Quick question on adjectives

[edmundfairfax@yahoo.ca [gothic-l]]

Dear Dirk, 
 As to the alternation between 'th' and 'd': this is a problem created partly by Gothic orthography. Like Modern German, Gothic had a phonological rule of final devoicing, but unlike Modern German, this devoicing is in fact reflected in the spelling. This, of course, creates problems for the student, since it is not apparent from nominative sg. whether the form has undergone devoicing or whether the underlying form is simply voiceless.
 
 An example:
 
 nom.sg. masc. kunths 'known' and acc. sg. masc. strong kunthana
 but
 nom. sg. masc. goths 'good' and acc. sg. masc. strong godana
 
 The 'th' in 'goths' arises from the application of devoicing, while the 'th' in 'kunths' is the simply an unaltered constituent sound.
 
 It would be less confusing to the student of Gothic if the 'underlying' form were written everywhere and the correct pronunciation arrived at through the application of devoicing but not reflected in the spelling, as in Modern German:
 
 e.g. Tag (pronounced [tak] but written <Tag>) and Tage (written as pronounced)
 
 rather than
 
 *Tak - Tage
 
 if the Gothic system were followed.
 
 The long and short of all this is that you must simply learn the underlying form when you learn a new word. Thus, with the adjective 'goths' you must learn that the underlying form is /god-z/, while the underlying form of the adjective 'dauths' is /do:th-z/ (/o:/ here representing a lengthened lax vowel comparable to the vowel in ModGerman 'Gott' for want of a handy suitable character).
 
 In fact, the non-devoiced form, that is, the underlying form, will in fact appear if the enclitic -uh is added to the nom. form (in which case the consonants in question are no longer word-final and so the rule of devoicing will not apply):
 
 e.g. goths + -uh = godzuh.
 
 
 Some of the examples in your last email still have mistakes. I give here the full set corrected:
 
 so mawi ist goda
 so godo mawi
 
 ('mawi' is fem., and in the first example the adjective is predicate not attributive, so the nom. sg. fem. strong form is needed)
 
 sa gudja ist dauths
 sa dautha gudja
 
 (the underlying form of 'dauths' has 'th' so there is no alternation between 'th' and 'd' here.)
 
 sa fula ist wiltheis
 sa wilthja fula
 
 ('wiltheis' is a ja-stem adjective, hence the 'j' here.)
 
 thata barn ist swinth
 thata swintho barn
 
 ('barn' is neuter.)
 
 sa laisareis ist kunths
 sa kuntha laisareis
 
 ('swikunths' means "manifest, obvious"; I think 'kunths' = 'known' is what you meant)
 
 thata barn ist siuk
 that siuko barn
 
 sa milhma ist hweits
 sa hweita milhma
 
 sa asneis ist leitils
 sa leitila asneis
 
 so thiwi ist gaura
 so gauro thiwi
 
 so authida ist fulgina
 so fulgino authida
 
 
 As to word-order: we are rather in the dark about Gothic word-order, but I doubt that SOV was the norm. In a contribution a few weeks or more back, I outlined some of the problems in this area and suggested possible principles. Lambdin has the verb 'to be' follow a predicate adjective, but his reasoning is flawed in this regard. SVO appears in fact to have been the unmarked order for Germanic as well as a number of Indo-European languages by the early centuries AD.
 
 Another historical point that may be helpful: Late Proto-Indo-European had only one set of adjective endings, which were identical to those added to nouns. Germanic developed two sets, the 'weak' from weak nouns, and the strong, which derive from the Indo-European forms. These strong endings still in Gothic are mainly identical to the endings of masc./neut. a-stems and fem. o-stems:
 
 e.g. godA gibA ('good gift')
 gothS wulfS ('good wolf')
 goth barn ('good child')
 
 In some cases, the strong forms have been replaced by those derived from the pronouns:
 
 e.g. godana wulf (cf. '-ana' with 'ina')
 
 Edmund
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