Principles of reconstruction.

[llama_nom]

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

> 5. elbow < PG *alinô + PG *bugan- > Go. aleina "elbow" (attested, 
> note the irregular –ei-, that is the long [i:] where other languages 
> have a short one) + Go. *buga "bow".

It's been suggested by some scholars that the apparently long vowel
'ei' in Gothic 'aleina' is just a spelling mistake or variant spelling
for 'i'. It's only attested once.

> 1. Early morning I take a bath 2. After that I put my clothes on, 
> take my staff and go to the wood 3. There I see a dwarf sitting 
> under a tree, on the very edge of the wood 4. He's sleeping 5. I 
> push him with my elbow 6. The dwarf gets awake, sees me and climbs 
> up the tree very quickly 7. Now he's looking pretty like an owl 
> sitting on a twig 8. He wishes he would fly away.

Excellent!

> to look like – wisan galeiks (lit. "to be like") + noun in dative 
> ("he's looking like A." is 'ist galeiks A.'). Don't forget to put 
> the A. ("owl" in our case) in dative. Consult your textbook on 
> dative singular of feminine n-stems.

Alternatively you could do something with the verb 'galeikon'
(skaunjana nu ina gasaihva galeikondan uggwilon "I see him now pretty,
resembling an owl"), or maybe simpler to use the conjunction 'swe':
ina skaunjana swe uggwilon gasaihva "I see him pretty as an
owl"--compare Mark 8:24 [
http://www.wulfila.be/gothic/browse/text/?book=4&chapter=8 ].

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