[gothic-l] Re: Old Nordic, Gothic and Old Gutnish

Thu Jul 12 11:59:11 UTC 2001

Hails!

Further to my post of 2 days ago (No 4340), I try to continue the 
presentation of the main innovations of Gothic and Gutnish, in order 
to see how related these languages are.

In addition to what I wrote regarding the innovations of Gothic, 
meantime I found an example where the "grammatical change" was 
reverted in Gothic, but still preserved in modern German:
Goth. tiuhan - táuh - taúhans "to draw, to lead"
Germ. ziehen - zog - -gezogen "to draw"
(Common Gmc.: *teuxanan - *taugha - *tughanaz, where "gh" is for 
gamma)

Another distinctive characteristic of Gothic is the genitive plural 
(masc. & neutrum) ending in -e:, but I don't know whether this is an 
innovation of Gothic or it is a remain of dialectal variation in 
Common Germanic or in the Pre-Germanic Indo-European language.

Now, let's take a look to the main innovations of Gutnish.

As I found written in my sources, the language of Gotland 
(Forngutniska) is distinguished from the Old Swedish of the mainland 
especially by the following characteristics:

1. the Old Norse diphthongs are preserved, e.g. auga "eye", droyma "to 
dream", stain "stone"; the form auga can be found also in West Norse 
(Old Norwegian and Old Icelandic), that preserved the au diphthong as 
well;
2. a triphthong has arisen by change of "iu" into "iau", e.g. fliauga 
"to fly" (you will never find such a thing in Gothic!);
3. the long vowels œ and ø have passed into long e, respectively long 
y, e.g. méla "to speak", dýma "to deem"
4. short o occurs only rarely, before r; in other positions it is 
changed to u. 
Well, here appears to be a common innovation with Gothic, but in fact 
the conditions are different: in Common Germanic there was no short o, 
since the Indo-European short o was changed to a in Common Germanic. 
In Gothic, the Common Germanic short u is preserved, excepting before 
r, h, and hw, where it was changed in short o (written "aú"). In North 
and West Germanic the Common Germanic short u was in many cases opened 
to o, but in Gutnish this o is re-closed to u, excepting before r. The 
tendency of opening of u to o before r and h is not a particularity of 
Gothic and Gutnish; it appears also in many other languages, including 
unrelated non-Indo-European languages like Arabic and Quechua (a 
Native American language of Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador).
5. w was dropped before r, e.g. raiþi "wrath"; in Gothic, w is always 
preserved before r (e.g. wraiqs "crooked", wrak(j)a "persecution", 
wraks "persecutor", wratodus "journey", wraton "go, travel", wrikan 
"persecute", wrohjan "accuse", wrohs "accusation", wruggo "snare").
6. The genitive singular of feminines in -a ends in -ur instead of the 
Swedish -u, e.g. kirkiur "of the church"; in Gothic, the genitive 
singular of feminines in -a ends in -os (e.g. giba "gift", gibos "of 
the gift").

These are the characteristics individualizing Gutnish from Old 
Swedish.
Of course, Gutnish has also all the innovations that are common to all 
North Germanic (Scandinavic) languages, the most important being:

7. initial j- is lost;
8. initial w- disappears before o, u, y, ø;
9. Common Gmc. *æ: > á (in Gothic *æ: > long e, e.g. jer "year");
10. the rhotacism z > r (also in West Germanic; in Gothic z is 
preserved, and in final position z > s);
11. h is preserved only initially (in Gothic h is preserved in all 
positions);
12. final -n is lost in unstressed syllables (the infinitive ending in 
all Scandinavic languages, including Gutnish, is -a; in Wulfilan 
Gothic it is -an, and in Crimean it is -en);
13. the loss of n before s, with the compensatory lengthening of the 
preceding vowel (never found in Gothic);
14. voiced consonants become unvoiced in final position or before 
voiceless consonants;
15. nt > tt and nk > kk (not in Gothic; in the Gothic spelling, the g 
of "gk" is a velar n);
16. the suffixed definite article (in Gothic, both Wulfilan and 
Crimean, the definite article stands before the nouns);
17. the change -jj- > -ggj- and -ww- > -ggw- (a common innovation of 
Gothic and North Germanic).

Now, using these (obviously incomplete) data, let's make (very rough) 
statistics:
There are listed above 17 (6 + 11) characteristics of Gutnish. 
One of them (no. 1) is a conservative feature (archaism), being thus 
irrelevant here. 
Another (no. 17) is common not only for Gothic and Gutnish, but it is 
found in all North Germanic languages. 
10 characteristics (no. 7-16) are common to all North Germanic 
languages, including Gutnish, but are not found in Gothic.
4 characteristics (no. 2, 3, 5, and 6) are found only in Gutnish; they 
are not found in Gothic, nor in the other North Germanic languages.
Only one characteristic (no. 4) is found only in Gutnish and Gothic, 
but, as I showed above, it is discutable.
Table of conclusions (without taking into account the archaism no. 1, 
only the other 16, that are innovations):

INNOVATIONS FOUND IN:                   NUMBER         PERCENT
Gutnish & Gothic only                      1             6.25%
Gutnish only                               4            25.00%
Gutnish & Scandinavic, not in Gothic      10            62.50%
Gutnish & Scandinavic & Gothic             1             6.25%
TOTAL                                     16           100.00%

FINAL CONCLUSION:
Taking into account these facts, the view that Gutnish is more Gothic 
than Scandinavic seems to be not sustainable.

Francisc

--- In gothic-l at y..., "Francisc Czobor" <czobor at c...> wrote:
> Hi Bertil,
> 
> --- In gothic-l at y..., Bertil Häggman <mvk575b at t...> wrote:
> > Francisc,
> > 
> > Nobody claimed that the influx was so strong
> > that it replaced Gutnish. After all, there is
> > still Gutnish around, it does not differ very
> > much from Old Gutnish, but definitely from
> > Swedish and Danish. 
> > 
> 
> And more definitely from Gothic, that's sure.
> (Again, look at the numbers)
> 
> >
> > BTW, what are the innovations in Gothic?
> > 
> 
> It's difficult to say now, whithout any source at hand.
> As far as I remember, some of the innovations of Gothic are:
> e > i excepting before r, h, hw
> i > open e ("aí") before r, h, hw
> u > open o ("aú") before r, h, hw
> the dropping of final -a and -i
> -jj- > -ddj- (like -ggj- in ALL North Germanic languages, not only 
> Gutnish)
> -ww- > -ggw- (like in ALL North Germanic languages, not only 
Gutnish)
> the reversion of the "grammatic change" in the conjugation of strong 
> verbs (sorry, I don't remember any example now). For this reason, 
the 
> conjugation of Gothic strong verbs appears more regular than, for 
> instance, in German.
> the genitive plural in -e
> z is preserved, and in final position z > s (in all West and North 
> Germanic languages, INCLUDING GUTNISH, z > r !!!).
> More later, I have to go home to look in my books.
> 
> Francisc

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