is, ist

[llama_nom]

Hi Fredrik,

Actually it's the other way round; Gothic has the more old-fashioned 
system, inherited from Indo-European, compare Latin.

2nd. pers.    es
3rd pers.     est

I suppose the loss of the /t/ in the 3rd pers. sg. in ON might be to 
do with the fact that in Old Norse verbs generally, the 2nd pers. 
sg. ending was extended to the 3rd.  Proto Norse, though, still had 
the old 3rd pers. sg. -iþ [ 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stentoften_Runestone ].  So maybe the 
old 2nd pers. ending (without the /t/) survives in the 3rd pers. 
sg., es, later 'er'?  Or maybe it was an earlier innovation shared 
by OE.  The Oxford English dictionary just says, "in Eng. as in ON. 
and Du. the personal suffix -t is lost," without suggesting any 
reason why.

Less mysteriously, the final -t that appears, in Germanic languages 
apart from Gothic, in the 2nd pers. sg. is from the pronoun 'þu'.  
The 2nd pers. sg. of the verb "to be" in OHG is 'du bis' or 'du 
bist'.

bis þu > bistu > bist þu/du, du bist.

Some dialects of Old English have 'earð' and 'earðu' or 'arðu' as an 
alternative to 'eart'.  In ON, the 2nd pers. sg. gets a final /t/ in 
the same way: es + þú > estu > est, later 'ert'.  Other OHG verbs 
also have 2nd pers. -is (as in Gothic), besides -ist.  The 2nd pers. 
sg. ending -es is found in some dialects of OE too.

So it's a bit odd to read in Gothic Online that

"Such features [as OHG ist, Gothic ist, but ON er] suggest the 
possibility of close interaction between Goths and Germans of the 
southeastern regions. If these features can be dated to an early 
period, as some scholars argue, then this casts some doubts on a 
protracted period of common development between Gothic and Old 
Norse, and even on the grouping of the West Germanic dialects 
itself."

because here Gothic and OHG preserve the inherited form, and it is 
ON and OE that have innovated!

Llama Nom








--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "Fredrik" <gadrauhts at h...> wrote:
>
> Great site you found...kinda usefull.
> 
> I was reading and came to the part about differences and 
similarities 
> between gothic and other germanic languages.
> Where it said that the third person singular present indicative 
form 
> of 'to be' has an edning with -t, like german but unlike old 
english 
> and nordic. "Gothic ist and Old High German ist as against Old 
Norse 
> er, Old English is, Old Saxon is, ist."
> But when it comes to the 2nd person of the same verb gothic differ 
> from them all (I guess). Gothic has just is but OE has eart and ON 
> has ert and german bist.
> Is there any reason that gothic has no t there?
> Or could it be like this. Gothic has just switched the two forms 
of 
> 2nd and 3rd person. If it would have remained 'he is' would be 'is 
> is' and thou art 'þu ist'. Every one could agree that 'is is' 
doesn't 
> sounds very good, right?
> 
> /Fredrik
> 
> 
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <600cell at o...> wrote:
> >
> > 
> > http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/lrc/eieol/gotol-TC.html
> >
>






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