Goths

Hans-Werner Hatting hwhatting at hotmail.com
Tue Jan 30 07:29:55 UTC 2001


On Mon, 15 Jan 2001 21:19:21 -0600, David White wrote:

>Harking back to an earlier emissive, I would like to know more about
>how the name of the Goths is supposed to have been from two different >
>agentnouns, each from a different ablaut grade.
>        It would also be good to know how the /o/ got there in Latin.  >
>One possibility is that the name (as it reached Latin) is indeed an
>"other-name" from other Germanic, in which case /o/ rather than /u/ in a
>past-participle of /geutan/ (more or less) would in fact be regular.  Or,
>to put it perhaps more clearly, the from with /o/ would be the non-Gothic
>Germanic, whereas the form with /u/ would be the Gothic version.  That the
>Greeks were in contact with the Goths whereas the Romans were in contact
>with other Germanic tribes might explain this difference, which as far as I
>can see has no other explanation.

Just a suggestion:
We could have an o-Stem *gauta- (with o-grade of the root, a type widely
attested for PIE and Gmc.),denoting the tribe, and an idividualising derived
n-stem *guton-, denoting the members of the tribe.

I would not worry much about Latin /o/ for Gmc. /u/, as at that time short
/u/ and /o/ probably already had merged in Vulgar Latin.

Best regards,
H. W. Hatting



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