Principles of reconstruction.

[llama_nom]

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

> 1. Early morning I take a bath

[...]

> Don't use the 
> pronoun (it's the same as e.g. in Spanish). That is, "I take" 
> is 'nima' (from 'niman' "to take").

Or maybe better to reconstruct a hypothetical cognate of Modern
English 'bathe' and say literally "I bathe myself"? OE. baþian, ON.
baða, OHG. badôn, bathôn, Mod.G. baden, Du. baden would give us in
Gothic a Weak Class 2 verb, *baþon, with which you'd use the reflexive
pronoun for the object (as in Icelandic: ég baða mig), thus Gothic:
air uhtwon baþo mik. The reflexive pronoun is typically placed
directly after the verb in this sort of context. We can tell this
because Gothic often uses a verb + reflexive pronoun to translate
Greek middle voice verbs, so in this instance the Gothic translation
isn't being influenced by the Greek word order.

It's not actually incorrect to use the pronoun 'ik nima', 'ik *baþo
mik', just (as in Spanish) more emphatic probably than it would be in
English. But it's hard to be sure of natural Gothic syntax because the
main surviving text is a vey literal translation from Greek, so it
tends to use pronouns most of the time only where the Greek has a
pronoun. There are a few examples where pronouns are used in the
Gothic where they aren't in the Greek though (and it's much rarer for
pronouns to appear in the closest Greek versions where they're absent
in the Gothic), which all seems to suggest that pronouns where more
likely to be used in Gothic than in New Testament Greek. There's also
a tendency been observed by Gisella Farraresi whereby examples of
Gothic subject pronouns in subordinate clauses that appear where the
Greek has none occur when there is a chance of subject between the
main clause and the subordinate clause. Again this suggests that the
difference between Gothic and Greek texts is due to more than chance
and probably can't be accounted for entirely by accidents in the
transmission of the text. That said, there are great uncertainties
over just how much subject pronouns would have been used in natural
Gothic. Perhaps less than Old English, given the fact that Old English
literal Bible glosses such as the Lindesfarne Gospels do feel the need
to insert pronouns regularly in contrast to their Latin originals.

LN

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