[gothic-l] Re: Ancient Nordic and Gothic

[keth at ONLINE.NO]

Hi Francesc,
Thank you very much for your interesting overview!

>3. The existence of the fourth class of weak verbs in Gothic and
>Norse, ending in -na-/-no-: Goth. fullnan "to be filled, to become
>full", ON versna "to become worse". But it is possible that this
>verbal class existed also in West Germanic languages and disappeared
>before their earliest attestations.

Here I'd like to remark that there are other verbs of this type, that
are perhaps easier for the Scandinavians living today to identify
with. ("versna" is rare. If used today it would probably be understood
as an Anglicism < to worsen)

åpne (to open, öffnen)
bugne (to be richly endowed, strotzen)
mørkne (to grow dark(er))
blekne (to grow pale, bleich werden)
hevne ? (to revenge)
blåne (to grow bluish - like distant mountains)
kjølne (to grow cooler)
levne (to leave something behind , e.g. doubts)
regne ?(to calculate - rechnen, to reckon)
stevne ? (to demand or arrange a meeting, to set the course to..)

I did not find very many.
But even today, I think people understand how the -ne or -na
suffix works. I have also put a question mark with those that
may not be "real". By "real" I mean that they should be verbs
formed from a stem that does not already end in an -n.
Thus, I consider the typical verb of this type to be formed
from an adjective to which the ending -ne or -na is added.
But maybe you had a different perception of the mechanism?

Example from Old Norse: myrkr = adj. "dark"; myrkna = verb 'to grow dark'.
I am however not sure if I can find the adjective that goes with
all the others. I think maybe the medio-passive (reflexive form)
has taken over some of these functions (?). ON "fullna" for example
is not used so much any more, only in some dialects.


>For this reason, the scholars consider that the Common Germanic
>language first splitted in two branches: West Germanic and North-East
>Germanic, and later the North-East Germanic branch splitted into North
>Germanic and East Germanic.

I agree with this, because I think such definitions have to be pragmatic.
(not based upon idealisations, but upon factual usage)

>"However, even if there was more resemblance between Scandinavian and
>Gothic than between Scandinavian and West Germanic, the difference was
>still more clearly marked than the resemblance, so that scholars have
>to come to the conclusion that the North Germanic languages should be
>treated as an independent group" [quoted from source 1, see the note
>below].
>Furthermore, we must not forget that Gothic was very clearly
>individualized against West and North Germanic, and there are some
>common innovations of West and North Germanic that are totally absent
>in Gothic. The most striking are:
>
>1. the rhotacism Gmc. *z > "soft" R > r, both in West and North
>Germanic; in Gothic z was preserved, and in final position z > s.
>Example: Goth. dius "animal, beast", ON dyr, OHG tiur (Germ. Tier),
>O.Sax. dior, OE deor (Eng. deer).
>
>2. The Umlaut, that appeared however at different moments in the West
>and North Germanic languages. In Wulfilan Gothic it is totally absent
>(as it was also in all the contemporary West and North Germanic
>languages), while in Crimean, because its attestation is to poor and
>distorted, we can not say anything.
>
>NOTE:
>The sources that I used for this post are:
>1. Virgil Stefanescu-Draganesti: "Introduction to the Comparative
>Grammar of the Germanic Languages", University of Bucharest, 1971
>2. Andreas Heusler: "Altisländische Elementarbuch", Carl Winter
>Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg, 1967
>3. Werner König: dtv-Atlas zur deutschen Sprache", Deutsche
>Taschenbuch Verlag, München, 1994
>
>My conclusion would be that the subgrouping of the Germanic languages
>in three distinct branches: East, West, and North Germanic, is well
>founded.

I'd also like to add that some time ago I read that the Norwegian
pioneer in these fields, P.A. Munch, in the 1850's still believed
that the oldest Nordic runic inscriptions were written in Gothic.

This teaches us to remember that when one talks about Old Norse,
one usually has the language anno ca. 1200 in mind. But in order
to perform a more realistic comparison of Old Norse and Gothic,
one needs to do a reverse playback of the development of Norse,
by about 800 years, and then compare. Since the early runic
inscriptions are so sparse, they alone will not form a sufficient
basis for a good comparison. I have seen analysis of early Nordic
runic inscriptions that make extensive use of what we know about
Gothic. So perhaps Munch's idea wasn't so silly after all. The
later scholars were able to correct him on this, no doubt. But
it seems as if all the Germanic languages were close at the
time. But perhaps Norse and Gothic were closer than the others?

Best regards
Keth



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