*gutiska vs.*gutisko

[akoddsson]

Hails Thiudans.

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <600cell at o...> wrote:
>
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "akoddsson" <konrad_oddsson at y...> 
> wrote:
> >
> > One issue which puzzles me is the reconstruction of the goths' 
> name for their own tongue, *gutiska. On the face of it, this 
adjectival form would seem inappropriate when compared with other 
germanic tongues, where a fem. on-stem is prefered (nominal). Would 
not the form *gutisko (oblique -on) make more sense? 

> Hails sijais, Konireþ!
> 
> That makes a lot of sense, and certainly agrees with Norse, 
although curiously OE has 'on englisc' "in English"; 'on wilisc' "in 
Welsh".  These are listed under the heading of the adjective in 
Bosworth and Toller, although they seem to behave more like a noun.  
Can anyone with more OE expertise clarify the grammar of these 
constructions?

> 'on engliscum gereorde' "in the English language"; 'to 
norþhymbriscum gereorde'; 'ge on Ledenisc gereorde ge on 
Grecisc' "in both the Latin and Greek languages" -- the adjective 
strong in these examples even applied to a specific 
language.  'gereord', n. "language".  But then there are also what 
seem like compounds: 'þæt is on englisc gereorde...' "in the English 
language, that is..."

I think the key here is the adjectival use (-*iskaz).

> Supposing the Goths' name for their own language was a feminine on-
stem noun though, can you think of any way of chosing between: 
*gutisko (Swedish 'gutiska' "Gothic"), or *gutanisko, or *gutnisko 
(Icelandic 'gotneska' "Gothic", Swedish 'gutniska' "Gotlandish")?  I 
don't know how much we can read into the Latin form 'gothones', 
whether this shows that *guta had an uncontracted plural *gutans, or 
if it's just the Latin ending -ones added to the root 'goth'.  But 
if the plural was *gutans, maybe *gutanisko is preferable.  Does 
continental West Germanic offer any clues here?

The goths could probably say things like *gutiska tuggo or *than is 
qath ana gutiska tuggon (accus. - then he answered/spoke in gotish), 
like in the norse, for example (hann es maeltr a norroena tungu - he 
speaks the norse tongue, or norroent mal, neut accus norse language, 
where the usage is adjectival, but would likely also have had an 
abstract fem on-stem *gutisko as a kind a title for their tongue, 
although it may not have been in heavy use, I think. Now, about 
*gutanisko - nothing really speaks against it, but a stem-formation 
would seem more original (*gutisko), compare gutthiuda from the 
gothic calendar and the norse gotthiod, constantly used in poetry, 
but sometimes corrupted to godthiod. Although not a native gotish 
speaker, my instinct tells me that the tongue in question could be 
called, at least formally, *so gutisko tuggo or just *gutisko.

Regards,
Konrad

> Llama Nom
>






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