Gothic language did not show some common features of later Germanic languages. The most obvious thing is that there is no morphological inflections in Goth, such as fotus in Goth, whose mode is fotjus, which is different from English foot and foot and German fu&; Szlig and f &；; Szlig Danish E, fod and f&; OslashDder, Swedish fot and f &；; Ouml is the opposite, and so on. These forms are due to I-umlaut/o:/>/&; oslash:/(& gt； English /I:/, German. /Y:/), Goth hasn't changed that much.
The original Germanic *z is still Z in Gothic, or it has been muted into S. In West Germanic and Germanic languages, *z becomes R, such as drus (meaning "falling") in Gothic, and dryre corresponding to Old English is an example.
Gothic language retains the Indo-European language family, but it does not appear in other Germanic languages. Like the old English word hātte (meaning "called"), it is only preserved as a trace and is passive in form.
Gothic language has a large number of verbs that become past tense through overlapping, which is another ancient feature inherited from Indo-European. Although this kind of trace exists in Germanic language, this phenomenon is largely covered up by later phonetic changes and analogies in other languages. The infinitives of the following words will be compared with their corresponding third person direct past tense:
1. "Sowing"
Goth: Sai An changed to Sai Suo. Old Norwegian: sá variant seri, derived from primitive Germanic language *sez.
The second step is "play"
Goth: Lekan changed to Lelek. Old English: lācan changed to leolc and l ē c.
Gothic and Cournot
Jordanians written in the 6th century attributed the origin of Gothic to Scandinavia. Of course, Gothic and Old Norwegian have some linguistic similarities, which makes them different from West Germanic. The hypothesis that ancient Norwegian and Gothic have the same ancestral language but are different from West Germanic is called "Gothic-Norwegian Hypothesis".
Some main features of North Germanic and East Germanic languages include:
1) The evolution from *-jj- and *-ww- in the original Germanic language to ddj (probably ggj and ggw in the former Gothic language) and ggj and ggv (Holcman's Law) in the old Norwegian language corresponds to the fact that the West Germanic language continues to retain semi-vowel pronunciation. For example, the common form of the word "Er" is zweio in Old Highland German, but twaddje in Gothic and tveggja in Gunos. In addition, we can also compare true in English and treu in German with triggws in Gothic and tryggr in Gunos. However, some people think that these two groups of sound changes (Gothic sound and Gunos sound) are just two unrelated and independent sound changes. .
2) There are many predicative verbs ending in -na, such as ga-waknan in Gothic and vakna in Gunos.
3) The second person singular used to end with -t, and it has the same vowels as the first person singular and the third person singular at the root. For example, the gothic namt (meaning "you received it") and Gunos namt correspond to the ancient highland German nāmi and the old English nāme and nūme. In West Germanic language, the second person ending in -t says that the past tense only exists in the verb "past-present tense".
4) There is a lack of repetition in J, or (in the case of old Norwegian) there is only G repetition in front of J. For example, the original Germanic language *kunjam has become Gothic kuni (meaning "kin") and Gunos kyn, and the corresponding form in old English is cynn, while the corresponding form in old Highland German is Ni Kun.
5) Absolute dative case consists of preposition at and a qualitative word, such as Gothic at urrinnandin sunnin, Old Norwegian at upprennandi sólu (meaning "when the sun rises"), Gothic at Iesu ufdaupidamma (meaning "when Jesus was baptized"), and Old Norwegian at Li&etc. EthNum vetri (meaning "when leaving in winter") and so on.
But the first point is controversial (see Hozman's Law), while the second and fourth points are left over from the analogy in the law, which is not enough as evidence. In addition, other equivalent lines make scholars think that a line can be drawn to divide the eastern and northwest Germanic languages. In any case, we must know that any two Germanic languages with the same characteristics do not necessarily have a specific ancestor language that excludes the third party, because the early Germanic languages may belong to a dialect continuum in their early development stage, and the language contact between different Germanic languages is extensive.
Even if Gothic-Norwegian or Northwest Germanic is not necessarily true, Gothic still plays an important role in understanding the evolution from primitive Germanic to ancient Norse. For example, in Old Scandinavian, the -n ending of nafn (meaning "name") can be seen in the genitive pattern namne of Gothic word namo. Sometimes Gothic helps to understand the earliest forms of words such as Nistler, such as the word gudija (see article Gothi) found in Nordhugglo, Nold Island, Norway. Its cognate word gudja (meaning "clergy") can be used as a textual research on its form and meaning.
There are many similarities between ancient Gothic and Gothic, which are not found in other ancient Scandinavian dialects. For example, there is no a-umlaut in high and low vowels (such as the contrast between fulk and folk in ancient Icelandic), the bass from U to O in front of R (such as bort), and the word "lamb" is used to refer to "sheep", and the early Germanic Latin loan lucerna (Gothic lukarn, Gugodland lukarr). How many coincidences there are and how many elements really link the two to the same ancestor are controversial. Elias. Elias Wei Sen has done a lot of work to classify ancient Gothic into Gothic dialects. If we understand such a proposal in strict historical terms, that is to say, it mentions the relationship between the pioneers of ancient Gothic language and the Gothic literature at that time. When the ancient Gothic language is recorded in the manuscript, it shows most features (words, word formation, phonology and grammar) that distinguish the ancient Norwegian language from the Gothic language, which can be seen from a document about the migration to southern Europe. The manuscript written in the ancient Gothic language by Gutsaga14th century:
Si & thorns; An af& thorn; Issum & thorns; Rim auca & thorns; Ganlanma body in the land elptj & thorns; Aim ai allafy & thorns; A & thorns; Aluta & Thorn; U & thorns; Landy Huldt Airlines. Thorns; Ri & thorns; Ia & thorns; Iau & thorns; So in Altsculdu & Thorn; Air aiga oc mi& thorns; Sir Bolt Hafassom. Thorns; Air fan ior & thorn; Ar attu ... so Fier Riforu & Thorn; Air at& thorns; Air quamu up to griclanz ... Ownby Gia Ohnhafa and Ohnhafa. Thorns; Air sumt af waru mali Chinese translation: After a long time, the descendants of these three people have produced so many descendants that the land can't be raised. Then they draw lots, and a third of them will pack their bags and get ready to leave. Besides, they can keep everything they have and take it with them. They walked a long way to the land of the Greeks ... they settled there and still live there, and they also brought back some things from our language.