Talk:Gothic language

Clarification??

"Gothic is unusual among Indo-European languages in only preserving it for pronouns." found under the pronouns section. This is inaccurate, as other Germanic languages have dual pronouns. It's uniqueness is due to the retention of the verb conjugation ONLY for pronouns. Old Norse certainly had dual pronouns, just no conjugations other than singular and plural. If I were more eloquent I'd change this myself... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Retailmonica (talk • contribs) 23:09, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I changed part of this, as it's generally agreed that all the early Gmc. dialects had dual pronouns. I'm currently researching the conjugation systems as well. --Aryaman (talk) 09:06, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Misinterpretation of a source?

In the section History and evidence we read "He [Walafrid Strabo] also refers to the use of Ulfilas' bible in a region probably around Lake Constance", which is obviously a misinterpretation of the same text, which is already commented in the previous sentence (there are no other references about Gothic language in his text, as "he also refers" appears to imply). Walafrid Strabo unambiguously refers to the use of Gothic language around the town of Tomis in Scythia: "didicimus apud quasdam Scytharum gentes, maxime Thomitanos, eadem locutione divina (i. e. the language of the Gothic translation of the Bible) hactenus celebrari officia" (De exordiis et incrementis quarundam in observationibus ecclesiasticis rerum, chapter 7); it is true that the town was renamed Constantia (modern Constanţa in Romania), but that has certainly nothing to do with the Lake Constance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.130.29.103 (talk) 15:55, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, I can't find anything about Lake Constance here. I've tagged the claim as dubious. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:55, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

PGmc. [z]

The article currently reads:

Proto-Germanic *z remains in Gothic as z or is devoiced to s. In North and West Germanic, *z > r. E.g. Gothic drus (fall), Old English dryre.

This is not quite true. Well, it's a little misleading, at any rate. I'm assuming at least some of the editors are aware of this, and that this has been simplified for the sake of accessibility. I don't know if those who have worked on this article are worried about making it more complicated than it might need to be. If this is the case, then perhaps a word other than drus should be used for an example? Because drus is typically reconstructed as (N.Sg.) *drusaz, not **druz. Besides this, in this particular case, the [z] has been deleted as a consequence of the EGmc. [z]-deletion rule, not as a consequence of the EGmc. obstruent devoicing rule (e.g. [z] > [s]). We know this because the stem vowel [u] is short, and [z]-deletion must have occurred prior to obstruent devoicing. Furthermore, PGmc. [z] undergoes more changes than just [z] > [s] (i.e. obstruent devoicing) in EGmc.: there's [z]-deletion and [z] > [r] as well (as in *ūz-rīsan > Gothic urreisan - which may be an areal change shared by NWGmc. under certain circumstances). Like I said, I understand if this has been omitted for the sake of simplicity. But it's kind of misleading as it stands. Thanks, --Aryaman (talk) 08:57, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Grouping of Gothic POV

In particular, the following statement: "However, for the most part these represent shared retentions, which are not valid means of grouping languages." LokiClock (talk) 13:45, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

What exactly is the problem with this? ---Pfold (talk) 14:14, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

In the absence of any response to my request for clarification, and since the point complained of is a fundamental tenet of historical linguistics, I am removing the POV flag. --Pfold (talk) 23:32, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I think the statement objected to was the claim that the features are, in fact, shared retentions. This is a matter of attributing the views to whatever scholars hold them. Since the article already states that the "the so-called Gotho-Nordic Hypothesis" is a minority opinion I don't really see the problem. But it would be useful to have a bunch of names associated with the minority view, if possible recent support of the hypothesis because otherwise it would appear to be not so much a minority as an obsolete view. --dab (𒁳) 20:43, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

The "Gotho-Nordic" connection hasn't seen much in the way of support since the late 60's. If names are needed, W.P. Lehmann (The Grouping of the Germanic Languages, 1966), H.F. Rosenfeld, (Zur sprachlichen Gliederung des Germanischen, 1954), and V. Schirmunski (Über die altgermanischen Stammesdialekte, 1965) would be the ones to include. The more recent mentions I've come across are made more as a historical footnote for the sake of completeness than for the purpose of presenting it as a viable hypothesis. Cf. H.F. Nielsen (1995) "Methodological Problems in Germanic Dialect Grouping" in Marold, E. (Ed.) Nordwestgermanisch pp. 115-123. --Aryaman (talk) 21:36, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Codex Rehdigeranus

Latin, not gothic!

Doesn't look like a gothic language source, but instead latin written in uncial see File:Codex Rehdigerianus.jpg. Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 20:28, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

So if you wonder why the entry disappeared from the list, it was me! Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 20:30, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I find it difficult to follow how you can conclude from the absence of Gothic in one page of the codex to the absence of Gothic in the codex as a whole. --dab (𒁳) 20:47, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

From the future?

The article refers to a dictionary in the Ottoman court and says "These terms are from nearly a millennium later and are therefore not representative of the language of Ulfilas" ... a millennium later would place the dictionary in 2500 - 2600 CE. I think that the article may mean a millennium earlier. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.47.180.174 (talk) 16:23, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Nah, what is meant that the Crimean Gothic materials are from nearly a millennium later than the Gothic texts from Late Antiquity. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:58, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Pronunciation of ai, au, e, o

Something that has always bothered me is the standard interpretation of ai, au as mid-open and e, o as mid-close. To me this doesn't really make much sense, because Proto-Germanic ē and ō were mid-open to start with. While it's possible that they became more closed in Gothic, there is also the fact that i before r or h is spelled ai, and likewise for u becoming au. This makes more sense to me if ai and au denote mid-close vowels, since the phonetic 'distance' isn't as great. The same applies to the spelling au for Germanic ū before a vowel, as in bauan. And Latin sources of the time write au as o later on (ostrogoths?), which shows that these diphthongs were being lost in Gothic.

I realise this is a lot of original research, so what I would really like to see is a bit more information on why the spellings are interpreted the way they are in this article. Some sources would be nice too... CodeCat (talk) 12:57, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Joseph Wright in his Gothic Grammar was perhaps one of the first to assume that at least some instances of ai and au are mid-close, and that ē and ō are mid-open. I don't know what his reasoning was for the closeness and openness. — Eru·tuon 13:51, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't think there's any doubt that interpretating of the diphthong spellings is an unresolved issue. But I don't see any problem in principle in the diphthong spelling representing a more open vowel, rather the opposite - after all the monophthongisation of /ai/ is naturally going to involve raising, but raising the first and stronger element /a/ *past* an existing open /e:/ is highly implausible (how come they didn't merge?). In fact the monophthongisation and the raising of /e:/ are readily seen as a chain shift.

I don't see anything wrong in leaving the passage as it is. But if someone felt like reviewing the literature on this issue, and expanding the presentation, I'm sure it would be useful. --Pfold (talk) 21:22, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Passive Voice exclusivity?

"Gothic retains a morphological passive voice inherited from Indo-European, but unattested in all other Germanic languages..."
I'm not saying I'm a language expert, but I'm very sure that Swedish has a passive voice as well.

He took the flask = Han tog flaskan.
The flask was taken by him = Flaskan togs av honom.

Isn't this a morphological passive voice as well? I'm just saying. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.216.64.210 (talk) 19:42, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

It is, but as far as I understand, the Swedish form is an independent, late innovation. The Gothic form is the only one that had been inherited directly from Indo-European. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:47, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

The Swedish passive originates from a combination of the verb with the reflexive pronoun. togs is etymologically really tog sig. In Old Norse the form was still tóksk, which is much more recognisable. CodeCat (talk) 13:34, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

This is correct for most of the cases, but this is mostley just contractions of verbs who have natural reflexive pronouns. With the passive, it wouldn't be possible to use the reflexive pronoun in a rewrite.
Han älskas -> Han blir älskad -> Han älskar sig.
He is being loved -> He is being loved -> He loves himself.

As you can see, they have two different meanings. I'm sure you are right, but can you say with 100% certainty that you are not bunching two different grammatical phenomenons together, just because they look alike (-s ending)?
Don't want to be flaming and stuff, just want to make sure there aren't any misunderstandings. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.216.64.210 (talk) 17:45, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

You're quite right of course that the "sig" reflexive and the "-s" passive today are distinct constructions with different meanings, but it is apparently still the case that the one emerged out of the other historically (a process of grammaticalization). I'm not an expert on Skandinavian languages, but from what I remember reading, I believe the explanation CodeCat gave is indeed the generally accepted one. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:11, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the explanation! I learned something new now :)--81.216.64.210 (talk) 00:52, 11 April 2011 (UTC)