nasal abbreviations + thatei / ei before indirect speech

[llama_nom]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "akoddsson" <konrad_oddsson at y...> 
wrote:
>
> If Gothic did not really use ei in indirect speech, as used by 
> Wulfila, then what did it use?


Hails Konrad,

I made at least 3 daft mistakes in that message, which I´d better 
explain.  (1) I typed "indirect" in the subject line when I 
meant "direct", (2) I carelessly mistook a Greek 1st person plural 
ending for the third person plural (thus complelely failing to 
appreciate the point of Richard's original message!), and (3) I 
somehow got the idea that W. Streitberg was talking about choice of 
tense in subordinate clauses, whereas the paragraph I quoted 
concerned choice of person.  Ack.  Obviously not my day.


> Sure, I grant that Wulfila simply 
> translated the words of a greek text, but at the same it seems 
> unlikely that he would have developed a usage entirely foreign to 
> native gothic speakers, who were, after all, his audience. What 
> strikes me most here, in the explanation above, is that it 
suggests no 
> alternative usage, presumably more native to Gothic. On the other 
> hand, if the use of ei was native to gothic in this function, one 
> imagines that Wulfila's audience would have no problems 
understanding 
> him, even if his translations were thought oddly worded and 
foreign to 
> some extent in syntax, word-usage, etc. He was, after all, 
translating 
> concepts and culture entirely foreign to Goths and Gothic. Thus, 
while 
> I certainly suspect that Wulfila stretched the meanings of words, 
and 
> was perhaps somewhat novel syntactically, I do not imagine that he 
> developed new usage in indirect speach without any precedent. Am I 
> alone in this supposition?



Not at all.  In fact it's in these small words and really basic 
components of the language that you can see most independence from 
Greek usage, e.g. 'iþ' regularly comes first in the clause, while 
Greek DE comes second.  Looked at as a whole, all the main 
constituents of the sentence may well match the Greek, but on 
virtually every line of the Gothic bible Greek articles are left 
untranslated, presumably because sa, so, þata was just too emphatic 
to use so ubiquitously; sometimes prepositions are inserted, 
occasionally pronouns, often reflexives; and of course my favourite, 
the enclitic -uh, often has no equivalent at all.  Conversations are 
another great place to look for subtle differences.  The all purpose 
Greek particle DE is replaced by a range of Gothic conjunctions, not 
at random, but according to their own various functions for which 
the Greek offered no model.  Relatives show curious patterns of case 
attraction which often contrast with Greek usage.  In fact choice of 
case generally, with verbs and prepositions, follows rules quite 
independent of Greek--only in some more abstract or metaphorical or 
rhetorical uses, where native rules offer no guide, is Greek in 
charge.  Likewise with the choice of prepositions themselves.

That said, given the level of immitation that we do find, any exact 
match between Gothic and Greek has to be suspect, unless it´s 
something common to Indo-European languages generally and Germanic 
specifically.  Relatives before indirect speech being a case in 
point!  But I can well imagine that these instances of a relative 
before DIRECT speech could be due to immitation if they are only 
found at places where the Greek has the same phrasing: They said 
that "we never saw the like".  It would be interesting to see these 
Norse equivalents though.  Another possibility is that Gothic had 
such usages in some contexts, but that the normal range of contexts 
in which they would appear has been extended in an attempt to match 
the Greek.  This is what Streitberg suggests may be the case with 
the accusative and infinitive construction, for example, which is 
common in Old Norse, but even more widely used in Koine Greek.

Llama Nom





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