About Villemann og Magnhild

[llama_nom]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "ualarauans" <ualarauans at ...> wrote:
>


Hails, Walhahrabn!


> >    3. There he wanted to play the gold harp - thar wilda ei 
> gulthaharpon slahan -
> >    I have used the construction "wiljan ei" as it appears in some 
> places of > the
> > corpus, meaning "want to".
> 
> There's a subordinate clause after ei in such cases, not a mere 
> infinitive: *wilda ei slahai... (subjunctive), lit. "he wished that he 
> would slay..." (rather than "play":). It's a construction most usual 
> with languages which have no morphological infinitive, like some of 
> the Balkan language alliance. A Goth would simply say: *wilda 
> slahan..., I think.


The two possibilities are: 'wiljan' (or some other verb of
wishing/commanding/needing, etc.) + 'ei' + subjunctive, or 'wiljan' +
infinitive.

(1) wiljau ei mis gibais ana mesa haubiþ Iohannis þis daupjandins.
(2) wileis ei ni ogeis waldufni = QELEIS DE MH FOBEISQAI
(3) ni þaurbum ei iswis meljaima = OU CREIAN ECETE hUMUN GRAFESQAI

(4) jabai hvas wili afar mis gaggan

Note especially (2) and (3) where the 'ei' + subjunctive clause in
Gothic translates a Greek infinitive (see Streitber /Stopp 353.2; 312,
Note 2).  In (3), an 'ei' clause is used even though the subject is
the same as in the main clause; but I wonder if there are any examples
of this with 'wiljan' specifically, or if an infinitive was prefered
in such circumstances with this particular verb?  If we can't find any
examples, the safest option would be to do as you say and use the
infinitive here: 'wilda gulþaharpon slahan', rather than 'wilda ei
gulþaharpon slohi' (preterite subjunctive to match the tense of 'wilda').

LN

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