This chapter demonstrates the varied role the foot has played in shaping phonological and morphophonological patterns across the Germanic languages. Data from German and Dutch dialects highlight how features are licensed differently in strong versus weak branches of feet paving the way for a range of patterns including medial consonant cluster simplification and consonant lenition which often result in worsened phonetic cues. The trochee is shown to shape morphological processes such as Dutch and German plural formation via prosodic templates in both the standard languages and dialects. Lastly, vowel balance in Frisian and Scandinavian, a process often argued to result from stress patterns and stem shapes, is reinterpreted in terms of the trochaic foot. The foot-based approach provides a unified account for various manifestations of vowel balance across the dialects. Scratching the surface of Germanic phenomena, the chapter serves to invite the reader to consider other patterns which may also be prosodically driven in terms of the foot and foot-based templates.

This chapter discusses tonal accent in North and West Germanic. Varieties with tonal accent display (primarily) tone-based oppositions between two accents in stressed syllables, commonly referred to as Accent 1 and Accent 2. In North Germanic, tonal accent occurs in most varieties of Norwegian and Swedish, as well as some in varieties of Danish; in West Germanic, it can be found in dialects spoken in Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands. Examples are [man1] ‘basket’ vs. [man2] ‘man’ for West Germanic (Arzbach), or [1andən] ‘the duck’ [2andən] ‘the spirit’ for North Germanic (Stockholm). For each of the two areas, this chapter reviews some basic synchronic properties of the respective tone accent systems, including patterns of variation across dialects. It furthermore provides a brief overview of the tenets of different synchronic analyses of the phenomena, as well as of diachronic approaches to the genesis and diachronic typology of tonal accent.