[gothic-l] Gothic "sa"

[Magnus Hreinn Snaedal]

At 22:16 6.10.2000 -0600, you wrote:
>Magnus Hreinn Snædal wrote
>>First:
>>Gothic 'sa' is NOT an article, but a demonstrative, cf. Braune/Ebbinghaus
>>§153.
>
>    That's the kind of bald statement which would be much improved if it
>carried some justification along with it.  How exactly does one test
>whether a certain determiner is an article or a demonstrative in any case?
>The semantic overlap is rather considerable.

I admit that my statement was bald, and exaggerating. That was intentional.
But as his balanced response shows, Matþaius has understood what I was
aiming at. Just saying: Be careful not to use the Gothic 'sa' whenever you
find the article in Greek (or English). Study the usage in Gothic itself.

>    I am probably not going to put myself to the trouble of tracking down
>what Herr Ebbinghaus has to say on the subject, so unless Magnus or someone
>else cares to summarize their arguments, I expect to continue to doubt the
>complete accuracy of the statement.

Well, I also took the risk of mentioning Ebbinghaus name in David Salo's
presence. Now I have to pay the penalty. I should have mentioned Streitberg
(Got. Elemantarbuch §281) because, like it or not, his overview of Gothic
syntax is still the best we have got (except perhaps the still older one by
Gabelentz and Löbe).

>    In reading Gothic texts, I normally experience no sense of semantic
>incongruity in rendering sa, so, thata as "the" in English; whereas
>translating it as "that, those" is often (not always) awkward (e.g. "swaei
>frauja ist sa sunus mans jah thamma sabbato" -- "so the son of man is also
>lord of the Sabbath" is perfect, but "so that son of man is also lord of
>that Sabbath" is execrable).  Perhaps that simply indicates that English
>"the" overlaps the boundaries of "article" and "demonstrative" that exist
>as idealized grammatical categories; BUT in making a statement about the
>nature of Gothic "sa" to a largely English-speaking audience, saying that
>it's _not_ an article ("the" being a paradigmatic article to
>English-speakers) is considerably misleading.  If people force themselves
>to translate Gothic "sa" as "that" at every instance, they're going to
>produce rather bad translations.

I admit the exaggeration. But even if 'the' is most often the BEST
translation of Gothic 'sa', translating it with 'that, those' may be more
EXACT.
The case of 'sunus mans' is interesting.

sa sunus mans - 9 times, 22 times without 'sa'
þana sunu mans - twice, 4 times without 'þana'
þis sunaus manns - once, 3 times without 'þis'

Perhaps one could learn somthing about the use of Gothic 'sa' by studying
this case?

Goleins
M.Sn.

>    I do note that there are many instances where a "the" must be supplied
>in translating from Gothic to English; but this is the kind of thing which
>a French-speaker, for instance is likely to notice about English itself
>(e.g., why do Anglophones say "liberty" instead of "the liberty"?).
>Obviously the use of "sa" is not identical to the use of English "the" (let
>alone French "le" or German "der", which have different distributions); but
>calling "sa" a "demonstrative" doesn't really help us figure out when to
>use "sa" with a noun and when not to.  Previous mention isn't a completely
>helpful rule either; in the example I mentioned (Mark 2:28), the "son of
>man" hasn't been mentioned _at all_ within the previous discourse unit!
>
>>(If there is only one can be disputed, cf. 'und þridjan himin' in 2 Cor
12:2.)
>
>   There's also Ephesians 4:10 "ufar allans himinans".  But that's rather
>beside the point, as it expresses the part of the Hellenistic-Jewish
>worldview from which these texts spring (and tells us nothing about the
>Goths).  Himins (repeatedly found both in singular and plural) is from the
>point of view of the earthbound unique.  If one takes the use of "sa" to be
>specifying a particular thing out of a field of like things, then obviously
>one would _not_ use it with himins! (Actually this does not appear to be
>the only use of "sa").  One might take himins as the effective equivalent
>of a toponym.
>
>
>/\     WISTR LAG WIGS RAIHTS
>\/            WRAIQS NU IST                               <> David Salo
><dsalo at softhome.net> <>
>
>
>
>
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