1.1 The motivation behind yet another study of word order in the older Germanic dialects (there have been a host of them, mainly m the 19th century), lies In the puzzle that still exists concerning the original expected order of elements in the parent langtiage of the Germanic dialects. The evidence from the oldeso documents of the other Indo-European languages points very definitely to a primary unmarked sentence order m which the verb occupied final position. Delbriick (1338, p. 15 ff) has shown this to be vne case in Sanskrit, and Gonda (1959, pp. 7? o) has further substantia cod tins view by a recent detailed scudy of Vedic Sanskrit in which he shows that sentences ia wviich ohe verb aopears to be m medial position ore actually s;-ntac tic ally" complece" through the verb, and that the Following material is an expansion which can be reno^ cd without affecting the syn-cactic structure of the sentence. Hale and Buck (1956, pp. 334~ 3/,-0) show that Latin has verb-final order as its primary order. Laroche (195^, pp. 161-17'!) does the same for Hittite, Luvian, and Lyeian. Even Celtic had verbfinal word order as its primary unmarked order originally as is shown by both Thurneysen (19-< r,, PP.^ 27, 328) and Watkms (1963, pp. 1-49). V/atkms has worked out a convincing explanation of the aevelopment of verb-initial