medial b

[llama_nom]

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

> Now when talking bout pronunciation I must ask about something I
> really dont know anything about, and therefor not any terminology.
> It is about tones.
>
> Coz I dont know any names for tones I try to describe it and hope
you
> know enough swedish to understand me :)
>
> In swedish there are these two word "stället" and "stället" which
are
> pronounced almost the same. The only difference is the tones.
> Both words are singular definite forms and the first is definite
form
> of "ställ" ( = rack) and the second of "ställe" ( = place).
>
> If you know the difference of the tones in these definite forms
which
> one is used in gothic.
> I think I pronounce gothic very much as how it would be in swedish,
> with the tones I mean.


Fredrik, I just came across a paper about the origin of the tones used
in modern Scandinavian languages [
http://www.hum.uit.no/a/bye/Papers/pitch-accent-kluw.pdf ].  I haven't
read it all yet, but it discusses two theories.  In one the two
lexical tone patterns could go back to c. 800, in the other theory to
c. 1000 or soon after.  The paper argues in favour of the later date.
 The reason that the system isn't thought to be earlier than this is
that the distinction in the modern Scandinavian languages corresponds
to the syllabic pattern of the word in Old Norse: words with one
syllable in Old Norse gave rise to one tone pattern, words with more
syllables to the other (the suffixed definite article isn't counted,
so words that had one syllable in Old Norse + the definite article
still have the tone of one syllable words).  But in the 4th c. North
Germanic still had many unstressed syllables that had been lost by
800-1000, so the different syllabic structures which correspond to the
different tones had yet to emerge at the time when the Gothic bible
was translated.  Although Gothic had lost a few more of these
unstressed syllables than North Germanic at this time (Go. hunds : NG
hundaz), it still didn't have exactly the same syllabic patterns as
Old Norse (Go. sunus : ON sonr/sunr), so presumably it didn't have
exactly the same tone distinction found nowadays in Norway and Sweden.
 Of course Gothic might have distinguished words by tone using a
system of its own similar to the one that appeared later in
Scandinavia, or maybe it didn't.  We'll probably never know.

Llama Nom





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