[gothic-l] Re: Pronouns and other questions

[llama_nom]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "seitokojiro" <MRemick01 at a...> 
wrote:

> 1) How do you know whether to use pronouns (like is, ita, si) and 
> their respective demonstrative pronouns (sa, thata, so) when 
refering 
> back to someone or something aforementioned? It seems that they 
are 
> almost interchangeable sometimes. Is there some circumstance, for 
> example, where 'thai' would be preferable to 'eis', or is it 
simply a 
> matter of preference? 
> 

Good question.  I'd like to know this too.  Both can translate Gk. 
autos, so the variation is presumably a feature of Gothic.  Both can 
appear where English has "he".  Sometimes _sa_ looks like it might 
be a bit more emphatic, while _is_ might imply more familiarity with 
the person on the part of the reader, but other times I can't really 
see the difference.  In the gospel narratives is _sa_ reserved for 
newly encountered people, or relatively newly mentioned people, do 
you think?  I can't recall _sa_ being applied with the meaning "he" 
to Jesus in the middle of the narrative of his travels.

It might be stylistic sometimes though--there might be a grey area 
in the middle of the Venn diagram of sa/is where either is 
acceptable--or maybe I just haven't figured it out yet.  Without 
being able to give any rules, Gothic seems to me similar in this way 
to Old English and Old Norse, both of which can have þæt/þat, etc. 
in some circumstances where MnE has "it" rather than "that".  But 
I'd like to know more.

Mk 1,25 jah andbait ina Iesus qiþands: þahai jah usgagg ut us þamma, 
ahma unhrainja.
26 jah tahida ina...jah...usiddja us imma

Mk 1,30 iþ swaihro Seimonis lag in brinnon: jah suns qeþun ina bi 
ija.
31 jah duatgaggands urraisida þo undgreipands handos izos, jah 
aflaitot þo so brinnon suns, jah andbahtida im.

In the first of these examples _þamma_ seems emphatic, but in the 
second _þo_ no more so than _ija_.  When qualified by an adjective 
or some qualifying phrase, þai = Gk. hoi, English "those" (þai miþ 
imma, etc.).

Llama Nom

PS. I don´t know if this is useful to you, but you can download the 
Gothis corpus here

http://www.wulfila.be/gothic/download/





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