Infestations, contortions, ambidextrations...

[llama_nom]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, Arthur Jones <arthurobin2002 at ...> 
wrote:


>   The difficulty here is that the Wilmisau dialect is almost 
extinct (fewer than 100 speakers left), and it has proven difficult 
as well to obtain reliable and detailed research on the topic. The 
most recent book, "The Making of a Language: The Case of the Idiom 
of Wilamowice", by Tomasz Wicherkiewicz, 2003, costs about 100 
Euros. I cannot afford it. 



Nor me.  You might be able to peek at a few pages on Google Books 
though [ http://books.google.co.uk/books?q=%22Idiom+of+Wilamowice%
22 ].  Or if that doesn't work, I think Amazon has a similar 
tantilisation device.  I searched for "gothic", but most of the 
relevant pages were "access restricted".  All very intriguing 
though.  I found 'huot' used twice = NGH 'hat', Go. 'habaiþ' "has" 
(rather than 'haubiþ' head), 'starwa' = NHG 'sterben' "to die".


  
>   2. Also collate comparable sentences and phrases for the oldest 
attested Slavic forms. Remember, up to 30 % of Slavic vocabulary 
was "borrowed" from Gothic. Could there have been a parallel 
superstrate influence on Slavic syntax as well, which would show us 
something of the syntax in use at the time in Gothic?


30% seems a surprisingly lot to me.  Doesn't match my experience of 
delving in Russian etymological dictionaries.  But I'm not an 
expert.  Wilhelm Streitberg believed that Gothic had a very similar 
system of verbal aspect to Slavonic, but I've just read an article 
by Philip Scherer ('Aspect in Gothic', Language 30:2, 1954) that 
completely refutes the idea of a formal system of aspect at least, 
although certain verbs might be perfective or imperfective due to 
their inherent meaning, while others are aspectually indifferent.  
He also says the 'present' tense of certain prefixed verbs in Old 
Bulgarian (=Old Church Slavonic) would always have a future meaning, 
although they aren't always necesarily perfective.  He has examples 
of verbs in both perfective and imperfective contexts, both verbs 
that are always simple, always prefixed with ga- or another prefix, 
and verbs that appear either in simple or prefixed form.  Which 
leaves me wondering why Streitberg concluded that there was a formal 
aspect system in Gothic.  The one thing lacking from Scherer's 
article is a statistical breakdown of particular verbs, which might 
show whether there was a general tendency towards a particular 
prefixed verb being perfective, while its simplex counterpart was 
imperfective--even if the rule wasn't always strictly followed.  
Does anyone know if such studies have been done?  It's also been 
claimed that there is a perfective/imperfective distinction made 
between the use 'wairþan' and 'wisan' as auxiliaries for the past 
passive.  I don't remember Scherer mentioning this, but it's 
something else worth scrutinising.  If there is any distinction 
made, and I'm not sure of that, I don't think it can be a simple one 
to one match, with one auxiliary perfrective and the other 
imperfective.  E.g. all perfective, I think (but I'll have to check 
the context):

atgibanos wesun imma bokos
galagiþs was in kararai
gabaurans warþ
gabaurans was

But then sometimes there does seem to be a distinction made, e.g.

haitans was "was called" (imperfective)
haitans warþ "was given the name" (perfective)

Streitberg has some figures which suggest a definite tendency, if 
not complete strictness:

             was   warþ   ist
imperfect    7     17
pluperfect         5
aorist       69    42     50
perfect      4     42     50

It would be interesting to see how these compare overall with the 
Old Bulgarian translation.  





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