[gothic-l] Re: Vladimir

[David Kiltz]

On Dienstag, August 26, 2003, at 04:53  Uhr, ?????? ???????? wrote:

Before I comment on the following I would like to introduce myself as 
this is my first post to the list. My name is David Kiltz, I live in 
Münster Germany.
I've studied Historical Linguistics ('Indogermanistik') -inter alia- 
and am involved with it.
Gothic being the most archaic and at any rate a very intriguing 
Germanic language, I subscribed to this list. Of course, the history of 
the this far-travelled people is also fascinating. I'm looking forward 
to an interesting membership.

> I did not contest the Germanic ending in ‘Tervingi’.
> I only admitted that a Germanic word might have some
> “foreign” origin because your metathesis
>
> terv- = *taírw- < *tirw- ~ triu, triw-.

As Francisc Czobor already noted, this kind of metathesis is nothing 
unusual.
To give you but one example: The OHG word for 'fidelity' normally shows 
up as _triuwa/treuwa_ (whence NHG 'Treue'). However in the Parisian 
Converstion Book (Pariser Gespräche) it always shows up as 
_terwe/terwa_. So, apparently, metathesis could quickly occur in one 
dialect (Franconian).
>
> does not look convincing. Also, I do not understand
> the statement that the Gothic language did not have
> umlauts. Why such an exclusion among other Germanic
> languages? Who did ever hear the Gothic enunciation?
> If Ulfila had not contrived special letters for umlauts
> this fact does not mean the umlauts did not exist in
> Gothic. For example, I suppose Gothic ‘ai’ sounded ‘ä’
> (a-umlaut) rather than ‘e.

1) Why not ? Umlaut in the Germanic languages in not a homogenous 
process. While it can be argued that, e.g. some sort of anticipatory 
umlaut was present it would still have been subphonemic since Wulfila 
didn't mark it.

I don't understand your remark on ä vs e. Their respective 
pronunciation in what language are you referring to ? /e/ can have many 
qualities. While _ai_ by all probability was an open /e/ that has, of 
course, nothing to do with umlaut. _ä_ is just a graphic convention. 
Indeed, in German _ä_ is used pretty unhistorically. Namely where 
-perchance- a word form containing an _a_ survived or was formed. E.g. 
in German _senken_ 'to sink, tr.'' and _tränken_ 'to let drink' both 
_e_ and _ä_ are pronounced exactly the same and are, indeed, of the 
same origin (namely _a_ palatalised). Cf Gothic _sagkjan_ and 
_dragkjan_. The _ä_ is only there because there happens to be a word 
_Trank_ 'drink'. _Ä_ in open syllable is pronounced more open than _e_. 
Perhaps you were referring to _e vs ä_ in Finnish ?

David

Forms can be found, e.g. in:
R. Schützeichel: Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch
Braune/Ebbinghaus: Althochdeutsches Lesebuch,
+ any Gothic dictionary, as you'll know.



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