History of the Gothic Language

[Tim Caldwell]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <600cell at ...> wrote:



Hi Ingemar, Llama Nom,

Thanks for your answers to my questions. Llama Nom, most of your 
answer is completely over my head (just as Ingemar suggested any 
answer I got would be), but I think I get the general picture!

Do the specific similarities with Old Gutnish suggest that Gothic 
shared a closer connection with Old Gutnish than with other early 
germanic dialects/languages? And if so, how conclusive should I (a 
linguistic ignoramus) consider the philological evidence for this to 
be?

Cheers,
Tim




> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "Tim Caldwell" <vikingtimbo650@>
> wrote:
> >
> 
> > Is the gothic language archaic only because it's attested earlier 
> > than other germanic languages, or could there be other reasons as 
> > well? If texts written in other contemporary germanic languages 
from 
> > western Germany and Scandinavia were to be discovered, would we 
> > expect the languages they were written in to be just as archaic?
> 
> Hi Tim,
> 
> In some ways, the precursors of the attested North and West Germanic
> languages would actually have been more archaic than Gothic was in 
the
> 4th and 5th centuries! A nice illustration of this is the Gallehus
> Horn inscription: ek Hlewagastiz holtijaz horna tawidô, which 
Nielsen
> reconstructed in Gothic as: ik Hliugasts hulteis haurn tawida.
> 
> (In the following, AN = Ancient Nordic, the language of the earliest
> Scandinavian inscriptions, called by some Proto-Norse, Proto-Nordic 
or
> Old Runic, etc.; NWG = Northwest Germanic, NG = North Germanic; WG =
> West Germanic; Go. = Gothic; ON = Old Norse; OE = Old English; OS =
> Old Saxon; OHG = Old High German.)
> 
> 1. Words in Proto-Germanic consisted of a root, so for example 
*stadiz
> "place" can be analysed as stad- + a stem vowel -i- + a grammatical
> ending -z.  Gothic had already lost the stem vowels in certain 
endings
> which are preserved in some later WG languages, and would have still
> existed in NG at the time of the Gothic Bible, for example in the
> nominative singular of masculine i-stems with a short root: Go. 
staþs,
> OE stede, OS stedi, OHG stat, ON staðr, AN *stadiz.  Runic
> inscriptions of the 4th and 5th centuries from NWG areas show stem
> vowels also in types of word from which they had dissappeared by the
> time that the descendant dialects were attested in manuscripts: AN
> gastiz : Go. gasts; AN stainaz : Go. stains; AN hlaiwa : Go. hlaiw; 
AN
> horna : Go. haurn.
> 
> 2. Biblical Gothic had lost the distinction between Germanic *i and 
*e
> which is preserved in later NWG languages.  Also the distinction
> between Germanic *u and *o, if the Proto-Germanic dialect from which
> Gothic descended ever made this distinction.  I don't know if it 
did.
>  Old Gutnish, the variety of Old Norse spoken on Gotland, also 
doesn't
> make this distinction, and like Gothic regularly has `o' before `r',
> but `u' in other positions.  On the other hand, there is some (very
> tenuous!) evidence of the distinction being preserved in Crimean
> Gothic, especially in the word `schuos', a misprint for *schnos?  
`o'
> appears in some other Crimean Gothic words where it does in NWG, but
> this one could be significant because it wasn't among those 
recognised
> as Germanic by Busbeque.
> 
> 3. Gothic lost the distinction between Proto-Germanic final 
unstressed
> *ô and *ôn, which both became `a'.  In North Germanic final 
unstressed
> *ô became `u' and final unstressed *ôn became `ô'.  Thus in the
> nominative singular: Go. rûna : AN *rûnu (cf. `liubu' on the Opedal
> stone) : OE rûn; versus the accusative singular: Go. rûna : AN 
rûnô :
> OE rûne.
> 
> 4. In Gothic, Proto-Germanic unstressed final *ê2 fell together with
> *ôn as Go. `a'.  Because of this, Gothic lost the distinction 
between
> the 1st and 2nd person singular past indicative endings of weak 
verbs
> (the kind that form their past tense by adding a dental ending).  
Thus
> we find forms like AN `fa(i)hidô' "I painted" (ON fáða) and AN
> `fa(i)hidê' "he or she painted" (ON fáði), but Go. `melida' "I 
wrote"
> = Go. `melida' "he/she wrote".
> 
> 5. Gothic had lost the final *z in the dative plural.  This is
> preserved in the 7th c. Stentoften stone runic inscription, which 
has
> the dative plural ending -umz, and even survives in a limited way in
> Modern Icelandic in variants of the dative of the numerals 2 
(tveimur)
> and 3 (þremur). In the WG area, the dative plural is attested in 
some
> Latin inscriptions dedicated to goddesses: Aflims (besides the Latin
> dative Afliabus), Vatvims (besides Latin Vatviabus), but had may 
have
> disappeared in WG by the time that Gothic is attested. The exact 
date
> of the loss of final -z in WG is uncertain, as far as I know.
> 
> 6. Gothic devoiced final fricatives in a way that hadn't happened 
in NWG.
> 
> 7. Gothic removed many traces of the operation of Verner's Law by
> paradigmatic analogy, especially in the past tense strong verbs and
> causative verbs of the 1st weak conjugation.
> 
> 8. Later attested WG dialects preserve the instrumental case much 
more
> extensively than Gothic does.  In Gothic, only a couple of pronouns
> survive of the old instrumental.  Like Old Norse, Gothic used the
> dative in place of the instrumental.
> 
> 9. On the other hand, WG had some early innovations such as 
gemination
> (doubling) of consonants before [j], attested in the Weser runes, c.
> 400 (kunni), and the precise dating of other innovations in NG is
> unclear...
> 
> 10. SHARED ARCHAISMS. The NWG dialects of Wulfila's time were either
> yet to experience the various changes known as i-mutation or i-
umlaut,
> or at least the results had yet to show up in inscriptions and
> certainly wouldn't have been phonemically distinct (i.e. 
unpredicable
> from neighbouring sounds). NWG dialects of Wulfila's time, like
> Gothic, would still make a phonemic distinction between the reflexes
> of Proto-Germanic *z and *r. No doubt there were lots of other 
shared
> archaisms for which the evidence is lacking.
> 
> Llama Nom
>


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