More about numbers

[Fredrik]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <600cell at ...> wrote:
>
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "Fredrik" <gadrauhts@> wrote:
> >
> > In crimean they count with ite as one.
> > What is that? Is it from ita = it?
> 
> Busbecq actually cites it as 'ita'. Yes, I think probably is from 
the
> personal pronoun spelt the same in Biblical Gothic, unless perhaps
> it's a contraction from the numeral 'ainata'.  This could well have
> happened if it was used in unstressed positions, e.g. if it came to 
be
> used as an indefinite article as in many other Germanic languages.
> 
Yes that seems to a reasonable explanation. When unstressed would it 
be enata then?

> > 
> > According to zompist the word for one is ene, what's the evidence 
of 
> > that? http://zompist.com/euro.htm#ie
> 
> Must be a mistake, or somebody tried to reconstruct the masculine 
form
> of 1 without realising that 2 and 3 are also neuter.
>
OK, but when used with masculine nouns it should be used. Shouldn't a 
masculine be just en or ens if -s suffix is kept?

> > 
> > Why do the numbers in crimean gothic end with -e?
> > e.g. sevene, nyne and thiine?
> 
> I don't know. Maybe the final -e in these numbers arose by analogy
> with athe.
> 
> > 
> > The e in athe is obvious coz it's a weakened 'au' I presume.
> 
> 
> I think so. Compare sune (BG sunno), mine (BG mena), etc.
> 
> > 
> > Should th in crimean be read as t?
> > 
> > And what about ii in thiine. Is that a long i or two syllables?
> > if so I guess it should have been a short e in the first syllable 
and
> > a schwa in the second.
> >
> 
> I don't know about the 'ii'.  Maybe [i:]?  Grønvik thought that

It was a greek guy who told Busbecq all these words and he could have 
some greek influence on pronunciation (as one website suggests), for 
instance hails should have been hel (or el) [(h)e:l] but he said it 
as iel coz he didn't use long vowels in his greek dialect. And his 
short e was broken into ie. If that's correct words such as thiine, 
breen etc. shouldn't have any long vowel.

> initial /t/ and /d/ of Germanic had fallen together in Crimean 
Gothic
> as a voiceless stop [t], which Busbeque spells variously 't' 
and 'th'
> (similarly /b/ and /p/ > [p], as in 'plut').  But the forms 'goltz'
> and 'statz' made him think that [þ] probably did still exist in
> Crimean Gothic. Busbecq may not have represented it very accurately
> because there was no such sound in his own language.
>
B seems to become voiceless before l (plut) but kept before some 
other (bruder, bars etc.) Is it the same with g (e.g. goltz), the 
word for cry was written as eriten but shouldn't this be griten, with 
g remaining?

I think it's confusing how Busbecq uses the spelling th and tz. If th 
is [t] and tz [T] then I wonder why the definite article the and tho 
as initla [t] and the pronoun [T]. Further could it be presumed that 
[T] was kept initlally before vowel and final (e.g. goltz, statz).

I realize that this is now off topic and should probably be discussed 
under crimean gothic instead, sorry for that ;)



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/gothic-l/attachments/20080609/31946e24/attachment.htm>