Further Thoughts On "Goth-"

[proto-language]

Dear David and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: "David L. White" <dlwhite at texas.net>
Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2000 2:59 PM

>         The word is sometimes connected with a word meaning 'flood' or
> something of that sort (sometimes given as 'pour').  It occurs to me that
> from an original /gout/ (ancestral to Germanic /gaut/), /gut/ might be a
> zero-grade, such as would (since this is a strong verb) occur in past
> participles (like "flooded").   A zero-grade version is, by the way,
> generally taken to be the ancestor of modern English "gut", though the
> semantics are unclear (to me).  The full o-grade might have meant "flood",
> so that the two variants might go back to a difference of opinion as to
> whether the Goths were being called in effect "the flood people" or "the
> flooded people".   As for why they would be called anything of the sort, I
> vaguely recall that sea-levels in the general vicinity were rising at about
> the time in question.  But all this is rather speculative, and I stand ready
> to be set straight.

[PR]
I would have thought some mention of Gutium, the bane of the Babylonians,
might be appropriate here.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
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