Goþesch Razde

[Dormouse559]

Overall it looks nice, personally the <dede> sequence looks a bit repetitive, <budedeþ> in particular is quite a tongue twister!

So Gothish speakers get to have as much fun as I do when I say, "I edited it". Like in that phrase, I'm guessing the tongue-twister-ishness is a quirk of the example verb.

Besides that, the verb grade is rather archaic, preserving the full PIE vowel alternations inherited from PGmc.

Vowel gradation ftw!

[Ælfwine]

Guden dach!

Have you now introduced rounded front vowels into your lang or is this some descendant of what you developed the first?
It would be simpler if you make another thread and just cross-link it with this one, if they are two langs.

I am playing around with front rounded vowels still. I included them here because they nicely preserve the ablaut in the Class IIa verbs. However some dialects may have unrounded them, I think given the timespan of 1800 years and Crimea's rather rugged geography there would be quite a few Crimean Gothic dialects. I didn't think the changes were enough to warrant another thread.

Perhaps what you are seeing here is "Early Modern" Gothish, which is quite similar to Busbecq's Crimean Gothic, and additional changes I introduce will be the more modern Gothish language.

Yeah, I mean that's what I would do in that situation. Although maybe just in the past tense? That seems more likely to get regularized.

I think this looks great. I especially like the leveling of the first person, present indicative to the vowel of the second and third persons. Gives the whole paradigm a nice singular/plural contrast taht could be retained even in more inflectional endings are lost.

Thanks for the compliment!

You are correct, that is what I have so far found in other paradigms, such as Class V verbs. In fact, I had just gotten done working on Class V verbs. The regular e: > i: change nicely distinguishes the subjunctive from the indicative here:

Spoiler:

Full Strong II Class Verb Conjugation, from PGmc *lisaną "to gather"
Infinitive: lesen [ˈleːsən]
Present Participle: lesents
Past Participle: lesens

Present Tense:
Indicative:
1st S: lese
2nd S: lises
3rd S: liset
1st P: lesems
2nd P: liseþ
3rd P: lesent

Subjunctive:
1st S: las
2nd S: last
3rd S: las
1st P: lisem
2nd P: liseþ
3rd P: lisen

Past Tense:
Indicative:
1st S: lesede
2nd S: lesedes
3rd S: lesede
1st P: lesedem
2nd P: lesedeþ
3rd P: leseden

Subjunctive:
1st S: lisede
2nd S: lisedes
3rd S: lisede
1st P: lisedem
2nd P: lisedeþ
3rd P: liseden

Now I could even go further and regularize the indicative to always have the vowel /e/ (as it does in the past tense) to the present tense). Tell me what you think.

Overall it looks nice, personally the <dede> sequence looks a bit repetitive, <budedeþ> in particular is quite a tongue twister!

Other than that, I got two questions:

1. Did you mean that the past participle got an extra -t on analogy with the present participle, and not the other way around (as you've written), since that's what your examples seem to show?

2. How did the 3. sg. ending get a different consonant from the 2. pl. ending?

You are right, it is quite a tongue twister, and I suspect schwa will be syncoped in casual speach, so that the form lisede becomes liste (and in fact this was raised by one scholar as a likely source for the Crimean Gothic word lista meaning "little," although in my mind a connection with English "least" or Gothic "leitils" is more likely.)

To answer your questions:

1. Yes that is my mistake, however I reversed this change after seeing that it merges the two in other paradigms.

2. Two totally separate sound changes:

ð > d / V_V (c.f. "bruder")

and

b β d ð z g ɣ > p f t θ s k x / _#

Hence why you get liset as the third person singular, but liseþ in the second person plural.

(Although it should be noted that the actual corpus suggests Crimean Gothic merged /θ/ and /t/ in these positions, e.g. plut, alt. Furthermore, -t may drop in analogy with the 3rd person of other forms, like in the subjunctive.)

[Ælfwine]

I'm somewhat tempted to split this project into two: one thread for "Crimean Gothic," which is my reconstruction of the language of the same name, another one for "Gothish" which is less of a reconstruction and more of a real "conlang." I want to do something with all those Cj clusters dangnabbit.

Rant time:

I have also always found it odd that for a language with centuries of isolation, it is not quite different from Low German (and even in several reports has been described as being mutually intelligible with them). Even Vilamovian shows greater divergence and less mutual intelligibility. What gives? Perhaps Busbecq introduced too much Flemish and German vocab and distortions, or perhaps the mutual intelligibility with low german was exaggerated. Nonetheless I am slowly being convinced of the idea that Crim Goth was a west germanic dialect as opposed to an east germanic one.

[Creyeditor]

I'm somewhat tempted to split this project into two: one thread for "Crimean Gothic," which is my reconstruction of the language of the same name, another one for "Gothish" which is less of a reconstruction and more of a real "conlang." I want to do something with all those Cj clusters dangnabbit.

Rant time:

I have also always found it odd that for a language with centuries of isolation, it is not quite different from Low German (and even in several reports has been described as being mutually intelligible with them). Even Vilamovian shows greater divergence and less mutual intelligibility. What gives? Perhaps Busbecq introduced too much Flemish and German vocab and distortions, or perhaps the mutual intelligibility with low german was exaggerated. Nonetheless I am slowly being convinced of the idea that Crim Goth was a west germanic dialect as opposed to an east germanic one.

I read somewhere that the Low German-like dialect and Crim Gothic where actually two independent languages, but other people in that area didn't really distinguish it (It's all Germanic to me ;) ). This needs the assumption that there was some Low German immigation into that area. But if so, people might be actually talking about two different languages and Crim Gothic might have been very different from Low German.

[Ælfwine]

Counting! Janko, where are you when I need you?

I had a lot of fun with this. Crimean Gothic numbers are quite unusual and point to strong Turkish and/or Iranian influence on their construction. Compare for example Turkish onbir (ten-one) = eleven; oniki (ten-two) = twelve; etc.

ите ite [ˈi.tə] one
туе tue [ˈtʰu.ə] two
дрие drie [ˈd̥ri.ə] three
фидер fider [ˈfi.dər] four
финф finf [ˈfinf] five
сес ses [ˈseːs] six
севене sevene [ˈse.və.nə] seven
атте atte [ˈat.tʰə] eight
нине nine [ˈniːnə] nine
тине tine [ˈtʰiːnə] ten

тините tinite [ˈtʰiː.ni.tʰə] eleven
тинетуе tinetue [ˈtʰiː.nəˌtʰu.ə] twelve
тинедрие tinedrie [ˈtʰiː.nəˌd̻ri.ə] thirteen
тинефидер tinefider [ˈtʰiː.nəˌfi.dər] fourteen
тинефинф tinefinf [ˈtʰiː.nəˌfinf] fifteen
тинесес tineses [ˈtʰiː.nəˌseːs] sixteen
тинесевене tinesevene [ˈtʰiː.nəˌse.və.nə] seventeen
тинатте tinatte [ˈtʰiː.nˌat.tʰə] eighteen
тиненине tinine [ˈtʰiː.nˌniː.nə] nineteen
щеге schtege [ˈʃte.ɣə] twenty
(etc.)
дритине dritine [ˈd̥riˌtʰiː.nə] (dialectally: driten [ˈd̥ri.tn̩]) thirty
(etc.)
фидертине fidertine [ˈfi.dərˌtʰiː.nə] (dialectally: fiderten [ˈfi.dər.tn̩]) fourty
(etc.)
финфтине finftine [ˈfinfˌtʰiː.nə] ([ˈfinf.tn̩) fifty
(etc.)
саде sade [ˈsa.də] (NB from Iranian Alan) hundred
хазер chazer [ˈxa.zər] (also from Iranian) thousand

[Zekoslav]

I like this system a lot. I've always liked number systems radically reshaped by contact with unrelated languages and thus different from the number systems of related languages (hello Romanian!).

[Herra Ratatoskr]

Neat. Do the cognates of eleven and twelve still exist in any sense in the language, like if say twelve became "a dozen", or something like that? Maybe with some semantic drift over the centuries?

[Ælfwine]

Neat. Do the cognates of eleven and twelve still exist in any sense in the language, like if say twelve became "a dozen", or something like that? Maybe with some semantic drift over the centuries?

The only word for twelve other than tinetue is "duzene," ['tu.zə.nə] which is a fairly ubiquitous loanword itself.

Now I could reconstruct something from proto germanic following Old Norse tylft, but I'd need an etymology.

[Ælfwine]

Ultimately with the strong verbs I decided to merge the subjunctive with the infinitive. The only exception is a handful of auxiliary verbs like wart "to be." This doesn't change much, except that I decided against the importation of the weak preterite endings into strong verbs, as most of them now preserve some difference via ablaut.

You can look at the strong verbs on my wiki.

Like in every other Germanic language, weak verbs are the only productive verbs in Crimean Gothic. They form their preterites in -еде -ede. In most verbs, this suffix reduces to -де -de. Due to vowel weakening, the weak verbs have merged into just one declension.

Full Weak Class Verb Conjugation, from PGmc *spellōną, "to speak"
Infinitive: spellen [ˈʃpellən]
Imperative: spell
Present Participle: spellents
Past Participle: spellens

Present Tense:
1st S: spelle
2nd S: spelles
3rd S: spellet
1st P: spellem
2nd P: spellet
3rd P: spellen

Past Tense:
1st S: spelde
2nd S: speldes
3rd S: speldet
1st P: speldem
2nd P: speldet
3rd P: spelden

[Ælfwine]

Several numbered updates have arrived for Crimean Gothic that I had been tinkering with recently. I assure you, my audience of maybe 4, there will be plenty more coming!

1.) First thing: I've mentioned on the Y&N whether I should delete final schwa in order to slowly introduce a Russian-style palatalization contrast, starting with absorbing the leftover glides (i.e. [ˈkʰriːmjə] > [ˈkʰriːmʲ]. I decided I am not going to do this, as it would require too much an overhaul to my current noun and verb paradigms, and introduce too many other complications when I just want to move forward.

2.) I've finally come to a decision on vowel/consonant length: it shall not exist in Crimean Gothic. So Gothish has no long vowels or geminated consonants.

3.) There are two main realizations of the mid vowels /e/ and /o/. In open syllables, they have a higher realization: i.e. /e/ becomes [e̝], a close-mid vowel. In some dialects they may be diphthongized to [eɪ] and [oʊ] respectively. In closed syllables on the other hand the realization is a somewhat lower [e̞], and may be described as open-mid [ɛ].

4.) For a while I was unsure if standard Crimean Gothic would have any diphthongs whatsoever, as it had monophthongized all the Proto-Germanic diphthongs by modern day. However, I discovered that the loss of /h/ before a syllable-final glide would reintroduce falling diphthongs with /u/ (/w/ is not phonemic). I have not found any diphthongs with a front glide /j/ yet.

Diphthongs:

/au̯/ <ау>, from PGmc *ahw
/eu̯/ <еу>, from PGmc *ehw
/iu̯/ <иу>, from PGmc *ihw
/ou/ <оу>, from PGmc *ohw

Examples:
сау /ˈsau̯/ see.1PS.PRET (PGmc *sahw)
сеу /ˈseu̯/ see.2PS.IMP (PGmc *sehw)

ик сау нєн. Ik saw njen. I saw no one.

Other forms of this verb have /v/ where the glide is expected to be. In other words these diphthongs have 'grammatischer wechsel' with /v/.

5.) The newest draft of the Gothish phonology is:

/m n/
/pʰ [p] b tʰ [t] d kʰ ([k] g)/
/f v θ s z ʃ x ɣ/
/l r/
/j/

/i u/
[e] [o]
/e̞ ə o̞/
[ɛ] [ɔ]
/ä/
/au̯ eu̯ iu̯ ou/

() = loanwords only
[] = allophones of the following or preceding phoneme

6.) The Orthography:


(I'm not quite sure why [k] is an allophone of /ɣ/ instead of /g/. I'll have to fix that.)

[Zythros Jubi]

Why are there so many schwas, just like West Germanic languages and Danish, in such an isolated environment from other Germanic languages; is this realistic?

[Ælfwine]

Why are there so many schwas, just like West Germanic languages and Danish, in such an isolated environment from other Germanic languages; is this realistic?

I'm going to fully admit that I don't know if this is realistic for Crimean Gothic, but a few things suggest it. First, is the confusion over vowels in unstressed syllables in the corpus with historical [a e i o u] = /ə/ usually writtten as <e> but sometimes other characters: for example, the stems in the verbs schlipen, breen, geen seem to have [e], possibly for /ə/, we also see [a] in mycha (c.f. BibGoth mekeis), [o] in ano (BG hana) etc.

A second reason is that later texts in related Biblical Gothic also show similar confusion in the unstressed vowel space. This paper explains it better than I can. Furthermore, a sound change as common as V[-stress] > ə hardly points to any relationship between Crimean Gothic and say, German any more than it does between French and Romanian (which both historically turned vowels into schwa.)

Admittedly, I am starting to become skeptical to the common scholarly viewpoint that ALL of Crimean Gothic's unstressed vowels became schwa. This doesn't seem to be the case in many words were Bibilical Gothic -a corresponds with CG -a, for example, in -thata, ita, brunna, miera, ada (<addja maybe, could also be from BG addi). Though this could be a coincidence, or a result of some constraints on the above sound law. However, if there are constraints I cannot identify them.

[spanick]

Russian, too, has s large number of reduced vowels. It’s not specifically a Germanic thing.

[Herra Ratatoskr]

On an unrelated note, do you have any work done on Goþesch adjectives?

[Ælfwine]

On an unrelated note, do you have any work done on Goþesch adjectives?

I haven't really worked on adjectives much. I don't think they would differ that much from what is typical of Germanic languages. Going from the Crimean Gothic body, there are a few ideas:

-s generally marks the nominative masculine singular, as it does in the nouns, hence CrGo ieltsch /ˈi̯el[t]s/ "health!" vs the accusative iel /i̯el/ in the short phrase iel vburt.

-ta or -ata continues to mark the pronominal inflection of neuter adjectives as we see in CrGo gadeltha "beautiful" and atochta "bad." The variations in some of these words suggest that the middle schwa was often deleted in between two consonants preceded and followed by another schwa, so gadeltha and atochta are [ˈɣa.dəl.tə] and [ˈa.təx.tə] from earlier gothic *gadilata and *atugata(?) respectively.

(Also I find it significant that /i/ and /u/ are both lowered to <e> and <o> when unstressed respectively. Maybe the vowels are closer to [ɛ] and [ɔ] respectively. Although perhaps the following [x] in atochta is influencing the latter form.)

[Herra Ratatoskr]

Cool. So, based on that and the nominal declensions, I'm guessing the endings would be something like this? (assuming the strong/weak distinction is retained)

Code: Select all

+-----+-----+------+-----+------+-----+------+
|     | Masculine  |  Feminine  |   Neuter   |
|     +-----+------+-----+------+-----+------+
|     |   S |   P  |  S  |  P   |  S  |   P  |
+-----+-----+------+-----+------+-----+------+
| STRONG                                     |
+-----+-----+------+-----+------+-----+------+
| Nom |  -s |      |     |      |     |      |
+-----+-----+  -e  | -e  | -es  | -te |  -e  |
| Obl |  -  |      |     |      |     |      |
+-----+-----+------+-----+------+-----+------+
| WEAK                                       |
+-----+-----+------+-----+------+-----+------+
| Nom |     |      | -e  |      |     |      |
+-----+ -e  | -ens +-----+ -ens | -e  | -ene |
| Obl |     |      | -en |      |     |      |
+-----+-----+------+-----+------+-----+------+

[Ælfwine]

Cool. So, based on that and the nominal declensions, I'm guessing the endings would be something like this? (assuming the strong/weak distinction is retained)

Code: Select all

+-----+-----+------+-----+------+-----+------+
|     | Masculine  |  Feminine  |   Neuter   |
|     +-----+------+-----+------+-----+------+
|     |   S |   P  |  S  |  P   |  S  |   P  |
+-----+-----+------+-----+------+-----+------+
| STRONG                                     |
+-----+-----+------+-----+------+-----+------+
| Nom |  -s |      |     |      |     |      |
+-----+-----+  -e  | -e  | -es  | -te |  -e  |
| Obl |  -  |      |     |      |     |      |
+-----+-----+------+-----+------+-----+------+
| WEAK                                       |
+-----+-----+------+-----+------+-----+------+
| Nom |     |      | -e  |      |     |      |
+-----+ -e  | -ens +-----+ -ens | -e  | -ene |
| Obl |     |      | -en |      |     |      |
+-----+-----+------+-----+------+-----+------+

That's actually... pretty close to my previous sketch (albeit formatted nicer.)

The neuter has pro nominal and null forms, so one can find blindete alongside mere blind.

[Herra Ratatoskr]

That's actually... pretty close to my previous sketch (albeit formatted nicer.)

The neuter has pro nominal and null forms, so one can find blindete alongside mere blind.

Neat. Is there a functional difference between the pronominal and null neuters, like one is attributive, the other predicative, or something like that? Also, do you have any Slavic influence on the usages of weak and strong adjectives (assuming the distinction did, in fact, stick around)? It looks like modern East Slavic languages only have relics of the Slavic indefinite/definite distinction, but Old Church Slavonic still made the distinction, so I'd imagine there could be an opportunity for influence.

[Ælfwine]

That's actually... pretty close to my previous sketch (albeit formatted nicer.)

The neuter has pro nominal and null forms, so one can find blindete alongside mere blind.

Neat. Is there a functional difference between the pronominal and null neuters, like one is attributive, the other predicative, or something like that? Also, do you have any Slavic influence on the usages of weak and strong adjectives (assuming the distinction did, in fact, stick around)? It looks like modern East Slavic languages only have relics of the Slavic indefinite/definite distinction, but Old Church Slavonic still made the distinction, so I'd imagine there could be an opportunity for influence.

You have to keep in mind that Slavic expansion into the Crimea is a relatively recent phenomena, for almost 1500 Crimean Gothic would be recieving purely Greek and Turkish influence (and as it seems Ossetian, Mongolian even...) So as I said before any Slavic influence into CrGo would be due to areal features spreading into it indirectly, or relatively recent influence (apparently many languages in Russia have a tendency to adopt palatal consonants and other features.)

I would have to see what Greek does. Greek puts the adjective before the noun, as does Germanic, so that's one thing to keep.

Edit: creating a new syntactical difference between the neuters sounds like an interesting idea too.

[Ælfwine]

Clitic Object Pronouns

Clitic object pronouns agree for the gender and number of the object pronoun. In simple phrases without objects, the neuter gender is default. They typically appear after a verb, cliticizing to their host. In embedded clauses, they come before the verb. The Gothic clitic object pronoun comes from the accusative singular form of sa.

Following usage in Turkish, the word for one, “итъ”, can also function as an indefinite article.

Some examples:

Neuter:
ик малдатъ итъ щап!
ik maldate ite stap
1SG say-PST one goat.
“I said a goat!” (Literally: “I said it, a goat!”)

Masculine:
ик малданъ итъ мар!
ik maldane ite mar
1SG say-PST one horse.
“I said a horse!” (“I said it, a horse!”)

Feminine:
ик малдо итъ ку!
ik maldo itə ku
1SG say-PST one cow.
“I said a cow!” (“I said it, a cow!”)