Studies in Gothic

This volume investigates a wide range of topics in the study of Gothic, the oldest Germanic language to be attested in any substantial texts, some three centuries before the earliest Old English. It covers issues in sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, phonology, derivational morphology, verbal syntax, and discourse structure. Individual chapters examine Gothic-Latin bilingualism in sixth-century Italy, some hitherto undiscovered aspects of the production of the first edition of the Codex Argenteus associated with England, and the translations of Greek nominal compounds in the Gospels. Phonological and morphological topics covered include vowel lowering (“breaking”), the distinction between abstract nouns in -ei and -iþa, the shape of the 'yon'-word in Proto-Germanic, and the morphology and derivational history of the word fidur-dogs 'four-days-old'. The syntactic studies explore the development of verb + particle constructions in Gothic and Old Saxon, attempt to discern the order of noun plus adnominal possessive, and analyse the complex and in part cross-linguistically unparalleled markers of Gothic relative clauses. The volume concludes with two chapters that explore discourse structure: the first studies the particles nu and þan in their dual roles as anaphoric elements ('now' and 'then') and as discourse particles, while the second examines the system of discourse articulation as a whole in the Gothic Gospels.

Jared S. Klein, Distinguished Research Professor of Linguistics, Classics, and Germanic and Slavic Languages, University of Georgia, Athens,Arturas Ratkus, Senior Research Fellow, University of Vilnius

Jared S. Klein is Distinguished Research Professor of Linguistics, Classics, and Germanic and Slavic Languages at the University of Georgia, Athens, where he teaches Sanskrit, Gothic, Classical Armenian, the comparative grammar of Greek and Latin, historical linguistics, and Indo-European. He is interested in Indo-European discourse structure as well as the comparative grammar of those old Indo-European languages whose earliest texts are translations from the Greek New Testament.


Arturas Ratkus is Senior Research Fellow in Linguistics at the University of Vilnius. His main research area is in historical linguistics, with a focus on the history of Germanic languages, the history of English, linguistic variation, reconstruction, and morphological and syntactic theory. He draws on Gothic material in investigating problems of determination, word order, and morphological and lexical variation.