[gothic-l] Verbal Particles

Thu Oct 7 11:42:45 UTC 2004

>
> > About verbs with a preposition in beginning, such as at-augjan.
> > Are they always in this way or are they breakable?
> > Ex. ik at-augja thuk or ik augja at thuk.

Sijais Fredrik hails!

Faur leitil waurdis mik fraht bi skaidandona 'wairba' in Gutrazdai.  
Wasuth-than thatuh framis leitil ussokjandans, jah manag gaïst 
thammei ni frathja, ak her swethauh waiht atsatja jah twos thoei 
bigat.

A little while ago, you asked about splitting verbs in Gothic.  Well, 
I've been looking at this a bit more, and there's still lots I don't 
understand, but here are one or two things I've found.

There seem to be two classes of verbal attachments: separable 
particles (=adverbs) and semi-seperable (=prefixes).  Many of both 
types have the same form as prepositions.  Some particles can be 
separable with one verb, but semi-separable with another.

Semi-seperable verbal particles (ana, at, bi, dis, du, ga, hindar, 
in, thairh, uf, us/ur, etc.) always precede the verb.  The idea 
expressed by the prefix sometimes needs reiterating with a 
prepositions: thairh thairko nethlos thairh-leithan 'to pass through 
the eye of the needle'.  Sometimes the idea is repeated three times, 
in prefix, adverb and preposition: us-gagg ut us thamma! 'Get out of 
that man!'

These semi-separable particles can be split from the verb root by 
enclitics and by certain 'Wackernagel' particles - short unstressed 
words which usually occupy the second position in a clause (e.g. 
nu 'so', 'consequently'; thau 'then', 'in that case'; -uh (various 
uses, e.g. 'and'); -uh than / uth-than (various uses, e.g. signalling 
a new topic); and the question particle -u):

us-nu-gibith tho kaisaris kaisara
'so give what is Caesar's to Caeser'

atuh-than-gaf sa lewjands im bandwon
'now, the traitor had given them a sign'

hindarleith anuhkumbei (=ana-kumbjan + -uh)
'go and eat'

gath-than-mith-sandidedum imma
'now, we sent along with him'

frah ina, ga-u-hwa-swehi
'he asked him if he saw anything?'

This is definitely a feature of Gothic, and not an imitation of New 
Testament Greek, which postpones any such particles till after the 
first entire word.  It is apparently an ancient inherited feature 
with parallels in Hittite and other IE languages (Ivanov; 
Eythorsson).  So where Gothic postpones a Wackernagel particle, this 
might be due to the Greek word order (ufkunthedi thau = eginoosken 
an), or it could be due to other rules that aren't clear to us, or it 
might even be optional - or sometimes, it might be due to a regular 
reversal in word order identified by Eric Fuss (2003).  According to 
Fuss, the normal natural word order of Gothic would have been OV, but 
this is reversed for finite verbs in specific limited circumstances 
in main clauses, namely: imperatives, negation & wh-questions.  
Sometimes, this bringing forward of the verb may affect the placement 
of some Gothic particles, cf. Mt 6,8:

ni galeikoth nu thaim
mee oun homoiootheete autois
'so do not be like them'

Go. nu = Gk. oun.  (Go. ni = Gk. mee.)  Fuss suggests that this was 
the rule, and that exceptions are due to the influence of Greek word 
order.  But not all particles can be delayed in this way:

nith-than mag augo qithan
ou dunatai de ho ophthamos eipein
'now, the eye cannot say'
(1Cor 12,21)

Here -th-than (= -uh than) = Gk. de.  (Go. ni = Gk. ou; mag = 
dunatai.)  And perhaps not all of Fuss's three contexts placed the 
same constrains on all Wackernagel particles, cf. the imperative us-
nu-gibith (L 20,25) in my first example.  Examples with wh-questions 
do match the Greek, so we can't say one way of the other whether this 
was the natural order in Gothic.  It's hard to come to any definite 
conclusions, with so few examples, given the normal usual rigid 
adherence to the order of the Greek.  I'm also not so sure about 
Fuss's claim that fronting of the verb is limited to these 
circumstances, cf.

hailidediu sabbato daga
ei tois sabbaton therapeusei
'whether he would heal on the Sabbath'
(Mk 3,2)

Anyway, the second class of adverbs are looser and can also appear 
after a finite verb, or in some circumstances a present participle.  
Typical examples are: inn & ut:

usgagg ut us thamma!
exelthe ex outou
'get out of that man!'
(Mk 1,25)

Inn galeithan & inn/ut atgaggan, etc. often follow the Greek practise 
of placing the inn/ut immediately before the verb (in Greek these are 
represented by prefixes), e.g. inn gaggandin imma (Mt 8,23).  I think 
this always applied to infinities of these verbs.  But the finite 
forms of the Gothic verbs sometimes differ from the Greek by placing 
inn/ut directly after the verb - as do present participles on 
occasion: galaith inn (Mt 5,40, etc.), atgaggandein inn (Mk 6,22), 
atgaggands inn (Mt 9,25), at iddja ut (J 18,29), attauh inn (J 
18,16), atuth-than-gaggand inn unweisai = eiselthoosin de 
idiootai 'now, ignorant people come in' (1Cor 14,23).  In all these 
examples, the Greek has a verb + prefix.  Gothic normally imitates 
this exactly, so these are probably significant deviations.  I don't 
know of any independent examples of such adverbs being moved a long 
way ahead of the verb - that is, with an intervening object - as in 
modern German.  All the examples I remember seeing so far match the 
Greek.  But it could be that the constrains of the translation are 
obscuring the full picture - bearing in mind the sometimes subtle 
differences that exist in the Germanic modern languages around this 
issue.  There is at least one reliable instance where an object 
intervenes between verb and separable preverb: dalath und halja 
atsteigis = heoos haidou katabeesee 'you will go down to hell' (Mt 
11,23).

One verb that consistently differs from the Greek is laistjan.  Here, 
finite forms regularly appear as, e.g. laistidedun afar imma, 
while "those following" = thai afarlaistjandans.  There is also the 
simple laistei mik 'follow me', but the meaning here often seems to 
be a little more abstract: "be my follower", while laistidedun afar 
indicates the physical act of following some person somewhere on a 
particular occasion.  It is not immediately obvious whether AFAR is a 
preposition or an adverb here.  On the face of it, it seems like a 
preposition, and there are certainly no examples of say: * 
laistidedun afar 'they followed [after]', with no explicit object.  
But given the smallness of the corpus, this could just be chance.  
Maybe AFAR was a preverb on its way to being interpreted as a 
preposition when shifted and used before the object?  However the one 
example of a finite form following its object suggests that we could 
see it as still essentially a preverb: jah allamma waurstwe godaize 
afarlaistidedi = ei panti ergoo agathoo epeekoloutheesen 'and she 
pursued every good work' (2Tim 5,10).  Though the order here is 
exactly that of the Greek, it contrasts with the non-Greek order 
found in VO clauses.  I wonder if Mt 11,23 represents a more natural 
Gothic word order, as this does diverge from the Greek, or whether 
the options represented by Mt 11,23 and 2Tim 5,10 were both possible -
 perhaps depending on stylistic considerations, such the length of 
the object phrase - or maybe there were different conventions for 
particular verbs / adverbs.  Note that where AFAR follows some finite 
form of laistjan, it has no equivalent preposition/adverb in the 
Greek.

Laistjan / afarlaistjan makes an interesting contrast with 
afargaggan.  The latter never loses its prefix.  It can translate a 
simple verb in Greek.  And it can even appear followed by the 
identical preposition: afargagga afar sigislauna = diookoo eis to 
brabeion (Php 3,14).  From this, it would seem that the same word, 
afar, can (in the case of different verbs) be either a semi-separable 
prefix, or a more or less fully separable adverb, or a preposition - 
cf. modern German particles like über.

In some cases, it's hard to be sure which category a prefix fits 
into, e.g. if there aren't many examples, and they all follow the 
Greek order exactly.  Mith is a tricky one.  It often appears as a 
prefix matching Gk. sun-, and sometimes the verb is followed by a 
second mith not in the Greek, serving as a preposition; sometimes 
not.  But at 2Cor 8,18 there is no preposition in Gothic although 
there is in Greek: gath-than-mith-sandidedum imma = sunepempsamen de 
met auton.  Otherwise the order is always: ga-mith- (mithgaswiltan, 
mithgaqiwidai, etc.).  Could this mean that the order of preverbs is 
variable, with ga- coming forward to hang the Wackernagel particles 
on?  Where would the root be if this was a natural Gothic sentence?  
After the object?  Or as it appears here?  (And is it significant 
that one of the scribes actually wrote: ga-than-mith-ga-sandidedum - 
considered a mistake by Streitberg, but can we be so sure?  Confusion 
cases by an old fashioned usage?  Or a natural tendency to repeat the 
perfective particle if it gets separated by too far.)  Then there is 
a single occurrence of mith being separated from the verb root by a 
negative: mith ni qam, suggesting a looser relationship with the 
verb.  Confusing, huh?  And I wonder how the phrase in 2Cor 8,18 
would be negated?!  (*?nith-than ga-mith-sandededum imma / *?nith-
than mith gasandidedum - I'm just guessing here).

Other adverbial particles which may serve as (a) preposition, (b) 
semi-separable preverb, and (c) separable particle, are faur & faura -
 connected for example to the root swiwan, in various combinations.  
So in summary (as ever): arrrgh!  Unfortunately there is not much 
data to go on within Gothic, and hard to untangle, given the 
predominance of Greek word order - but still, some the answers could 
be buried in there somewhere.  I'd love to hear it anyone out knows 
more about this, or has any other useful links.

Llama Nom

http://www.niwi.knaw.nl/nl/oi/nod/onderzoek/OND1291287/

Eythorsson, Th (?) 'Particle, prefix, zero: unidirectionality in the 
development of Indo-European preverbs'
Fuss, E (2003) 'On the historical core of V2 in English' Journal of 
Nordic Linguistics 26(2), 195-231
Ivanov, VV (?) 'Indo-European syntactic rules & Gothic morphology'
Streitberg, W (1909) 'Die Gotische Bibel' www.wulfila.be

Links to these: http://freespace.virgin.net/o.e/egd/Links%20Page.html

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