[gothic-l] Lucky Luke

[John Frauzel]

At 09:53 PM 10/12/00 +0100, you wrote:
>Thank you so much!!
>
>John Frauzel wrote:
>
> > I think these are two coordinated dative absolutes. Sometimes the absolute
> > in Gothic is preceded by at (in which case it's not strictly absolute), and
> > sometimes not. The Greek text here has two genitive absolutes. Gothic
> > dative absolutes always correspond to genitive absolutes in Greek
>
>.. and in the German and other languages I guess. But just _why_ is 'allai 
>managein' and 'allaim' dative if
>subjects??
That's the nature of the beast. The absolute construction stands outside of 
the syntax of the main clause to which it is attached and supplies 
background information related to time "while [abs], main clause" (by far 
the most common in Gothic), condition "if [abs], main clause", etc. The 
absolute consists of a subject (noun or pronoun) and a predicate (always a 
participle in Gothic, sometimes a noun or adjective in Latin) that agree in 
case. The case is almost always dative in Gothic. There are also disputed 
genitive, accusative and even nominative absolutes. Greek has Genitive 
absolutes, and Latin has ablative absolutes.
Other Germanic languages had dative absolutes (English perhaps also 
instrumental). Absolutes survive without case marking in formal English, 
e.g. "The battle fought, the troops went home". There are similar examples 
in most modern European languages, probably all imported from Latin.
Anyone have an opinion on whether the construction is native to Gothic 
and/or Germanic, or whether it's borrowed from Greek?




>  This was what made it so hard to crack. I did recognize the forms as 
> dative but it didn't seem to make
>sense.
>                                                         (roughly then:)
>at wenjandein þan allai managein        And the people went abiding there
>jah þagkjandam allaim                       and they all wondered
>in hairtam seinaim bi Iohannein,          in their hearts weather Johannes
>niu aufto sa wesi Xristus,                   not after all were Messiah.
>
>This is my guesswork in reconstructing the sentences.
>The Swedish Lutheran bible (1917 version) reads:
>
>Och folket gick där i förbidan
>och alla undrade
>i sina hjärtan om Johannes
>icke till äventyrs vore Messias.
>
>Simple and transparent.
>
>And, yup, this is Luke 3:15 out of Wulfila.
>
>Seigmund
>
>
>[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
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John Frauzel  Phone 520 579-3235
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