The modern history of Germanic and English (synchronic and diachronic) linguistics reveals two main types of scholarly approach to language data: positivism (labelled ‘God's truth’) and theoreticism (labelled ‘hocus-pocus’ by American structuralists). The latter seems to have been dominant in the last decade.

The influence of IE laryngeal segments and their physical presence in early Germanic have frequently been adduced to explain some five classes of problematic phenomena of the early Gmc. languages. These problems are: first, that of the past forms of the seventh-class strong verbs; second, the so-called Verschärfung; third, the Gmc. ē2-vowel; fourth, the e-to-i change; and finally, various Gmc. etymologies. The laryngeal explanations of these five phenomena are deficient and alternative explanations are preferable. Therefore, there exists no hard evidence for the presence of laryngeal segments in later pre-Gmc. Indo-European nor in early Germanic.

An IE root *bhel(ə)- ‘strike, hit, hew, chop’, although not included in the standard IE etymological dictionaries, is shown to underly a number of etymologically obscure Germanic words, such as OHG bolz(o) ‘bolt’, Go. bliggwan ‘to beat’, OIcel. bella ‘to hit’, blak ‘slap, blow’, OHG blast ‘a throwing to the ground’, OHG bloh, bloc ‘block of wood’, and possibly OHG balko ‘beam’. Since related words can be found in Italic, Celtic, Baltic, and perhaps also Slavic and Greek, there would seem to be sufficient justification for the addition of this root to the inventory of recognized IE roots.

The publication of Batts 1971 (the actual scribal spellings in MSS A, B, C of the Nibelungenlied) and of Bäuml-Fallone 1976 (A concordance to the Nibelungenlied) for the first time have provided access to scribal spellings as the most direct evidence for the phonological structure of Middle High German (at least in this important work). This study is limited to the velar stops, affricates, fricatives. The scribal spellings together with historical eveidence and the modern dialects suggest the full structure of the velars. Finally, it is shown that the “normalized spelling” is in three respects misleading, at least for the Nibelungenlied.

In the production of written German, the spelling system and the writing process are distinct but interdependent. The system of spelling depends upon the writing process for its manifestations; the process of writing depends upon the spelling system for its substance.