Gothic – Text sample
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Goering, Nelson
Sandell, Ryan P.
In this video an excerpt from Wulfila's Bible is analysed, showcasing several of the previously-discussed features of Gothic.
 Hello, I'm Ryan Sandell. And I'm Nelson Gearing, and we would like to welcome you to our final session of our module on the Gothic language. In this video, we will read two verses from the Gospel of John to illustrate the Gothic language in action. Here is John 1810, first in the Gothic alphabet, and then in Romanization, and finally in a phonetic transcription. If Simon Petrus havan's heru uslok inna, jak slok des ochumistens guðiens skalk, jak af me met imma os o texuo, sach than hetans was namin malkus. The Greek text here is from Robinson and Pierpont's 2005 edition of the Byzantine tradition of the Greek New Testament. It may not be an exact match for the text that the Gothic was translated from in every detail, but it's a pretty good approximation. We've also provided an English translation from the King James Version to give the general sense of the passage. Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it, and smote the high priest's servant and cut off his right ear. The servant's name was malkus. We start out with our first bit. It's Simon Petrus havan's heru uslok inna. It is a conjunction. It is often mildly contrastive and translated as but, but it can also be a more neutral connective just indicating a change of subject, which is its function in this case. Simon Petrus is clearly a borrowed name, and Petrus, like many non-Gothic names, has been adopted into the Gothic as a you stem noun. Havans is a present participle modifying Peter, though not a finite verb. It functionally serves as a relative clause, Peter having a sword, or Peter who had a sword. This kind of construction is very frequent in Gothic, but is usually, as here, closely calc down the Greek original. Morphologically, Havan is a Class III week verb built with the derivational suffix I, which regularly surfaces simply as a in many forms. Here it is indistinguishable from the present participle of a Class VI strong verb. Phonologically, note that sparentization applies to the underlying voiced b in the word to make it into a voiced fricative va. In heru, the object of Havans, note here the application of lowering in an underlying short i to e preceding the Rotic r. Our main verb is uslok, here in the meaning of geru. While the past tense stem makes it clear that this lexeme is a Class II strong verb, the corresponding non-past stem luuk, with a long u, is unusual for this class. We might instead have expected a non-past stem luuk, with a diphthong u. Pay attention here to the accentuation of uslok as well. The primary stress falls on lok, not on us. The object of uslok is inna, the accusative of the anaphoric pronoun in the masculine singular tugri, with heru. The finite verb in this clause is slok, the third singular past form of slachan strike. The long o-vaul in the past tense stem, alternating with a short a in the non-past, gives away the membership of this verb in strong Class VI. It is worth noting that this verb in Gothic has analogically leveled the voiceless h throughout the various stem forms, where in West Germanic languages there has been a tendency to level the voiced consonant from Verner's law as in German schlagen or English sle. In the genitive phrase, this ohumistens guðins, guðjins, the adjective has weak adjectival ending ints rather than the strong ending is. This is typical for an adjective following a determiner, in this case this. The whole phrase modifies skalk, the order, genitive and then noun. This order is probably influenced by the Greek, where things are more independent, Gothic seems to prefer the order noun and then adjective. As discussed in the lectures on nominal morphology, guðja is a regular type of derived noun. The base word is guðgad, to which have been added the Jan stem endings to form a related agent noun, in this case person who carries out activities related to the deity or more simply priest. Finally, note that in the form guðins, we again meet an instance of the application of sparentization, in this case of an underlying post-vocalic d to the fricative d. Looking to the next clause, again beginning with jað, we have jað af memet imo oso texvo. Here we find a class 7 past tense form of af memet, cut off. The reduplication in the past tense tells us that the verb belongs to strong class 7. But also that the reduplicant stands in between the root met and the preverb af, and that the primary stress falls on the verbal root. Two forms in this clause show contrasting origins for diphthongal spellings in Gothic. On the one hand, the word oso, ear in the accusative, contains along au in its first syllable arising from an original protogermatic diphthong au. On the other hand, the word texvo contains a short eh, resulting from the lowering of an underlying short eh before an h. Morphologically, oso belongs to the fairly small class of neuter end stems, which includes a number of words for body parts. The adjective texvo has a weak adjectival ending. There's no determiner to condition this, but this adjective always takes weak endings, probably for semantic reasons. Certain adjectives, such as right and left or comparative adjectives, have implied definite reference and always take weak endings to mark this. Also note the dative of possession immer rather than a genitive form like the Greek original. Gothic uses both genitives and datives for inalienable possession, but favors the dative in cases like this where the possessed object, the ear, is in some way strongly affected, especially in cases where body parts are being removed. Moving on to sahtan, hetans wasnamen malkus. We start with saht. Here we have the demonstrative pronoun sa with the eklitic ukh attached. After a vowel, the u of the eklitic is deleted. The combination ukhthan is often used to introduce backgrounded or parenthetical information as here. The name is a further piece of incidental information interrupting the main narrative of events. Hetans was is a typical passive construction. The verb hetan is normally transitive to name or to call with a direct object. In the present, the synthetic passive hetada is named could have been used, but in the past, Gothic has to employ a paraphrastic construction with the past participle and an auxiliary verb. The order of participle first and auxiliary following is typical for Gothic and is not derived from the Greek forlaga, which uses a rather different construction overall. Formally was functions as a normal class 5 strong verb in the preterite, although the non-pass forms of wisan are irregular. Lastly, namin is an independent dative, not an argument of any other element in the clause. Its function is what we traditionally call a dative of respect, meaning by name in terms of his name. And now my colleague Ryan will comment on the remaining part of our text. Going on now to 1811, we have Tharuch Quath Iesus Du Petro, Larithana, Heru in Father Stickel, Thani Gaff, Mis Atta, New Drinckothana. In the King James version, this is translated as, Then Jesus said unto Peter, Put thy sword into the sheath, The cup which my father hath given me, shall I not drink it? We start off with Tharuch Quath Iesus Du Petro, where Thar is strictly speaking a locative particle cognate with and often meaning there. But it can also have a temporal sense, as in this case. It is serving as the host for the clausal clitic uch, which we have already met. This time, since it is following a consonant rather than a vowel, we have the full form of the clitic uch. Quath is the third singular past tense form of a class V strong verb. Class membership and stem formation with ablout to the vowel a in the past tense is determined by the fact that the root quith contains a single obstruent consonant following the root vowel. Iesus is of course one of the most common names in the New Testament, but it is always abbreviated. The nominative singular as here is written just as Iesus in the manuscript Iesus. We've already seen the nominative of the name Peter as Petrus, and here we have Petro, the dative singular, the expected case for an argument of the preposition du. Then we come to La Githana Heru in Fodor. La Gith, Le, stands out in a second singular imperative form terminating in a long I, which is spelled I plus I. This is a peculiarity of class I weak verbs whose stem forming derivational suffix otherwise takes the form of either a glide, ya, or a short high vowel, I. Derivationally, the verb larian can be contrasted with the class V strong verb léhran to lie, which provides the derivational base for larian. In other words, larian here is the causative, derived with suffixation and ablout to the non-derived intransitive léhran. Thana here is the accusative singular of the determiner sa, translated with the Greek article thain. Not all Greek articles are translated as determiners in Gothic, but many are. The preposition in here can be a little slippery in Gothic. Unlike du, it can govern any oblike case, and its meaning changes depending upon the case governed. In this instance, it's followed by the accusative, which signals an allative meaning into. The Greek original here has the prepositional phrase esten teikin, with a definite article thain before the noun. Gothic systematically prohibits determiners in such positions, and so here, as usual inside prepositional phrases, leaves the Greek article entirely untranslated. The word forther, sword, as well as the immediately following form, stickle, cup, which we'll see on the next slide at the beginning of the next clause, contain phonotactically rare sequences in Gothic of an obstrant preceding a sonorant at the right edge of the word. As was discussed in the second video on phonology, it's not clear if such sequences should be interpreted as containing syllabic sonorants, or show that Gothic permitted some radical sonority sequencing violations. Stickle now is part of a new main clause, but we'll have to wait a moment to see since we interrupt our regularly scheduled broadcast with a relative clause modifying stickle. This is introduced with the relative pronoun thani. This is formed with thana, the accusative singular of sa, with the addition of the relativizing particle i. This causes a lesion of the second vowel. The pronoun is a masculine singular to agree with stickle, and accusative because it is the object of the verb gaaf within the relative clause. Gaaf, like quath seen earlier, is also the past tense singular stem of a class 5 strong verb in this case to give, and is identifiable through the same features. In terms of its phonology, gaaf nicely illustrates the relationship between the processes of spurentization and fricative devoicing. The underlying root, kib, with a voiced stop, with a voiced labial stop, post-vocalically becomes the corresponding voiced fricative, v, and this fricative in turn is then devoiced in word-vinyl position, thereby giving us the form gaaf. Verbs of giving can often have two objects. In Gothic, as with other languages you may be familiar with, gyvan can have an accusative object of the thing given, here fani, and a dative object of a person to whom the thing is given, in this case mis, which is the dative singular of the first person pronoun to me. Atta, father, is notable largely for the fact that it contains a geminite voiced stop. It proves that monomorphemic geminites are happily permitted in Gothic. We now return to the main clause, new dringothana. This turns out to be a rhetorical question, and is introduced with the negative particle ni, to which is attached the inclinic interrogative particle u. The combined niu often introduces rhetorical questions that are framed as negatives, but imply that the positive is the case. Here the question, should I not drink the cup? The question is, should I not drink the cup? But the implied answer is, I should indeed drink the cup. Drinko, nicely exemplifies the first singular non-past-optative form of a Class III strongverb. That the form belongs to Class III can be determined from the lack of a further derivational suffix, and that the root contains a nasal, in this case spelled with a g, since it's a velar nasal, followed by another consonant. The ending for the non-past first singular-optative, which was simply all, and thus seems to lack the glider front value usually seen in Gothic-optative forms, probably arises through vowel coalescence. See the fourth lecture on morphology for more details. The direct object of Drinko is stichl, the cup, which has been topicalized and therefore placed at the start of the clause, and then modified by a relative clause. Here we have a resumptive demonstrative faana, agreeing with stichl in case, number, and gender, which is placed following the verb, as is more usual for direct objects. This might well all be native Gothic, but in this case the entire construction follows the Greeks so closely that it's hard to tell. This concludes our commentary on verses 10 and 11 of John 18, and with it, our module on the Gothic language. We thank you for your attention. Thank you very much for having been with us at this look through the grammar of the Gothic language. Good luck with your future studies, and goodbye.
 Hello, I'm Ryan Sandell.  And I'm Nelson Gearing, and we would like to welcome you to our final session of our  module on the Gothic language.  In this video, we will read two verses from the Gospel of John to illustrate the Gothic  language in action.  Here is John 1810, first in the Gothic alphabet, and then in Romanization, and finally in  a phonetic transcription.  If Simon Petrus havan's heru uslok inna, jak slok des ochumistens guðiens skalk, jak af me met imma os o texuo,  sach than hetans was namin malkus.  The Greek text here is from Robinson and Pierpont's 2005 edition of the Byzantine tradition of  the Greek New Testament.  It may not be an exact match for the text that the Gothic was translated from in every detail,  but it's a pretty good approximation.  We've also provided an English translation from the King James Version to give the general  sense of the passage.  Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it, and smote the high priest's servant and cut  off his right ear.  The servant's name was malkus.  We start out with our first bit.  It's Simon Petrus havan's heru uslok inna.  It is a conjunction.  It is often mildly contrastive and translated as but, but it can also be a more neutral  connective just indicating a change of subject, which is its function in this case.  Simon Petrus is clearly a borrowed name, and Petrus, like many non-Gothic names, has been  adopted into the Gothic as a you stem noun.  Havans is a present participle modifying Peter, though not a finite verb.  It functionally serves as a relative clause, Peter having a sword, or Peter who had a sword.  This kind of construction is very frequent in Gothic, but is usually, as here, closely  calc down the Greek original.  Morphologically, Havan is a Class III week verb built with the derivational suffix I,  which regularly surfaces simply as a in many forms.  Here it is indistinguishable from the present participle of a Class VI strong verb.  Phonologically, note that sparentization applies to the underlying voiced b in the  word to make it into a voiced fricative va.  In heru, the object of Havans, note here the application of lowering in an underlying  short i to e preceding the Rotic r.  Our main verb is uslok, here in the meaning of geru.  While the past tense stem makes it clear that this lexeme is a Class II strong verb, the  corresponding non-past stem luuk, with a long u, is unusual for this class.  We might instead have expected a non-past stem luuk, with a diphthong u.  Pay attention here to the accentuation of uslok as well.  The primary stress falls on lok, not on us.  The object of uslok is inna, the accusative of the anaphoric pronoun in the masculine  singular tugri, with heru.  The finite verb in this clause is slok, the third singular past form of slachan strike.  The long o-vaul in the past tense stem, alternating with a short a in the non-past, gives away  the membership of this verb in strong Class VI.  It is worth noting that this verb in Gothic has analogically leveled the voiceless h throughout  the various stem forms, where in West Germanic languages there has been a tendency to level  the voiced consonant from Verner's law as in German schlagen or English sle.  In the genitive phrase, this ohumistens guðins, guðjins, the adjective has weak adjectival  ending ints rather than the strong ending is.  This is typical for an adjective following a determiner, in this case this.  The whole phrase modifies skalk, the order, genitive and then noun.  This order is probably influenced by the Greek, where things are more independent, Gothic  seems to prefer the order noun and then adjective.  As discussed in the lectures on nominal morphology, guðja is a regular type of derived noun.  The base word is guðgad, to which have been added the Jan stem endings to form a related  agent noun, in this case person who carries out activities related to the deity or more  simply priest.  Finally, note that in the form guðins, we again meet an instance of the application  of sparentization, in this case of an underlying post-vocalic d to the fricative d.  Looking to the next clause, again beginning with jað, we have jað af memet imo oso texvo.  Here we find a class 7 past tense form of af memet, cut off.  The reduplication in the past tense tells us that the verb belongs to strong class 7.  But also that the reduplicant stands in between the root met and the preverb af, and that  the primary stress falls on the verbal root.  Two forms in this clause show contrasting origins for diphthongal spellings in Gothic.  On the one hand, the word oso, ear in the accusative, contains along au in its first  syllable arising from an original protogermatic diphthong au.  On the other hand, the word texvo contains a short eh, resulting from the lowering of  an underlying short eh before an h.  Morphologically, oso belongs to the fairly small class of neuter end stems, which includes  a number of words for body parts.  The adjective texvo has a weak adjectival ending.  There's no determiner to condition this, but this adjective always takes weak endings,  probably for semantic reasons.  Certain adjectives, such as right and left or comparative adjectives, have implied definite  reference and always take weak endings to mark this.  Also note the dative of possession immer rather than a genitive form like the Greek original.  Gothic uses both genitives and datives for inalienable possession, but favors the dative  in cases like this where the possessed object, the ear, is in some way strongly affected,  especially in cases where body parts are being removed.  Moving on to sahtan, hetans wasnamen malkus.  We start with saht.  Here we have the demonstrative pronoun sa with the eklitic ukh attached.  After a vowel, the u of the eklitic is deleted.  The combination ukhthan is often used to introduce backgrounded or parenthetical information  as here.  The name is a further piece of incidental information interrupting the main narrative  of events.  Hetans was is a typical passive construction.  The verb hetan is normally transitive to name or to call with a direct object.  In the present, the synthetic passive hetada is named could have been used, but in the  past, Gothic has to employ a paraphrastic construction with the past participle and  an auxiliary verb.  The order of participle first and auxiliary following is typical for Gothic and is not  derived from the Greek forlaga, which uses a rather different construction overall.  Formally was functions as a normal class 5 strong verb in the preterite, although the  non-pass forms of wisan are irregular.  Lastly, namin is an independent dative, not an argument of any other element in the clause.  Its function is what we traditionally call a dative of respect, meaning by name in terms  of his name.  And now my colleague Ryan will comment on the remaining part of our text.  Going on now to 1811, we have Tharuch Quath Iesus Du Petro, Larithana, Heru in Father  Stickel, Thani Gaff, Mis Atta, New Drinckothana.  In the King James version, this is translated as, Then Jesus said unto Peter, Put thy sword  into the sheath, The cup which my father hath given me, shall I not drink it?  We start off with Tharuch Quath Iesus Du Petro, where Thar is strictly speaking a locative  particle cognate with and often meaning there.  But it can also have a temporal sense, as in this case.  It is serving as the host for the clausal clitic uch, which we have already met.  This time, since it is following a consonant rather than a vowel, we have the full form  of the clitic uch.  Quath is the third singular past tense form of a class V strong verb.  Class membership and stem formation with ablout to the vowel a in the past tense is determined  by the fact that the root quith contains a single obstruent consonant following the  root vowel.  Iesus is of course one of the most common names in the New Testament, but it is always  abbreviated.  The nominative singular as here is written just as Iesus in the manuscript Iesus.  We've already seen the nominative of the name Peter as Petrus, and here we have Petro,  the dative singular, the expected case for an argument of the preposition du.  Then we come to La Githana Heru in Fodor.  La Gith, Le, stands out in a second singular imperative form terminating in a long I, which  is spelled I plus I.  This is a peculiarity of class I weak verbs whose stem forming derivational suffix otherwise  takes the form of either a glide, ya, or a short high vowel, I.  Derivationally, the verb larian can be contrasted with the class V strong verb léhran to lie,  which provides the derivational base for larian.  In other words, larian here is the causative, derived with suffixation and ablout to the  non-derived intransitive léhran.  Thana here is the accusative singular of the determiner sa, translated with the Greek  article thain.  Not all Greek articles are translated as determiners in Gothic, but many are.  The preposition in here can be a little slippery in Gothic.  Unlike du, it can govern any oblike case, and its meaning changes depending upon the  case governed.  In this instance, it's followed by the accusative, which signals an allative meaning into.  The Greek original here has the prepositional phrase esten teikin, with a definite article  thain before the noun.  Gothic systematically prohibits determiners in such positions, and so here, as usual inside  prepositional phrases, leaves the Greek article entirely untranslated.  The word forther, sword, as well as the immediately following form, stickle, cup, which we'll  see on the next slide at the beginning of the next clause, contain phonotactically rare  sequences in Gothic of an obstrant preceding a sonorant at the right edge of the word.  As was discussed in the second video on phonology, it's not clear if such sequences should be  interpreted as containing syllabic sonorants, or show that Gothic permitted some radical  sonority sequencing violations.  Stickle now is part of a new main clause, but we'll have to wait a moment to see since  we interrupt our regularly scheduled broadcast with a relative clause modifying stickle.  This is introduced with the relative pronoun thani.  This is formed with thana, the accusative singular of sa, with the addition of the  relativizing particle i.  This causes a lesion of the second vowel.  The pronoun is a masculine singular to agree with stickle, and accusative because it is  the object of the verb gaaf within the relative clause.  Gaaf, like quath seen earlier, is also the past tense singular stem of a class 5 strong  verb in this case to give, and is identifiable through the same features.  In terms of its phonology, gaaf nicely illustrates the relationship between the processes of  spurentization and fricative devoicing. The underlying root, kib, with a voiced stop,  with a voiced labial stop, post-vocalically becomes the corresponding voiced fricative,  v, and this fricative in turn is then devoiced in word-vinyl position, thereby giving us  the form gaaf.  Verbs of giving can often have two objects. In Gothic, as with other languages you may  be familiar with, gyvan can have an accusative object of the thing given, here fani, and  a dative object of a person to whom the thing is given, in this case mis, which is the  dative singular of the first person pronoun to me.  Atta, father, is notable largely for the fact that it contains a geminite voiced stop.  It proves that monomorphemic geminites are happily permitted in Gothic.  We now return to the main clause, new dringothana. This turns out to be a rhetorical question,  and is introduced with the negative particle ni, to which is attached the inclinic interrogative  particle u. The combined niu often introduces rhetorical questions that are framed as negatives,  but imply that the positive is the case. Here the question, should I not drink the cup?  The question is, should I not drink the cup? But the implied answer is, I should indeed  drink the cup.  Drinko, nicely exemplifies the first singular non-past-optative form of a Class III strongverb.  That the form belongs to Class III can be determined from the lack of a further derivational suffix,  and that the root contains a nasal, in this case spelled with a g, since it's a velar  nasal, followed by another consonant. The ending for the non-past first singular-optative,  which was simply all, and thus seems to lack the glider front value usually seen in Gothic -optative forms, probably arises through vowel coalescence.  See the fourth lecture on morphology for more details.  The direct object of Drinko is stichl, the cup, which has been topicalized and therefore  placed at the start of the clause, and then modified by a relative clause. Here we have  a resumptive demonstrative faana, agreeing with stichl in case, number, and gender, which  is placed following the verb, as is more usual for direct objects. This might well all be  native Gothic, but in this case the entire construction follows the Greeks so closely  that it's hard to tell.  This concludes our commentary on verses 10 and 11 of John 18, and with it, our module  on the Gothic language.  We thank you for your attention. Thank you very much for having been with us at this  look through the grammar of the Gothic language.  Good luck with your future studies, and goodbye.
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