[gothic-l] "Umlaut" in Gothic?

[gazariah]

Vladimir,

I'm just a beginner in Gothic, but I do know something about Slavic 
linguistic history. I have some questions and notes.


>"Airils" is [jarilo]. Should "ai" 
>be here pronounced as [e], the Russian 
>version would be [(j)erilo]. Though, in 
>case of the pronunciation [aj], I realize 
>a probability of a metathesis 
>[ajrilo]-[jarilo], which would explain 
>the Russian cognate without the a-umlaut.

What is "Airils"? Is it a name? A figure in mythology? (I said I'm no 
whiz at Gothic.) Where is it attested? If it's a name, does it have 
root meanings, like so many names in Germanic? 

Vasmer believes that Russian /jarilo/ comes 
from /jara/ 'spring'(cognate with English 'year'.) That would make 
good sense given the time of year that the ritual with jarilo was 
performed. Do you have reasons for rejecting this etymology? 

If the Russian word is being used as evidence for the pronunciation 
of Gothic, you must think it's a borrowing, not a cognate, right? If 
the word were borrowed from Gothic into Common Slavic (the Goths were 
not around later), its form would have violated the law of rising 
sonority, which required (simplifying) that every syllable end in a 
vowel. So /aj/ is out. Metathesis might have occured, but in general 
the Slavic reflex of /aj/ in a closed syllable would be jat', a vowel 
which had a different pronunciation from /e/, although in Russian the 
two later fell together and the letter jat' was eliminated from the 
alphabet after the revolution in 1917. But if /aj/ of Airils went to 
jat' in Slavic, you would end up with /je/ in modern Russian, which 
you don't have. If you want to think that /aj/ was "umlauted" in 
Gothic, you would still end up with /je/, not with /ja/ as seen in 
Russian.


>the Russian cognate to 
>Gothic "hlaifs" as [hleb] indicating 
>replacement "ai">[e]. But I'd like to add 
>the Finnish cognate "läipä" indicating 
>preservation of [aj].

Again, this is generally thought to be a loan, not a cognate. And 
the /aj/ from Gothic would end up as jat', which is exactly what it 
did, with all the usual reflexes in Slavic: Russian /xleb/, 
Ukrainian /xlib/ and so on. (Just to keep up, the nom.-acc. 
form /xl#b/ used to end with a short vowel, again in keeping with the 
law of rising sonority.) The change of diphthong /aj/ to jat' holds 
for all of Slavic and can be seen as part of the law of rising 
sonority. See for example Slavic /c#na/ Russian /cena/ 'price' 
cognate (no borrowing) with Lithuanian /kaina/.

So I don't see how either of these Russian words can help to support 
or refute any claim about "umlaut" in Gothic.

I know I've written a lot of things you know here, Vladimir. I'm just 
trying to make it possible for others to see the point.

Best regards,
Gazariah 





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