[gothic-l] Re: Ancient Nordic and Gothic

[Francisc Czobor]

Hi Keth,

--- In gothic-l at y..., keth at o... wrote:
> ...
> 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.
> 

I have the same perception as you have on the mechanism.
Examples from Gothic:
fulls "full" > full-nan "to become full"
daufs "deaf" > af-daub-nan "to become deaf"
dumbs "dumb" > (af-)dumb-nan "to become dumb, to be silent"
etc.
in these examples, the verbs are derived from adjectives and have the 
semnification of "to become ..."(the quality or state shown by the 
adjective)
But in other situations the suffix -na- forms medio-passives from 
other verbs, e.g.:
andbindan "loose, unbind" > andbund-nan "become unbound, be loosened"
biaukan "increase, add to" > biauk-nan "become larger"
disskreitan "rennd, tear" > disskrit-nan "necome torn, be rent appart"
fraliusan "lose" > fralus-nan "be lost"
fraqistjan "destroy" > fraqistnan "perish, be destroyed"
etc. etc.
It seems that the verbal suffix -na- was very productive in Gothic.

> ...
> 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?
> 

The language of the oldest Proto-Norse runic inscriptions (like the 
famous "ek hlewagastiR holtijaR horna tawido") is older and more 
archaic even than Wulfilan Gothic, being very close to the 
reconstructed Common Germanic (the above mentioned inscription would 
sound in Common Germanic probably something like that: *eka 
hlewagastiz hultijaz hurnan tawido:; in Gothic: *ik hliugast hultiggs 
haurn tawida; in Old Norse: *ek hlégestr hyltingr horn táða).
So the language of the oldest runic inscriptions was not Gothic, but a 
more archaic language, very close to Common Germanic.
At that time, Proto-Norse and Gothic were probably very close, but 
West Germanic was also not very far from them.
The assertion of Munch is caused probably by the fact that in the 
XIXth century Gothic was still regarded by some people as the ancestor 
of the other Germanic languages, so that a very archaic Germanic texts 
was considered as being (close to) Gothic (today we would say: close 
to Common Germanic). That's my opinion (maybe I'm wrong).

With best regards,

Francisc


You are a member of the Gothic-L list.  To unsubscribe, send a blank email to <gothic-l-unsubscribe at egroups.com>. 

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/