The Main Groups of the Gothic Nouns with Compound Stem-Building Markers and their Parallels in Indo-European Languages.
We have investigated ja-, jM-stems and found that they are characterized by the semantic unity. On the whole they denote animate objects of the real world or objects played the relevant role in economic life of the Germanic people. There are nouns marked by these stem-building markers, which express possession. Such nouns have the meaning of pertaining to something or somebody. We might conclude that the consonantal marker -j- is the characteristic of nouns of all three genders, therefore it didn’t relate to the grammatical category of gender, which was formed later. As the marker is rather old (Corbett), the original meaning of -j- was connected with an earlier category – category of animateness/inanimateness, i.e. it was the marker of animateness. This is determined by the semantic and etymological analyses of the Gothic ja-, jM-stems. It is possible to subdivide the Gothic nouns of ja-, jM-stems denoting animate things in perception of ancient people into six groups: 1) nouns denoting people and their occupation; 2) nouns of relationship; 3) nouns denoting animals and plants; 4) nouns denoting realities bound up with a person or animal; 5) nouns in any case pertaining to a person and his activity; 6) nouns denoting natural phenomena.
( 405.91 kB ) 
( 391.77 kB )
Issue: 4, 2006
Series of issue: Humanities (Philology: Indo-European and Siberian languages)
Rubric: Indo-European Languages
Pages: 17 — 25
Downloads: 1668