History of the Gothic Language

[llama_nom]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "Tim Caldwell" <vikingtimbo650 at ...>
wrote:
>
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <600cell@> 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!

Sorry! Just ask if you want definitions of any of the jargon or more
background that might help to unravel the baffling bits.

> 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?

I don't know, in answer to the first question. And not extremely
conclusive, I'd say, in answer to the second, although interesting
nevertheless, especially taken together.

Diphthongs: OGut. 'ai' and 'au' are archaic, and not a very
significant point of "agreement" with Gothic. Before the Goths set off
on their migration south, these diphthongs were universal in North
Germanic. Ironically, it's quite likely that they had become
monophthongs in the Ostrogothic speech of the scribes who wrote the
surviving Gothic manuscripts, although loanwords in Provencal, and
other evidence, suggests that the diphthongs still existed in other
varieties of Gothic [
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/gothic-l/message/8782 ].

The lack of a-mutation (that's what causes the difference in other
Germanic dialects between /o/ and /u/) is an interesting match between
Old Gutnish and Gothic. Old Gutnish stands at the extreme end of a
dialectal continuum in this respect: within North Germanic, mutation
of Proto-Germanic [u] to [o] (caused by an [a] in the following
syllable) tends be less evident the further east you go. But this
agreement is interesting in view of the similar agreement between
OGut. and Go. having 'i' where other Germanic dialects have 'e'.

The raising to, or preservation of, [o] before [r] is an
understandable phonetic change that could well have happened
independently. On its own, not very significant.

The lexical matches are maybe even more curious than the phonetic
matches: 'lamb' "sheep" and the early Latin loan Go. 'lukarn', OGut.
'lukarr'--but being so few, there's room for coincidence.

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