'Artificial Language'

[llama_nom]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, Michael Erwin <merwin at ...> wrote:
>
> Hails,
> 
> Ik im ussiggwands Patrick Amory, "People and Identity in Ostrogothic  
> Italy, 489-554." Jah meljandaries qitham ei Wulfila skapjau ain razda  
> "far removed from any common parlance when it was written" (p. 239).  
> Nu anthar meljandarjos qithand samaleiko. Ak ni frathja hwaiwa wisai.  
> Jabai Wulfila sokidedi ain ainbruka aiklessiatuggo, habidedi  
> Graikarazda jah Latina(razda).

Hails Michael!

Here's my guess at one way to express this in Gothic (no doubt there
are other possibilities, equally convincing if not more so): Ik
(us)siggwa / Ik anakunna ...  Jah meljands qaþ/qiþiþ/melida þatei
Wulfila gaskapida razda ((þo) sei razdai gamainjai fairra afhabaiþ
sik).  Anþarai meljands nu samaleiko qiþand.  Akei ni fraþja hvaiwa
magi swa wisan.  Jabai Wulfila tuggon sokidedi inniujida ei fram
aikkljesjon ainai brukidedi, duhve nih Kreke razda nih Rumone ni
gawalidedi?


> The word order usually follows the Greek. The vocabulary is of course  
> very Gothic. The dative absolute has Greek and Latin parallels, not  
> Germanic ones. The remnant dual doesn't fit the 'artificial language'  
> hypothesis. It could fit the 'specialized language' hypothesis.
> 
> The order of books (in Argenteus) is western; many readings are  
> western; some readings are unique. (I have no Vetus Latina text but  
> 1st Timothy 1:10 matches Vulgate structure while contradicting  
> Vulgate meaning; I understand it doesn't match any known Greek text).


I don't know how these terms 'specialized language' and 'artificial
language' are defined by Patrick Amory, nor exactly how far removed he
intended "far removed" to mean.  I suppose it's all a matter of
emphasis.  But taken literally or to an extreme the idea of Gothic
being 'artifical' can become ridiculous; it would make no sense for
someone trying to promote Christianity among the Goths to begin by
translating the Bible into a language that diliberately avoided what
what natural Gothic, and this wouldn't explain the many small but
regular divergeances from the syntax of the original.  Could you
elabourate on the similarity / differenece between 1Tim 1:10 in Gothic
and the Vulgate?

As you say, the Gothic translation seems to follow the Greek word
order wherever possible.  The deviations that do exist offer an
interesting clue to the limits of flexibility in Gothic word order. 
Another sort of clue to Gothic word order comes from instances like
1Tim 1:10 where Gothic turns a Greek compound into a phrase --
although even here we have to be careful, as in certain types of
construction Gothic tends to replicate the order of elements in the
Greek compound.  Yes, the vocabulary is mostly Germanic.  Apart from a
few naturalised loans, most of the borrowing in the Bible consists of
proper names and a handful of technical terms relating to the
Christian or Jewish religions.  It seems likely that the syntax has
been influenced at many points  (in other ways besides word order) by
Greek, e.g. the heavy use of present participles, in contrast to the
other old Germanic languages, although of course present participles
exist in these languages and were used in a more limited way. 
Likewise the dative absolute: this is also known in Old Norse, and
there is no reason to think that it was invented by Wulfila (and if it
had been, wouldn't it be genitive like Greek?), but it may well have
been used more heavily that it would normally due to the desire to
make as literal a translation as could be.

Go. at sunnin þan urrinnandin, at urrinnandin sunnin
"when the sun rose, at sunrise"
Go. at Iesu ufdaupidamma "when Jesus had been baptised"

ON at upprennandi sólu "when the sun came up, at sunrise"
ON at liðnum vetri "when the winter had passed"
ON at Gamla fallinn "after the fall of Gamli"
ON at honum önduðum "after his death"
ON at sér lifanda "during his lifetime"
ON at öllum ásjándum "in the sight of all"

The difference being that the ON examples are more strict about the
tense of the verb, and as far as I know don't omit the 'at'.

Anyway, the choice of vocabulary in the Gothic, use of verbal
prefixes, use of cases, show a great deal of independence from the
Greek.  I'm not aware of any influence on morphology from the source
text, as far as native words go, and can't see why there would be --
or how there could be without needlessly risking incomprehensibility.
 But the Greek influence is very prevelant in word order, up to a
point, and there are many idiomatic expressions which seem to have
been translated word for word, as far as the language allowed.  We
don't know how much technical vocabulary was coined for the
translation in the form of calques: this is another potential source
of artificiality.

Llama Nom

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