Principal features of Gothic

 

Pronunciation

Some letters are pronounced differently in Gothic from their pronunciation in Dutch, for example the <u> is pronounced like the Dutch <oe> in "boek" (like English "soon"), but it can be either short or long.
Furthermore there are sounds which are no longer found in Dutch, for example the letter <d> is pronounced like the voiced <th> in English "then" (eg þiudinassus = 'kingdom'), the <þ> like the unvoiced <th> in English "thin" (eg þata = 'the' or 'that') or the <q> like a sort of "ku", ie a /k/ with simultaneous lip-rounding (eg qimai = 'come').

As all other Germanic languages Gothic also has the stress on the first syllable (see also Van Bree, 1996: 37)

 

Nouns and adjectives

Gothic has five cases:

• Nominative:for nouns acting as the subject of the sentence
• Genitive: expresses possessive relationships
• Dative: for nouns acting as the indirect object
• Accusative: for nouns acting as the direct object
• Vocative:for the person addressed (it is usually the same form as the nominative)

Nouns
The inflectional ending depends on:

- the stem of the word: The stems include a-, ja-, o-, i-, u- and n-stems. These terms refer to the reconstructed Primitive Germanic (eg bird: "fugls" is an a-stem, cf the Primitive Germanic word: *fuglaz).

- the gender of the word: Gothic has masculine, feminine and neuter nouns.

- whether the word is singular or plural.

Adjectives
The adjective takes the same gender, number and case as the noun.
The endings also vary according to:

- the stem to which the adjective belongs (as for the nouns above).

- inflection: weak inflection (for the vocative and after a definite article) and strong inflection (in all other situations).

 

Articles and Pronouns

Articles and demonstrative pronouns
The definite article is an important new development in Germanic. It arose from the demonstrative pronoun and still has the same form in Gothic (sa = 'the' or 'that' masculine, þata neuter, so feminine). It is only the context which enables its use as an article to be recognised.
The indefinite article does not yet exist.

Possessive pronouns
The possessive pronouns are inflected according to the strong inflection of the adjective.

Personal pronouns
Gothic uses the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person and a three-fold number division. Alongside singular and plural there is also a dual which indicates two people (eg wit = 'the two of us').
The familiar and polite forms of "you" use the same form of the second person, as in English, but unlike most other modern Germanic languages.
(see also The Middle Dutch case system)

 

Verbs

The form of the verb indicates:

- the person (1st, 2nd, 3rd) and the number (singular, dual, plural)
A personal pronoun is used when needed for emphasis or contrast. In other cases Gothic suffices with the verb on its own.

- the mood: Gothic uses the indicative, imperative and subjunctive.

- the tense: There are only two forms, the present tense for the present and future, and the preterite for the past tenses (there are as yet no analytical compound verb forms such as "have done").
The preterite can be formed in various ways:
a) by a vowel change (strong verbs) - this method goes as far back as Indo-European.
b) by adding a dental suffix (weak verbs) with the sounds /d/ (as in English then) or /þ/ (as in English thin). Weak verbs are an innovation of the Germanic languages.
c) by reduplication, eg sleep: slepan - saislep - saislepum).
Strong and weak verbs are a typical feature of all modern Germanic languages.
(see also characterisation of the Germanic language family)

- active and passive: there are active and passive verb forms except for the passive preterite which is expressed by means of a different verb (wisan = 'to be' or wairþan = 'become') and a perfect participle (eg daupiþs was = 'he was baptised'). Here we can see the beginnings of the development from a synthetic to an analytical language, which is typical of all West-Germanic languages.
(see also Middle Dutch verbs)

The principal developments from a language state with these features to the modern West-Germanic languages are the erosion of the differences between the stems of the nouns as a result of the heavy initial stress (see also loss of inflection in Middle Dutch), and the development towards an increasingly analytical language, the early stages of which we see in the formation of the passive preterite. (see Van der Wal, 1992: 3.12.-3.19. and Van Bree, 1977: 6-9)