Feminine equivalent of masculine -areis?

[llama_nom]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, Michael Erwin <merwin at ...> wrote:
>
> Does Gothic include a feminine noun-ending equivalent to the  
> masculine -areis?
> 
> I know that English -ess (often alternates with masc. -er) and -rix  
> (*always* alternates with masc. -or, e.g. aviatrix, unless people are  
> really sloppy) both come from Latin. But have they replaced Germanic  
> feminine noun-endings?

Corresponding to the masculine -a, -ja (þarba, kasja), there's
feminine -o, -jo (haiþno, kalkjo).  A feminine o-stem can correspond
to a masculine a-stem (daurawarda : daurawards); there's one instance
of 'so daurawardo' too, but that might be a scribal error (Braune/Helm
 1965, § 112 a.3).  The masculine nd-stem 'frijonds' has the feminine
equivalent 'frijondi' (jo-stem).  Another feminine suffix is -ini
(jo-stem) -- cognate with Old English -en, Modern German -in --
attested in Gothic 'Saurini' "Syrian woman".  There isn't any feminine
adaptation of the Latin-derived suffix -areis in Gothic, but, by
analogy with Old High German (cf. OHG lâhinârra), you could maybe
reconstruct/invent *-arjo (jon-stem).  On the other hand, in
Icelandic, the language which best preserves old Germanic grammar
nowadays, names of professions etc. can be used for people of either
sex, regardless of the noun's grammatical gender; adjectives agree
with the grammatical gender, e.g. Modern Icelandic 'hún er góður
kennari/læknir/blaðamaður' "she is a good teacher/doctor/journalist"
('góður' is inflected as masculine to agree with 'kennari', etc.);
likewise in Old Icelandic, a woman can be described as 'góður drengur'
"a fine fellow", again with grammatical gender winning out over
natural gender.  That said, I can't think of any examples of this in
the Gothic corpus, and there are a few examples there of natural
gender taking precedence over grammatical gender (Wright § 429.1-2,
Streitberg § 236.1-5).

Llama Nom

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