Araaiþei aflaiþ

Thu Jun 15 22:06:14 UTC 2006

Hails Walhahrabn!

'gaskokai fotum' is especially interesting because it differs from the
accusative of the Greek: TOUS PODAS.  Sturtevant (1938) compared this
with other Germanic examples of a "dative of respect", ON blindr augum
"blind in the eyes"; fríðr sýnum "fair to look at"; OE giddum fród
"wise concerning songs".  But he also argued that 'bundans handuns jah
fotuns' was a native Germanic construction and not just an imitation
of Greek; he calls it an "accusative of manner" and cites ON Egill var
bundinn við staf ein, bæði hendr ok foetr (Sturtevant 1948).  This
isn't decisive evidence, as 'hendr' and 'foetr' each have the same
form as the nominative here, and were so regarded by Nygaard (1906
para. 74, fn. 4).

Your suggestion that an unstated verb 'habands' might lie behind such
constructions with the accusative could explain: gawasiþs taglam
ulbandaus jah gairda filleina bi hup seinana (Mk 1:6), also acc. in
Greek ZWNHN.

Your suggestion that an unstated preposition might lie behind them is
interesting in the light of: eisarnam bi fotuns gabuganaim = PEDAIS
"with fetters" (Mk 5:4) = fotubandjom (L 8:29).

Streitberg (para. 244) saw 'wlits is auralja bibundans' as a
nominative absolute.  So did Gering, who pointed out the parallel of
OHG: gibuntan hanton inti fuozin mit strengin inti sin annuzi mit
sweizduohu gibuntan (Tatian 135:26).  According to Lücke there are no
other examples of 'was' missing from the passive like this, and
several scholars have suggested that 'was' was simply left out by
accident by the scribe: Massmann, Schulze, Köhler, H Rückert (and
maybe Grimm, who also considered the nominative absolute possible). 
This would accord with the usual Gothic practice, as well as the Latin
translations of PERIEDEDETO: facies...erat ligatus (Vulgate);
vultus...erat objunctus (Codex Bezae).  Metlen too suggested a scribal
error; he thought that "the Gothic writer, with the appositive
gabundans still in mind, unwittingly construed also 'bibundans' the
same way" (Metlen 1938).

On the other hand, there are examples where Gothic immitates Greek in
elliding the copular, e.g. þata andwairþo hveilahvairb (2Cor 4:17);
witoþ weihata jah anabusns weiha... (Rom 7:12).  Though uncommon in
Germanic, it's not completely unknown, cf. Hymiskviða (Old Norse): ok
sumblsamir "and [they were] desirous of ale" (st. 1); óteir jötunn
"the giant [was] not happy" (st. 25), [
http://www.hi.is/~eybjorn/ugm/hymir/hymis.html ].

Another Old Norse example which might be relevant here: hann átti tvá
sonu...vænir menn "he had two sons [accusative]...fine looking men
[nominative]."  Sturtevant (1948) calls this anacoluthon.

I'm not aware of any cognates to ON 'vængr', but thinking about it
now, it occurs to me that this might actually be a contraction of some
root with the ending -ingr.  Could it be connected with the Gothic
verb 'waian' "to blow"?  Go. *wai(j)iggs, Proto-Norse *wa:ing-?  The
only complication there is that the ON word is an i-stem, but maybe
that was a later development inspired by the mutated vowel.  Regarding
alternative, þlugil- / flugil-, a masculine a-stem would match the
German word, but my speculations about a weak ending were triggered by
personal names in -ila corresponding to *-ilaz in other Germanic
languages, e.g. Agila = ON Egill.

Llama Nom

Sturtevant (1932) 'Gothic notes', The American Journal of Philology
53:1, 53-60.
Sturtevant (1948) 'Old Norse syntactical notes', PMLA 63:2, 712-717.
Metlen (1938) 'Absolute constuctions in the Gothic bible', PMLA 53:3,
631-644.
Nygaard (1906) Norrøn syntax.

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "ualarauans" <ualarauans at ...> wrote:
>
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <600cell@> wrote:
> >
> > 
> > Hails Walhahrabn!
> 
> Hails Llama Nom!
> 
> I'm sorry I haven't read Wright (yet), and my first (probably wrong) 
> impression of the examples you cite is that the accusative here is 
> but a usual rection of the verbs involved, i.e. standaith nu 
> ufgaurdanai hupins izwarans... is literally "stand therefore 
> [having] girt your loins (regular accusative of the direct object of 
> the verb ufgairdan - ?); gabundans handuns jah fotuns – "[having 
> his] hands and feet bound (???). Could it be something like that? 
> This active-passive confusion (ufgaurdanai is literally rather "you 
> who have been girt" and would then demand some prepositional object 
> (?) - *bi hupins izwaros "around your loins") is perhaps to be 
> considered together with the usage of passive in active meaning like 
> those examples cited in Braune/Helm 1952: 90 ufkunnanda (Joh. 
> 13,15), ustiuhada (2 Cor. 7,10), waurkjada (2 Cor. 4,17) (the 
> authors explain them as Wulfila's personal misinterpretation of the 
> Greek text). Maybe it all is rather due to an underdeveloped state 
> of language apparatus to express complex grammatical relations? Or 
> we face a somewhat clumsy attempt to keep as close as possible to 
> the original? It reads perizo:samenoi te:n osphyn hymo:n en 
> ale:theia kai endysamenoi ton tho:raka te:s dykaiosyne:s and perhaps 
> there was no better option than to render the Greek passive forms 
> with Gothic participles inertially preserving the accusative of the 
> object?
> Another thought (to stay within Gothic) is that this accusative 
> might be explainable as a way to somehow discriminate oblique case-
> forms as the direct object in the examples is followed by an 
> indirect: standaith nu, ufgaurdanai hupins izwarans sunjai jag-
> gapaidodai brunjon garaihteins (in the second clause we certainly 
> miss something like *gapaidodai leika izwara (Acc.) brunjon) Eph. 
> 6,14; but Eph. 6,15 jag-gaskohai fotum in manwithai aiwaggeljons 
> gawairthjis – why not *fotuns? Cause gaskohai is not a verbal 
> participle passive? Or because there's no another preposition-less 
> instrumental object that had to be dative? Greek is hypode:samenoi 
> tous podas (Acc.!). Joh. 11,44 is still more interesting: gabundans 
> handuns jah fotuns faskjam, (seemingly fits the above-said) jah 
> wlits is auralja bibundans (it's nominative!). It makes sense in 
> Greek (dedemenos tous podas kai tas cheiras keiriais kai he: ophis 
> autou soudario: periededeto), but the Gothic here suffers from 
> lacking copulas, right? Maybe the mere problem is that Gothic has no 
> synthetic preterite passive?
> 
> > > ni muna taujan – ni man taujan? Or perhaps optative *ni munjau?
> 
> > 'muna' is here 1st pers. sg. indicative of 'munan', of the 3rd weak
> > conjugation, expressing an intention for the future: I will do / I
> > mean to do (rather than the preterite-present 'munan' "to 
> think/believe").
> 
> Shame to confess but I simply didn't know there's a weak verb munan, 
> so my previous remark is of course invalid.
> 
> > What do you think to *weggs, mi, for "wing"?  The Modern English 
> word
> > comes from Scandinavian; earlier, the ancestor of "feather" was 
> used
> > for "wing" too.  As an alternative, I wondered about a cognate of
> > German Flügel, Go. *þlugils, ma?  Or a weak noun perhaps (-ila, -
> ilo)?
> 
> What is the etymology of the ON vaengr I wonder? Maybe the "wing" 
> semantics are not original? *Thlugils seems to be more transparent 
> if we agree about having *thliugan for "to fly" (or *fliugan, but 
> psst! not to provoke thl-/fl- fight again :) But if a -ils formation 
> from a verb stands for "means to do it", what would be "airplane"? 
> Or UFO? Could either of them be smth like *thlaugs M. –a/-i ? 
> And "flight" – is it *thlauhts F. –i ? I was recently thinking of a 
> word for "key", could it be *lukils M. –a (ON lykill)? (maybe I saw 
> it somewhere).

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