This reference grammar of Gothic includes much history along with a description of Gothic grammar. Apart from runic inscriptions, Gothic is the earliest attested language of the Germanic family in Indo-European. Specifically, it is East Germanic. Most of the extant Gothic corpus is a 4th-century translation of the Bible, traditionally ascribed to Wulfila. This translation is historically important because it antedates Jerome’s Latin Vulgate. Gothic inflectional categories include nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Nouns are inflected for three genders, two numbers, and four cases. Adjectives also have weak and strong forms, as do verbs. Verbs are inflected for three persons and numbers, indicative and nonindicative mood (here called optative), past and nonpast tense, and voice. The mediopassive survives as a synthetic passive and syntactically in innovated periphrastic formations. Middle and anticausative functions were taken over by simple reflexive structures. Nonfinite are the infinitive, the imperative, and two participles. Gothic was a null subject language. Aspect was effected primarily by prefixes, relativization by relative pronouns built on demonstratives plus a complementizer. Complementizers were the norm with subordinated verbs in the indicative or optative. Switch to the optative was triggered by irrealis (the unreal), matrix verbs that do not permit a full range of subordinate tenses (e.g. hopes, wishes), potentiality, and alternate worlds. Many of these are also relevant to matrix clauses (independent optatives). Essentials of linearization include prepositional phrases, default postposed genitives and possessive adjectives, and preposed demonstratives. Verb-object order predominates, but there is considerable variation. Verb-auxiliary order is native Gothic.

The Oxford Gothic Grammar

The present paper investigates the origin and semantics of complex verbs with pleonastic prepositions in the Gothic Bible in comparison with the Greek and Latin sources from which the Gothic was translated. In these constructions, the same directional information is specified by a preverb and its semantically and formally related preposition in a PP-modifier. It is shown that Gothic preverb-preposition redundancy is largely the result of mechanical translation from the Greek source, with the strong possibility of Latin influence in some cases. While there are co-occurrences of formally related preverbs and prepositions in Gothic independent of Greek and Latin textual influence, directionality is usually only fully specified by the preposition, and so these instances are not truly pleonastic. The considerable influence of Greek on redundant preverb-preposition constructions in Gothic ultimately serves as a caution against taking Gothic morphosyntax at face value.I would like to thank Kari Ellen Gade, Robert Dennis Fulk, and Tracy Alan Hall for their valuable input on earlier drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank the anonymous referees for their helpful feedback.

Greek Textual Influence on Gothic Complex Verbs with Pleonastic Prepositions

The Gothic lexical field of fear differs sharply from that of the New Testa ment Greek it translates, as well as from those of the modern languages that gloss Gothic in dictionaries and grammars and the analogous fields in the other old Germanic languages. For example, the frequently attested West-Germanic cognates of dread (OE ondraedan, OHG intratan, and OS antdredan) are semantically distant from the morphologically analogous, but independently formed Gothic hapax undredan ‘to take care for.’ 1 What follows is intended to demonstrate that the Gothic lexicon distinguishes between different kinds of fear according to their cause, operation, and moral value determined by the disposition of the sufferer. Moreover, the Gothic language uses its capacity to distinguish between prudent and ignominious fear through vocabulary to underscore the distinction between faithful and faithless fear that is established largely through narration and dialogue in the Greek New Testament. T he fundamental divide in the Gothic semantic field of fear lies between expectant fear and shocked fear. Expectant fear, indicated primarily by agis, may be associated with trembling and may lead to action. Shocked fear, most often indicated by faurhtei, is associated with surprise and paraly sis. The semantic field thus divided is crossed again by an ethical distinction between reverent fear of high moral value and mundane fear that reveals a deficiency of faith and consequently has low moral value. Reverent fear is most commonly indicated with a member of the agis family, and mundane fear with a relative of faurhtei. The ethical distinction between reverent and mundane fear is suggested in the Greek source text by the opposition of δeιλία to φόβος, but the distinction is more thoroughly lexicalized in the Gothic translation, so that it organizes the whole semantic field and restricts the translation of Greek words that imply no moral judgment, such as ἔκστασις.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/jenglgermphil.111.3.0285

The Gothic Vocabulary of Fear

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0028688500012534

The Gothic ‘Skeireins’ in the Greek Original, Leaves V and VII

Verbs in Gothic are thematic, athematic, or preterite present. Several classes, including modals, are discussed. Strong verbs have seven classes, weak verbs four. Inflectional categories are first, second, and third person, singular, dual (except in the third person), and plural number. Tenses are nonpast and past/preterite. There are two inflected moods, indicative and optative, and two voices (active, passive). The passive is synthetic in the nonpast indicative and optative. The past system features two periphrastic passives, one stative-eventive with wisan (be), the other inchoative and change of state with wairþan (become). Middle functions are mostly represented by simple reflexive structures and -nan verbs. Nonfinite categories include one voice-underspecified infinitive, a nonpast and past participle, and a present active imperative. The third person imperative is normally expressed by an optative.

The verbal system

Gothic prepositional compounds in their relation to their Greek originals

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Gothic prepositional compounds in their relation to their Greek originals