Reconstructing Gothic

Tue May 27 00:43:34 UTC 2014

A few observations in connection with the last contributions:

1) Gothic fadar is indeed extant only once (Gal.4,6):

 insandida guth ahman sunaus seinis in hairtona izwara hropjandan 'Abba! Fadar!'
"God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying 'Abba! Father!' 

It is used here to gloss the -- in the context of the Greek original -- exotic Aramaic word 'abba', which is perhaps an indication that the word fadar itself was perhaps felt to be exotic as well, either an archaic word or a borrowing from another Germanic dialect. Of course, the root fadr- is also found in the Gothic word fadreins, glossing Greek/Latin patria, but this could possibly be an instance of a "cranberry" morpheme in Gothic (cf. Mod. English were- in werewolf).

2) Even with the knowledge of OHG eide, the cognates OE athum, OFris athom, OHG eidum 'son-in-law' complicate matters. According to Lehmann, aithei is a derivative, like the other forms given here, from Pre-Germanic *oit-, the source also of aiths 'oath'. Lehmann (1986: 20) suggests that aithei was originally "a Germanic word for woman given by legal process to a man; carries implication that children of aithei would inherit in contrast with those of concubine". Given the foregoing forms, reconstructing a Gothic aithei (were the noun not extant) would still be far from obvious.

3) As to Icelandic language purism, there is an official governmental organization called the -- sorry no accents -- Islensk Malnefnd ('Icelandic Language Commission'), not to mention many professional societies which have their own language committees, that meet regularly to discuss proposed neologisms especially in the fields of science and technology. Modern Icelandic simi 'telephone', to give an example of their work, is simply an Old Norse word revived ('rope') with a new meaning. But these organizations, of course, are not attempting to reconstruct earlier forms of non-extant Norse lexical items and so have unlimited freedom in the invention of words. Alas! Something lacking in the English-speaking world, thanks to its fixation on the Graeco-Latin!

Edmund

On Monday, May 26, 2014 4:31:23 PM, "David Connolly dec.phd at sbcglobal.net [gothic-l]" <gothic-l at yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Dirk and everybody,

All of Edmund's points are well taken indeed.  The Gothic corpus that we have preserves 45 instances of 'aithei', including Nom., Acc., Dat., Gen. forms in the singular, and Acc. plural.  The number of occurrences of *modar is *zero*.  

Our best bet for deciding which form "the Goths" would have used is to query Gothic as it is actually preserved (i.e., Wulfila's Bible).  Even if some Goths (some sub-dialects, some regions?) had a word like *modar, what we have attested is 'aithei'.  If we are so attracted to 'modar' due to its similarity to our modern cognates, then it seems that we are embarking on something other than recovering/reestablishing Gothic; rather, we are making up sort of a pan-Germanic lingo that might be fun but shouldn't be called Gothic.  (Similar sentiments apply to recent comments about 'wreitan' (sp?) for 'write' versus [attested] meljan.)

It is interesting that there are a couple hundred (I believe) examples of 'atta' as father;  but in keeping perhaps with Dirk's suggestion, there is indeed *one* example of 'fadar' in Wulfila.  The Gothic word for father seems to have been 'atta', but with the lexical item of 'fadar' lurking in the recesses of at least some Goths' minds - ?

I appreciated the point a few messages ago about the restoration/enhancement of Hebrew in the 20th century in Israel; it is true, an ancient language was revamped and modernized to become a major world vernacular.  But of course, the Hebrew example had a large worldwide population of (mostly) Jews, coming together as a group with a shared identity in a specific region (Palestine); in other words, all the makings for a major linguistic coup, combining a traditional holy tongue with modernity.  We Gothic fans, however, alas, are quite a ways from anything like that.  We are reveling in the fact that there are a few like-minded individuals out there at least in the world of the internet.  I am wondering how familiar any of y'all are with the process by which Modern Icelandic has dealt with new words (including technological, scientific, etc.)--I understand that they have a process of creating "natively" Icelandic versions of said new words. 

Comments offered in all good fun and best wishes -
David  

________________________________
 From: "d.faltin at hispeed.ch [gothic-l]" <gothic-l at yahoogroups.com>
To: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Monday, May 26, 2014 3:48 PM
Subject: Re: [gothic-l] Reconstructing Gothic

Hi Edmund,

your point regarding Gothic aithei (mother) is well taken and valid. However, just to add Old High German also preserved this form as "eide" meaning mother (in a certain legal context) and "fotar eidi" meaning nurse, i.e. woman nursing a child.
The problem would have been to decide which form the Goths would have used. My guess is that they also had a world like *modar, but it was simply not recorded.

Best
Dirk

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