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The Germanic substrate hypothesis attempts to explain these features as a result of creolization between an Indo-European and a non-Indo-European language.
Writing an introductory article to the Germanic languages in The Major Languages of Western Europe, Germanicist John A. Hawkins sets forth the arguments for a Germanic substrate.
Hawkins argues that the proto-Germans encountered a non-Indo-European speaking people and borrowed many features from their language.
He hypothesizes that the first sound shift of Grimm's Law was the result of non-native speakers attempting to pronounce Indo-European sounds, and that they resorted to the closest sounds in their own language in their attempt to pronounce them.
The Battle-axe people is an ancient culture identified by archaeology who have been proposed as candidates for the people who influenced Germanic with their non-Indo-European speech.
Alternatively, in the framework of the Kurgan hypothesis, the Battle-axe people may be seen as an already " kurganized " culture built on the substrate of the earlier Funnelbeaker culture.

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