[gothic-l] Re: Ic. "Bill" & Relevance

[David Salo]

>Matþaius melida:
>> *awtaumobilus           Used by Romanized Goths and the educated
>(Latin-speaking)
>> *silbagaggands          Same as above, but more common among
>linguists
>
>I thought that in the modern Germanic languages, except for English,
>the verbs based on the *gang- root usually meant to go on foot as
>opposed to *far-, meaning to travel in a vehicle or on horseback.
>Did Gothic have this distinction?  If it did, then perhaps
>*silbafarands, *silbaleiþands or *silbawratonds might be
>possibilities.  Since the -mobil- root really means to move, other
>possibilities might be *silbadreibands, *silbaskiubands,
>*silbadragands, and I'm sure there are others.

   Those are good possibilities.
   I looked up instances of _faran_ in the Gothic texts; the verb only
occurs once that I can find, in Luke 10:7 "ni faraiþ us garda in gard";
here it seems to refer to journeying on foot, and might as well be "ni
gaggaiþ".
   I can't think of any chariot or wagon-travel in the Gospels or the
Epistles but there is a lot of travel by ship, e.g. John 6:17 "jah usstigun
in skip, iddjedunuh ufar marein in Kafarnaum" "and going up into the ship,
they went over the sea to Capharnaum"; here the verb used is the preterite
of gaggan.  Admittedly galeithan, usleithan, ufarleithan seem more common.
   The prefixed silba-, while not impossible (we have silbasiuneis
"eyewitness" and silbawiljis "willing of oneself") seems less likely with a
transparent verb form; I guess the more idiomatic way a Goth might express
the notion of "moving itself" would be _dreibando sik_, which does not
easily turn itself into a noun.

/\     WISTR LAG WIGS RAIHTS
\/            WRAIQS NU IST                               <> David Salo
<dsalo at softhome.net> <>



------------------------------------------------------------------------
WRITERS WANTED! Themestream allows ALL writers to publish their 
articles on the Web, reach thousands of interested readers, and get 
paid in cash for their work. Click below:
http://click.egroups.com/1/3840/6/_/3398/_/960506210/
------------------------------------------------------------------------