[gothic-l] Re: Gothic Language Corner 11

Fri Feb 13 18:41:53 UTC 2015

1) The idea that <ai> and <au> owe something to the runic tradition is sheer speculation. There is no solid evidence for any influence of runic writing on the Gothic alphabet or orthography. 

 2) It is not true that the digraphs <aj> and <aw> are found only in loanwords: cf. 'bajoths', 'tawida.'

 3) Monothongs can be either long or short. The most commonly received interpretation today is that Proto-Germanic /ai/ and /au/ became in Gothic open /e:/ and open /o:/ (as outlined below), that is, the sounds found in Modern German 'Bett' and 'Gott' respectively but held for roughly TWICE the length of time. The quantitative length of the monothong, not the presence of a diphthong, then is instrumental in determining the heaviness or lightness of the syllable.

 An example like 'stiur', however, which should be a heavy-stem and thus should take an -s in the nom. sg. but does not do so (and it is often interpreted as a disyllabic to account for the anomaly), can be seen as proof that the heavy/light distinction was no longer determined phonologically but rather had become simply lexicalized; that is, the learner simply had to memorized which stems behaved like the so-called 'heavy' ones. A not dissimilar change can be seen in the Old English verbal system, with the creation of different lexicalized classes as a result of earlier phonological change.

 4) The shift of <aw> (= /au/) to <au> (= /o:/) and of <aj> (= /ai/) to <ai> (= /e:/), in such words as mawi etc., is the result of the following phonological alternation:

 stressed /au/ and /ai/ are monothongized when followed by a consonant

 thus mawi = [mau.i] because /au/ followed by a vowel
 but maujos = [mo:.jo:s] because followed by a consonant

 For further details, see, for example, Joseph Voyles's >Early Germanic Grammar, Pre-, Proto-, and Post-Germanic Languages< (2007, p.91).

 The variation between <iw> and <iu> in 'thiwi' and 'thiujos' is presumably to reflect differing syllabic segmentations, thus [thi.wi] verus [thiu.jo:s].

 While it is true that in orthographies broadly, one sound may have more than one spelling and one spelling may have more than one phonetic realization, as Modern English amply shows, this is not, however, proof for the existence of diphthongs, and the fact remains that there is simply no convincing evidence for interpreting WULFILIAN Gothic <ai> and <au> as diphthongs, just as there is no evidence for believing that the earth is flat.

 Edmund

---In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, <write2andy at ...> wrote :

 Most languages use the same digraph for multiple sounds. At least it's not impossible, and Wulfila may have been basing his "ai" and "au" off of a runic tradition that didn't survive in any attested runic inscriptions except for "HAILAG". It may have been confusing, but he had multiple ways to spell "k" and "I" (assuming "x" and "y" were "k" and "I", respectively), so why couldn't one digraph represent two sounds? The only time we see "aj" and "aw" is in loanwords from Latin and Greek. Wulfila always uses "w" for upsilon; e.g. "martwr". He would have kept doing so when it was in a digraph, but maybe he used something else for native Gothic words. It's perfectly logical, considering he could have spelt "martwr" like "martur", but he went with "w" like always does for upsilon.
 What I don't get, though, is how it could be a monophthong and make some words short-stems and some words long-stems; "waír" is a short-stem (short vowel+one consonant) and so there's no -s ending, but "gáurs" is a long-stem (since it has a short consonant /a/ and two consonants /wr/) and keeps its -s. Also, why would "mawi" change to be pronounced "mojos" in the plural? Again, not impossible, but the tradition of changing the /w/ spelling for the /w/ sound into /u/ before consonants is also seen with, for example, "þiwi", plural "þiujos". The sound /w/ has two spellings, depending on the following sound. (Unless the "iu" in þiujos is pronounced like [y]?)
 In the standard, modern language, I fully support ái and áu.

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