[gothic-l] Re: Brotherhood

[edmundfairfax@yahoo.ca [gothic-l]]

Dear Johann, 

 The development of 'haid-' into a suffix is a specifically West Germanic phenomenon. In its earliest use, it appears to have meant mainly 'state, rank' vel sim.; that is, it was not mainly a collectivizing suffix: e.g. OE cildhad 'childhood', i.e., 'being a child' rather than a 'group of children.' A '*brothruhaidus' would mean simply the 'manner of a brother' in Wulfilian Gothic. Likewise, the suffixal use of -skap- appears to be a non-East Germanic development as well, for there is no sign of it as a suffix or even as a noun in the Gothic corpus. Kluge notes that the use of -skap- as a collective suffix is only occasional even in the early Germanic languages (<Nominale Stammbildungslehre der altgermanischen Dialekte< p. 38).
 

 Germanic had two notable suffixes used to form collectives, to wit *-ahjan and *-ithjan (the latter with short or long 'i'). Both of these suffixes survived into the early Germanic languages with the same function:
 

 1) Derivatives of *-ithjan:
 

 OLG: Ekthi (< *aikithjan "place where oaks abound"), Bergithi, Wulfithi
 OHG: pfluogide 'team of plough-oxen'
 MHG: geswisteride 'Geschwister', geveteride 'Gevattern', geteilide 'group of participants'
 OE: eowde (< *awithjan) 'herd of sheep'
 Go: awethi (with reverse spelling for *aweithi) 'herd of sheep'
 

 2) Derivatives of *-ahjan:
 

 OHG: steinahi 'stony land', eihhahi 'group of oak trees', rorahi 'reeds', chindahi 'group of children'
 

 In Gothic, this suffix evidently shifted to the ein-class, as suggested by its one attestation:
 

 bairgahei 'hill-country'
 

 A further variant of this suffix as a collective-marker used with kinship terms is found in the following:
 

 OLG: gisustruhon 'sisters'
 Go: brothrahans 'brethren, brothers' (masc. pl. n-stem)
 ON: fethgin 'parents', maethgin 'mother and son(s) collectively', systkin ' brother and sister collectively', etc. (the 'g' here instead of 'h' is owing to Verner's Law)
 

 I think the best choice for 'brotherhood' is the already extant 'brothrahans,' which in fact refers to a group of brothers. As a collective term, 'brothers' and 'brotherhood' are, at least in ModE, largely interchangeable.
 

 Edmund
 

---In Gothic-L at yahoogroups.com, <anheropl0x at ...> wrote :

 I discussed this with another member a couple weeks ago. Somehow this word doesn't make it into the silver Bible, but if like to see it rendered in Gothic. Unfortunately, there are a couple directions this could be taken, and there is little evidence in aware of to suggest which is more correct. Following English -hood, one might arrive at something like *broþruhaidus. Going with *skapiz like most other Germanic languages, one could get *broþruskaps. Or do any of you think it could be something completely different? 




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