[gothic-l] Re: Ancient Nordic and Gothic

[Francisc Czobor]

Hi Bertil,

Please excuse this late reply, but I was very busy last days.
You mentioned the differences between North Germanic and Gothic (East 
Germanic). But there are some common innovations also, that 
distinguish them from West Germanic.
Different sources (my sources are given in the note below) claim that 
there are several such common features of Gothic and North Germanic, 
but only three of them are currently cited (Gmc = Common Germanic, ON 
= Old Norse, OHG = Old High German, OE = Old English):

1. Gmc. -jj- > ON -ggj-, Goth. -ddj- (<*-ggj- with palatal g)
Example: Goth. twaddje "of two" (genitive, Lat. duorum), ON tveggja, 
O.Swed.&O.Dan. twaggiae, but: OHG zwei(i)o, OE twég(e)a

2. Similarly, Gmc. *-ww- > ON, Goth. -ggw-
Example: Goth. triggws "true, faithful", ON tryggue, O.Icel. tryggr, 
Swed., Norw. trygg, but: OHG triuwo, gi-triuwi, OE ge-triewe

3. The existence of the fourth class of weak verbs in Gothic and 
Norse, ending in -na-/-no-: Goth. fullnan "to be filled, to become 
full", ON versna "to become worse". But it is possible that this 
verbal class existed also in West Germanic languages and disappeared 
before their earliest attestations.

For this reason, the scholars consider that the Common Germanic 
language first splitted in two branches: West Germanic and North-East 
Germanic, and later the North-East Germanic branch splitted into North 
Germanic and East Germanic.
"However, even if there was more resemblance between Scandinavian and 
Gothic than between Scandinavian and West Germanic, the difference was 
still more clearly marked than the resemblance, so that scholars have 
to come to the conclusion that the North Germanic languages should be 
treated as an independent group" [quoted from source 1, see the note 
below].
Furthermore, we must not forget that Gothic was very clearly 
individualized against West and North Germanic, and there are some 
common innovations of West and North Germanic that are totally absent 
in Gothic. The most striking are:

1. the rhotacism Gmc. *z > "soft" R > r, both in West and North 
Germanic; in Gothic z was preserved, and in final position z > s.
Example: Goth. dius "animal, beast", ON dyr, OHG tiur (Germ. Tier), 
O.Sax. dior, OE deor (Eng. deer).

2. The Umlaut, that appeared however at different moments in the West 
and North Germanic languages. In Wulfilan Gothic it is totally absent 
(as it was also in all the contemporary West and North Germanic 
languages), while in Crimean, because its attestation is to poor and 
distorted, we can not say anything.

NOTE:
The sources that I used for this post are:
1. Virgil Stefanescu-Draganesti: "Introduction to the Comparative 
Grammar of the Germanic Languages", University of Bucharest, 1971
2. Andreas Heusler: "Altisländische Elementarbuch", Carl Winter 
Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg, 1967
3. Werner König: dtv-Atlas zur deutschen Sprache", Deutsche 
Taschenbuch Verlag, München, 1994

My conclusion would be that the subgrouping of the Germanic languages 
in three distinct branches: East, West, and North Germanic, is well 
founded.

Francisc
--- In gothic-l at y..., Bertil Häggman <mvk575b at t...> wrote:
> Esteemed listmembers,
> 
> The Ancient Nordic has by some researchers
> been regarded as closer to Gothic than
> West Germanic. There are however according
> to some sources seven
> main differences between Ancient Nordic
> and Gothic:
> 
> 1. Ancient Nordic has endings -a and -i like hlaiwa
> while Gothic has hlaiw, gasts, dags.
> 
> 2. Genitive sing.  endings  in Ancient Nordic are
> -as while in Gothic -is (dagis).
> 
> 3. Ancient Nordic an-stems are -an in genitive and dative
> sing. while Gothic has -ins (hanins) and -in (hanin).
> 
> 4. Ancient Nordic has dative sing. of a-stems ending in -e
> while Gothic has -a (katurna).
> 
> 5. Ancient Nordic has dative sing. of the u-stems with -iu while
> Gothic has -au (sunau).
> 
> 6. Ancien Nordic has nom. plur. of the r-stems with iR while
> Gothic has -jus (dohtrjus)
> 
> 7. Ancient Nordic ends sing.pret of weak verbs with -o (tawido)
> while Gothic has -a (tawida).
> 
> Grateful for comments.
> 
> Gothically
> 
> Bertil


You are a member of the Gothic-L list.  To unsubscribe, send a blank email to <gothic-l-unsubscribe at egroups.com>. 

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/