan "to think", *habjan "to have", *libjan "to live")
• The split of the Class II weak verb ending *-ō- into *-ō-/-ōja-
• Development of a plural ending *-ōs in a-stem nouns (note, Gothic also has -ōs, but this is an independent development, caused by terminal devoicing of *-ōz)
• Possibly, the monophthongization of Germanic *ai to ē/ā, and *au to ō/ā (this may represent independent changes in Old Saxon and Anglo-Frisian)