• Pages
  • Table of Contents
  • About These Lessons
  • The Sounds of Gothic
• Lessons
  • Unit 1
  • Unit 2
  • Unit 3
  • Unit 4
  • Unit 5
  • Unit 6
  • Unit 7
  • Unit 8
  • Unit 9
  • Unit 10
  • Unit 11
  • Unit 12
  • Unit 13
  • Unit 14
  • Unit 15
  • Unit 16
  • Unit 17
  • Unit 18
• Nouns
  • Pure A-Stems
  • Pure A-Stem Plurals
  • Masculine JA-Stems
  • Neuter JA-Stems
  • WA-Stems
  • Feminine Ō-Stems
  • JŌ-Stems; Decl. of Thousand
  • Masculine I-Stems
  • Feminine I-Stems
  • Irregular I-Stems
  • U-Stems
  • N-Stems
  • Minor Declensions
  • Personal Pronouns
  • Reflexive Pronoun
  • WH Pronouns
  • Relative Pronouns
  • Demonstrative Pronouns
  • Posessive Pronouns
  • Indefinite Pronouns
  • Negative Indef. Pronouns
  • Paradigm Tables
• Verbs
  • Present Personal Endings
  • Preterite of Strong Verbs
  • Preterite, Consonant Changes
  • Ablaut Table
  • Principal Parts of Strong Verbs
  • "To Be", Present Tense
  • "To Be", Preterite Tense
  • "To Will", Conjugation
  • Reduplicated Preterites
  • Class I Weak Verbs
  • Irregular Weak Verbs I
  • Class II Weak Verbs
  • Class III Weak Verbs
  • Class IV Weak Verbs
  • Preterite-Presents
  • Auxiliary Verbs
  • Passive Voice
  • Imperative
  • Subjunctive
  • Participles
  • Verbs Governing the Genitive
  • Verbs Governing the Dative
  • Verbs with Feeling
• Adjectives
  • Strong A-Stems
  • Strong JA-Stems
  • Strong WA-Stems
  • Strong I-Stems
  • Cardinals 1 to 10
  • Cardinals Beyond 10
  • Declension of Two and Three
  • Weak Declension
  • Gender of Groups of People
  • Ordinals
  • Comparatives
  • Superlatives
  • Adverbs
  • Adverb Compar. and Superl.
  • Participles
  • Adjectives Governing the Genitive
  • Adjectives Governing the Dative
• Misc
  • Prepositions
  • Conjunctions
  • Questions: Yes/No
  • Questions: WH
  • Cardinals 1 to 10
  • Cardinals Beyond 10
  • Months, Days of Week
  • Colors
  • Other Uses of Accusative
  • Other Uses of Genitive
  • Other Uses of Dative
  • Compound Formations
  • Prefixes
  • Suffixes
• Lexicon
  • Gothic-English
  • English-Gothic
  • Gótico-Español
  • Español-Gótico
• Tools
  • Rhyme Utility
  • Keyboard
• Feedback

Unit 10

10.1) Demonstrative Pronouns

Although the definite article functions as the usual demonstrative pronoun, there is attested a pronoun whose stem is hi-, as und hina dag (to this day), himma daga (in this day), fram himma (henceforth), und hita nu (until now). No other forms of this pronoun are attested, although a complete declension has been reconstructed; it appears in the lexicon on this site as his.

There is a compound demonstrative pronoun, formed from sa, sō, þata by appending -uh. The nom. sing. forms are sah, sōh, þatuh; all others change final -a to -uh; final -s to -zuh; and any other vowel simply appends -h.

10.2) Posessive Pronouns

In addition to the genitives of the personal pronouns, there are also posessive pronouns: meins, meina, mein(ata) (my); þeins, þeina, þein(ata) (thy); seins, seina, sein(ata) (his/her). These appear to be declined like most adjectives (see mikils). Also attested is unsar, masc. acc. unsarana, fem. nom. acc. unsara. The neuter nom. acc. of unsar does not occur with the -ata ending.

Only when referring to the subject of the sentence do forms of seins occur. Any other time, one of the genitive pronouns is, ize, izos, izo, is used.

The corpus of Gothic texts frequently uses posessive pronouns with the definite article, a construction reminiscent of, and perhaps influenced by, Greek, for example so armahaírtiþa þeina, literally "the mercy [of] thine", as the translation for σοῦ ἡ ἐλεημοσύνη.

10.3) Class II Weak Verbs

Class II weak verbs are distinctive in having their infinitive in -ōn instead of -an. Otherwise, the consonants of the present tense are the same as in strong verbs:

The preterite forms are salbōda, salbōdēs, salbōda; salbōdēdu, etc.

Quite a few verbs belong to this conjugation:

and several more.

10.4) Imperatives

Imperatives are formed differently in strong vs. weak verbs. Strong verbs such as qiþan form the 2nd person singular imperative from the plain stem: qiþ (say!). If the final consonant is voiced, it becomes devoiced: liuþ (grow!) from liudan. For weak verbs, the 2nd sing. imper. is formed like so: sōkei (seek!) from sōkjan and salbō (anoint!) from salbōn. The imperative of wisan is regular for a strong verb.

These and other persons and numbers of imperatives for these verbs are as follows:

10.5) Indefinite Pronouns

By appending -uh to the forms of ƕas, ƕō, ƕa, and the forms of ƕarjis, with some sound changes, the indefinite pronouns ƕazuh (ƕōh, ƕah), ƕarjizuh (ƕarjōh, ƕarjatōh), and áinƕarjizuh (áinƕarjōh, áinƕarjatōh) are formed. Both mean each, every. There is also ƕaþaruh (each of two; both), but this is only attested in the masculine dative form ƕaþarammēh and its compound áinƕaþarammēh.

Ƕazuh has ƕanōh for masc. acc. and ƕammēh for dat. masc. and neut. but otherwise resembles ƕas in all genders with the following changes: Final vowels append -h and final consonants append -uh; final s is voiced to z. Ƕarjizuh similarly resembles ƕarjis + -h, -uh, s->z but with masc. acc. ƕarjanōh; neut. nom. acc. ƕarjatōh; masc. neut. dat. ƕarjammēh.

The sound changes for appending -uh to pronouns are are evident in the following declension table:

Note the irregular form ƕanuh. It is attested twice, however the expected ƕanōh is attested once. Also attested is acc. pl. ƕanzuh for the same pronoun.

The combinations ƕazuh saei, saƕazuh saei, saƕazuh izei, þisƕazuh saei all mean "whosoever". The neuter equivalent þataƕah þei means "whatsoever". In the neuter N.V.A., þisƕaduh þadei is attested as an adverb meaning "whithersoever".

Another indefinite pronoun is sums (some), declined like mikils. When used in the construction sums... sums..., it means "the one... while the other..." comparing two parallel clauses in a manner equivalent to Greek 'ο μέν... 'ο δέ. When used in this way, sums usually has -uh added to its second occurence, and sometimes to both: (nom. pl.) sumái(h)... sumáih... (some... and others...). In many instances the -h assimilates to -þ due to a following þan. The attested forms of sums + -uh are:

10.6) Indefinite Pronouns for Negation

Indefinite pronouns used for negation are built from ƕas, áins, or manna plus the clitic -hun, and always occur with ni to mean "no one". Mannahun is always masculine and declines as mannahun, mannanhun, manshun, mannahun. (More on this declension in the next unit.) Ƕashun is only attested in the masc. nom.: ni ƕashun. Ni áinshun (no one, nothing) is declined as:

10.7) Other Uses of the Accusative

Besides forming the direct object of the majority of transitive verbs, the accusative has a few other uses:

• To complement a verb with a parallel in meaning, as in: háifstjan gōda háifst, to fight a good fight; ōgan sis agis mikil, to fear a great fear; waúrkja waúrstwa, I work works.
• Rarely in Gothic a phrase such as gabundans handuns (bound as to hands) occurs. (Gabundans is a participle, covered in unit 14; the declension of handus is covered in the next unit.)
• The accusative governs the length of time and spatial extent of an action: gaggan dagis wig = to go a day's journey.
• Impersonal verbs concerning hunger and thirst take an accusative of the person: ina huggreiþ (he is hungry). The idiom kar(a) ist (it concerns, lit. there is a care) takes accusative of the person who is caring and genitive of that which is cared of: kar-ist ija fadreináis izōs (she cares about her family).
• Láisjan (to teach) takes an accusative of the student and another of whatever is being taught. If used reflexively, e.g. láisjan sik, it means "to learn".
• The verbs táujan (to make), waúrkjan (to work), briggan (to bring) with two accusatives convey the sense of making the one direct object into the other; similarly, a number of other verbs of knowing, judging, finding, counting, etc. are known with two accusatives and a semantic pattern similar to "to consider X to be Y".

10.8) Giving Thanks

The verb awiliudōn has uses involving various prepositions and conjugations. The entity being thanked, if specified, goes in the dative, and follows the verb, although there are two occurrences of guda awiliuþ ("thanks be unto god") in which the latter word is actually a noun and wisadáu is implied. To thank someone for something attributed to them, it is common to use untē or fram +dat. To be thankful for a condition or situation, ei, ƕáiwa, and in +dat are all attested. To thank on behalf of someone, in +gen occurs in multiple places and faúr uns occurs once. Some examples include:

10.9) Examples of Material from This Unit

Answers

6. Work ye beautiful works. (Note that skáun waúrstw also means "artwork", so this can also be translated as "Make ye artworks.")

7. He cares not for the sheep.

8. Learn Gothic and you'll understand my words.

9. The ones you gave me, I have not lost any of them.

10. For some, snow is pleasant; for others, it is too cold.

« Previous Lesson   Table of Contents   Next Lesson »