Principles of reconstruction.

[llama_nom]

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

> > > 1. skjöld "shield" (the Gothic cogante is recorded in Eph 6:16)
> 
> I actually wrote this wrong. it should be 'sköld'. Why? I don't know,
> coz the more correct form should be skjöld I think, since old swedish
> has skiolder

= Old Icelandic 'skjöldr' < PG *'skelduz' > Go. 'skildus'.

> > > 2. örn "eagle"
> 
> isn't this form (beside icel. ari) just a "wrong" form just as björn
> with the n added to the stem and made a u-stem with u-umlaut?
> (maybe arnuR)

...which would give us Gothic *'arnus' < PG *'arnuz'.  There's an Old
English cognate too: 'earn'.  For the attested Gothic word, 'ara', see
Luke 17:37 'qeþun du imma: hvar, frauja? iþ is qaþ im: þarei leik,
jaindre galisand sik arans' "they said to him: where lord? and he said
to them: wherever there is a body, there eagles will gather".

> > > 3. flyga "to fly"
> 
> how is it about initial f infront of l,does it become th in gothic?
> i think i've seen forms such as thliuhan for flee/escape

Yes, 'þliuhan' is right. JRR Tolkien reconstructed the verb for "to
fly" as *fliugan in his poem Bagme Bloma. But in all but one of the
recorded examples, initial 'fl' is followed by a vowel + a consonant
cluster containing a dental. If that's significant, the change 'fl' >
'þl' could be explained as a dissimilative blocking of the otherwise
general assimilation of 'f' to dental 'l'. On the other hand, initial
'þl' is always followed by a vowel + what was--in Proto-Germanic, at
least--a velar consonant. Or maybe one or both of those facts is a
coincidence. Some scholars have suggested that the 'fl' and 'þl' forms
were borrowings from different dialects of Gothic, others have
explained it in terms of "lexical diffusion" (a sound change in
progress, or which affected some more common words, but didn't get as
far as influencing other rarer words). For the reasons above, if I had
to guess, I'd go with *'þliugan' "to fly".

> > > 4. tugga "to chew"

*'tuggwon'.

> > > 5. sätta "set, put" (the Gothic cognate of this is recorded)

Very common verb this: 'satjan'.

> > > 6. däggdjur "mammal"
> 
> i've (ofcoz) tried to make such a word in gothic based on this swedish
> word. djur (animal) is ofcoz dius and the word (verb) dägga which
> isn't as common as dia ar cognate with pgmc dajjan isn't it?

The complication here is knowing how to make the compound.  The Gothic
verb is 'daddjan' "to suckle", so maybe *'daddi-dius'? That's
supposing we can treat the verb as ja- and jo-stem nouns are treated
when they form the first element of compounds. I'm not sure if there
are any examples of this with a Weak Class 1 verb though.

> > > 7. ost "cheese"
> 
> we have discussed this earlier so the answer can be found somewhere
> around here

PG *'justaz' > Go. *'justs.

> > > 8. hänga "to hang" (the Gothic cognate for the strong verb is
> > recorded with both transitive and intransitive senses)
> 
> since hänga can have two meanings i guess it would be translated in
> gothic to hahan and hahjan (is these correct)
> 
> 
> is this a special gothic thing to have h for ng in words such as hahan
> for expected hangan and huhrus for hungrus?

According to Verner's Law, Weak Class 1 verbs ought to have the voiced
form of the medial consonant(s), so the etymologically "correct" form
would be *'hangjan', but Gothic tends to replace forms like this with
forms that have the voiceless consonant by analogy with the related
strong verbs: 'ur-raisjan' : 'ur-reisan', etc.  So, on that basis, we
ought to have *'hahjan'--except that the strong (reduplicative) verb
'hahan' is used both transitively (J 10:24) and intransitively (L
19:48), which makes me think that maybe the weak verb isn't recorded
because Goths didn't use it.  In other words, they seem to have used
the same form for both transitive and intransitive meanings, just like
Modern Swedish, except that the Goths they used their version of the
old strong verb.

Congratulations on Message 10 000!

LN

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