'Artificial Language'

[ualarauans]

Hails Michael,

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, Michael Erwin <merwin at ...> wrote:
>
> Ik im ussiggwands Patrick Amory, "People and Identity in 
Ostrogothic
> Italy, 489-554." Jah meljandaries qitham ei Wulfila skapjau ain 
razda
> "far removed from any common parlance when it was written" (p. 
239).
> Nu anthar meljandarjos qithand samaleiko. Ak ni frathja hwaiwa 
wisai.
> Jabai Wulfila sokidedi ain ainbruka aiklessiatuggo, habidedi
> Graikarazda jah Latina(razda).

Hugja ei Patrikius sa meljands bi sumata raihtaba qiþiþ. Aþþan ni 
swa fairra wisan galaubja þo razda Wulfilins þizai gamainjon tuggon 
gutiskai ei ni mahtedeina fraþjan waurdam is.

I think the author is right to some extent. But the language of 
Wulfila was apparently not as far removed from the daily speech as 
to be totally obscure. Look at the Eastern churches where liturgical 
languages are other than Latin. Old Church Slavonic is still used 
and more or less understood in Serbia, Bulgaria, Russia, the 
Ukraine, though it was different from the daily speech already in 
the time of its birth (the 9th ct.). It was essentially the same 
story: Greek syntax, Greek calques, a number of loanwords and a 
script based on the Greek alphabet.
 
> The word order usually follows the Greek. The vocabulary is of 
course
> very Gothic. The dative absolute has Greek and Latin parallels, not
> Germanic ones. The remnant dual doesn't fit the 'artificial 
language'
> hypothesis. It could fit the 'specialized language' hypothesis.

I'd suppose the dative absolute is a Proto-Germanic inheritance. It 
seems that the prepositional constructions are later ones, developed 
separately in Gotho-Nordic ('at') and West-Germanic ('bi') from the 
earlier preposition-less dative absolute.

What are you referring to as an 'artificial language'? If you mean 
that the given language had never been naturally spoken such as it 
was represented in script, then perhaps the Wulfilan was pretty 
artificial. Not that it was incomprehensible without a special 
linguistic training therefore.

> The order of books (in Argenteus) is western; many readings are
> western; some readings are unique. (I have no Vetus Latina text but
> 1st Timothy 1:10 matches Vulgate structure while contradicting
> Vulgate meaning; I understand it doesn't match any known Greek 
text).

Ualarauans

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