[gothic-l] problems with evolution of Gothic vowel system

[jdm314 at AOL.COM]

-------------------------- eGroups Sponsor -------------------------~-~>
GET A NEXTCARD VISA, in 30 seconds!  Get rates
of 2.9% Intro or 9.9% Ongoing APR* and no annual fee!
Apply NOW!
http://click.egroups.com/1/7872/8/_/3398/_/967839091/
---------------------------------------------------------------------_->


In a message dated 9/1/00 12:51:48 PM, Manolo (Emanuel?) wrote:

<<On Thu, 31 Aug 2000, Vito Evola wrote:

> 

> 2)  Would there be anyone willing to put on the list the evolution of the 

> vowel system IE < *germ. < goth.  ?


If I recall correctly (IIRC), indoeuropean (which modern Lituanian

and Sanskrit are their purest examples ??) did have a relative

simple system of vowels , maybe 8-10. >>

    Well, it is commonly stated that Lithuanian and Sanskrit are the purest 
remnants of Proto-Indo-European... but language "Purity" is a slippery 
concept, and linguists tend to avoid the term these days. It is true that 
both languages are very conservative in many ways, but people tend to 
overlook the fact that both have made quite a bit of innovations too. For 
example, is the Sanskrit word as'va somehow closer to proto-indo-european 
*ek'wos than, say, Latin equus?




<< Skandinavian languages were rather innovative and they invented 

a lots of sounds. 


German was more conservative but even so it has too much vowels,

they have three "e" while Spanish/Latin has only one. >>

Let's see, do you mean eh, e, and ae? I should mention that Latin technically 
has TWO e's, namely the long and the short.



 

<<> 

>           *germ. herdijaz < goth. haìrdeis


The difference between ai-e is that ai tends to be more vocalic. 

herdijaz is closer to hrdijaz that hairdeis. Consider vocalic

as that the ratio vowel/consonants tends to get higher. >>

Are you sure? Keep in mind that the soudn represented by <ai> in Gothic is 
not the same as, say, the sound represented by <ai> in Spanish!



<<Now, the -ijaz , -eis . I suspect that both endings are different.

I'd bet for hairde -is. The man of the hairde , being -is a genitive. 

While -ijaz could be -ija-z . -z for genitive and -ija a suffix

for creating jobs, like justit-ia, vig-ia (Spanish) , milit-ia

or a class for jobs. That -ija (indoeuropean ) ending was lost in

German while kept in Latin.  >>

Er, can someone else take this one? I mean explaining how -ijaz > -eis. I 
remember that it pertains to syllable weight, but I can never get all the 
details just right, and I don't feel like looking it up right now.
    Note, btw, that the -jaz suffix would become just an umlaut in Modern 
German, so I'm not sure if it HAS dissapeared entirely. True, you can't just 
take a random word, pop an umlaut on it and make it a masculine word that 
declines like der Tag and suddently have an "agent" noun, but maybe there are 
some nouns of that class lurking around nevertheless.



<< Anyway, don't be too hard, I don't use books and I take all this

from my head so I can do some big mistakes. :)

Likewise



<< > vito.evola at libero.it


Well, being Italian you have Latin+Italian+English to compare :)


BTW, I've always thought that the "anomalities" in Italian 

(suppousedly, closer to Latin than Spanish) came from Goths or

Lombards (which one ). I mean thing like:

gli <-- the  >>

I don't think so. Remember that gl represents a palatalized l, almost a l 
plus a y. Gli is said to come from the Latin word ILLI when followed by a 
vowel, so e.g. ILLI ARTES > gli arte. Of course Italian has generalized the 
usage of gli to certain other places too...


<< On Thu, 31 Aug 2000 jdm314 at aol.com wrote:
 
> This is true, but note that protogermanic e normally becomes i in gothic, 
> which I'm assuming is what Vito was getting at. However, before r, h, or hw 
> short i and o become ai' and au' instead of i and u. Note that r doesn't 
> exactly form a natural class with h and hw, which has lead some people to 
> suggest that the r might have been particularly throaty as in, say, modern 
> high german. This is a cool theory, but hardly conclusive.

The french "r" is a modern invent from French, the R was a hard
R in all indo.. languages. The h stuff , like rhinocerons, suggest
an even harder r. BTW, indoeuropean was fond of sibilants (s, sh,
dzh) and liquids (r, l,ll), Celtic conserved these characteristics
more than any other else.  >>

I'm not sure I understand. Modern french does use an uvular fricative for 
/r/, and this was considered vulgar until the French Revolution turned 
everything upside down (or so I'm told), but I'm not sure what you mean about 
"hard" r's. Do you mean the r in the Spanish word perro? That DOES seem to be 
the most common /r/ in the Indo-European languages, but by no means the only 
one. The h in rhinoceros goes back to the Greek pronunciation of r... the 
Athenians at least seem to have devoiced r at the beginning of a word or 
after another r. This became standardized in Latin spellings of Greek words.
    Proto-Indo-European had only one sibilant... only one fricative really, 
and that was s... unless you're countint the "laryngeals" whatever the heck 
THOSE were. Perhaps you're thinking of Indo-Iranian?


<< They care for a language with a hard melody, because they were
all time making war each other ?? (theory of mine). >>

Hard to say... certainly the aesthetics of a culture will affect how they 
perceive different styles of speaking and pronouncing, but these things are 
often to such a degree a subjective thing that it's impossible to say. Some 
people feel the palatalized <ch> in Modern German 
has a "menacing" sound, others consider it aesthetically pleasing!


-IUSTEINUS

You are a member of the Gothic-L list.  To unsubscribe, send a blank email to <gothic-l-unsubscribe at egroups.com>.
Homepage: http://www.stormloader.com/carver/gothicl/index.html