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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
In an article on “Perceptual Sense in Gothic,” JEGPxxxiii, [1934], 205, ff. Professor Allen W. Porterfield propounds a number of theses, the most important of which, when stripped of their sometimes elegant, sometimes confusing phrasing, may be restated as follows: To render the idea of observing an optic phenomenon, Wulfila, irrespective of Greek usage, employs some form of saian or some compound of it with amazing regularity (p. 205). Possibly Wulfila followed the Latin, with its rather consistent use of videre, more closely than the Greek (p. 206). The Gothic prefixes add no semantic increment to the verb, but represent mere verbal nuances (pp. 209, 218). There must have been, in folk-Gothic, an appreciable number of verbs expressing the same general idea (pp. 214 f., 217). It was in all likelihood Wulfila's Arianism that influenced him in the use of saian, as “confining himself to a realistic, ocular verb, one that admits of nothing supernatural, would be in keeping with Arian doctrine.” It is my unenviable task to enter into these propositions at some length, in order to reexamine the use of gasaian and other ga-compounds.
1 This one consideration should have sufficed to refute the absurd fancies promulgated some twenty years ago by Professor Leo Wiener, who would have us believe that the Gothic Bible was in reality Burgundian of the eighth and ninth centuries. Who, in any section of Western Europe, at that time would have thought of translating the Scriptures from the Greek? who in Western Europe even knew Greek? and who would in that epoch have invented the letters used in the Gothic fragments, when the Latin script was generally accepted in the West of Europe?
2 Gothic gaggan translates . Some of these words are rendered by compounds of leiþan and a few other verbs of locomotion. But it seems unlikely that from these facts we could draw inferences on special modes of moving from place to place. Every language has some words that it uses with striking frequency, cf. and their compounds, Fr. mettre, Engl. to get, move, change, Ger. tun, machen, etc. There are certain modern investigators of a particularly dangerous type who would
make out such frequent use of certain words as signs of some specific form of Geistigkeit and Weltgefühl and draw from such phenomena far-reaching conclusions on the character of the speech community.
3 And possibly vernehmen; horchen, lauschen, an-, zuhören mean different things, acts of volition.
4 I fail to grasp the meaning of “Would it not be safer here to figure on long periods of time and their effects than to suppose loan words in an age when loans could hardly have been realized?” Does the author assume that there were no loan words in Gothic? that Gothic could possibly have been preserved in Nordic purity after decades if not generations of association with the peoples of the Roman Empire? And it is entirely erroneous to assume that because certain words existed in OGH they must also have been found in Gothic. In the same place we hear: “We sometimes neglect the facts of chronology and ethnological progress in this connection. We say: 'There is a wide gap between Gothic and OHG.' There is very little gap at all; where the 'gap' comes in is in the possession of actual Gothic and OHG documents.” We had always fancied that at Wulfila's time there was no such thing as OHG, and that West Germanic was not yet split up by the OHG sound shift.
5 “There can certainly be no flaw in the reasoning to assert that the use of Gothic andniman in this connection would have revealed a keener sense of linguistic discrimination.” But andniman means to take up, to receive. If the author had taken the trouble to compare Gal. vi. 2 gup mans andwairpei ni andsitiþ—a close parallel to the above passage—he would have found a better substitute.
6 As to the subtitle, I would reaffirm here my denial of the very existence of synonyms properly so called. I do not believe that any two words of any one language ever meant absolutely the same thing under any and all conditions.
7 I do not recall ever having heard of collective verbs; does the author means verbs containing the idea of together, zusammen?
8 The wording “For the inability … for the same, …” of course either contains an odd misconception or beclouds the issue hopelessly, for it admits of no other interpretation than “for their inability to see Him after He has gone to His father,” when what Christ means is that He will return, or that He will take them into His heavenly mansions.
9 Professor Curme treats verb aspect in his Grammar of the German Language 2nd ed., §164; for English, in Kurath-Curme's Grammar of the English Language, iii (Syntax), 373—388; Hirt in his Handbuch des Urgermanischen, iii, 128–134.
10 Jacob Grimm, with his marvelous intuition, had divined it fully sixty years before; see his letter to Lachmann, Dec. 27, 1823.
11 A modern German parallel: “Manch ein Volk hat gehungert und gehungert und hat seine Größe erhungert.”
12 The figures of my own collection from the entire Gothic texts do not tally with Professor Porterfield's; neither does a count of cases of saian and its compounds in Gabelentz-Loebe's vocabulary confirm his statistics. But I attach little importance to such a divergence.
13 Behaghel calls attention, in §598, to another function of ga- besides its perfective use. As is shown by the use of the prefix in nominal compounds, the idea of zusammen may merge with that of repetition and, finally, duration, as in Geächze, Geseufze, Gesinge, and he adduces familiar and dialect locutions such as etwas zusammenreden, zusammensingen. If I correctly analyze my own speech rhythm and melody, I make a distinction in the pitch of zusammen in cases like these: Was redest du da zusammen!= What senseless chatter is this! as against Was redet ihr da zusammen? = What are you talking, conferring, whispering about, what mischief are you up to? Die Arbeit habt ihr zusammen geschrieben=you collaborated in this piece of work, as against Der hat einen schönen Stiefel zusammengeschrieben = that's a fine mess that fellow has concocted. But it is odd that I cannot detect any such difference in these two sentences: Wenn sie zusammen (= miteinander) kommen, sind sie wieder versöhnt, and Wenn sie zusammenkommen (= aneinanderkommen, -geraten), gibt's ein Unglück.
14 Hirt's statement, loc. cit., page 130, that the present of point-action verbs has only future meaning, needs considerable modification. Ich sehe ihn!—the usual translation of the phrase quoted—is equivalent to ich erblicke ihn, which is distinctly point-action. Hirt mentions among the simple verb stems belonging here bringen; but ich bringe dir's may just as often mean I am bringing it as I shall bring it.
15 The position of the reflexive, e.g., after the infinitive, as in English, which grates on the ears of a German, is evidenced by the development of the passive form in the Scandinavian languages out of reflexive verbs.