Gothic declension

Grammatical cases

A complete declension consists of five grammatical cases.

Description of cases

Order of cases

Gothic language grammars often follow the common NOM-ACC-GEN-DAT order used for the Germanic languages. VOC is usually attached to the same line as ACC as a combined VOC-ACC, but if not, it may be placed between NOM and ACC (as in Wright's "Grammar of the Gothic Language").

Short vs. long stems

An important distinction in many of the declension classes below is the difference between "short" and "long" stems. Frequently declension classes are divided into two subclasses, one for short-stemmed nouns and one for long-stemmed nouns.

A short stem contains:

A long stem is all other types of stems:

The -a declension

This declension has as counterparts the second declension (us/um) of Latin, and the omicron declension (os/on) of Greek. It contains masculine and neuter nouns.

A varied set of nouns have two stems, one occurring with endings that are null or begin with a consonant (the nominative, accusative and vocative singular) and another that occurs with endings beginning with a vowel (all but the previously listed forms).

One common situation leading to two-stem nouns is the automatic devoicing of voiced fricatives at (or near) the end of a word, e.g.:

Other nouns with two stems are:

The -ja declension

This declension is really just the -a declension with a j immediately preceding. However, due to various sound laws, a new declension subcategory has arisen that does not exactly follow the form of the plain -a declension. Similar developments occurred in Greek and the Slavic languages, among others.

This declension has as counterparts the second declension nouns in (-ius/-ium) of Latin. The counterparts in Greek are some second declension nouns in (-ios/-ion), as well as many that show effects of palatalization (e.g., -zdos < *-gyos or *-dyos; -llos < *-lyos; -ptos < -*pyos; -ssos or -ttos < -*tyos; -airos/-eiros/-oiros < *-aryos/-eryos/-oryos; -ainos/-einos/-oinos < *-anyos/enyos/onyos; etc., and similarly for neuter nouns in -ion or *-yon). It contains masculine and neuter nouns.

The masculine nouns have a distinction between short- and long-stemmed nouns, as described above. harjis "army" is a prototypical short-stem noun, and haírdeis is a prototypical long-stem noun. Neuters, however, have merged the two types in favor of the short-stem endings. Properly, there should be a distinction in the genitive singular between short-stem -jis and long-stem -eis, as for the masculine nouns, but -jis has mostly taken over. For a few nouns, however, both forms can be used, as in genitive andbahteis or andbahtjis "of service", gawaírþeis or gawaírþjis "of peace", from neuter nouns andbahti "service" and gawaírþi "peace", respectively.

Note that the neuters in this declension can be said to follow the two-stem pattern (e.g. kuni vs. kunj-) described above for a-stems. A few neuters in this declension follow the same overall pattern but have additional vowel changes between the stems:

The -ō declension

This declension counterparts the first declension (a) of Latin, and the alpha declension (a/as) of Greek. It contains feminine nouns.

The -jō declension

Nouns ending in -jō that have a short stem (see discussion above) behave identically to normal -ō stems, e.g. brakja "strife", sibja "relationship", sunja "truth". However, long-stemmed nouns in -jō have a different nominative singular ending in -i:

Note that in this particular case the "long-stem" declension includes nouns with a long vowel or diphthong and no following consonant. In addition, these nouns have a different stem in the nominative singular from all other cases:

The -i declension

This declension counterparts the vowel stems of the third declension (is) of Latin, and the third declension of Greek. It contains masculine and feminine nouns. Note that masculine nouns have become identical to -a stem nouns in the singular, while feminine nouns have preserved the original declension.

Similar to the situation with -a stems, some nouns have a different stem in the nominative and accusative singular than in other cases:

Some additional complications:

The -u declension

This declension counterparts the fourth declension (us) of Latin and parts of the third declension of Greek (cf. πῆχυς). It contains nouns of all genders. faíhu "property" is the only well-attested neuter -u stem, and lacks a plural. Other remnants are the invariant neuter adjective filu "much" (with an adverbial genitive filáus), and qaíru or gáiru "spike, goad", occurring once in a gloss. leiþu "cider, fruit wine" is attested only in the accusative singular and without any context to infer its gender, so it may have been masculine or neuter.

The weak declension, n-stems

The an, on and in declensions constitute a Germanic word derivation, which is also used for adjectives in the weak form marking definiteness. The declension loosely parallels the Latin nouns in -ō, genitive -ōnis/-inis, which shares the same Indo-European declensional origin (the Greek descendent being the more regularized -ōn, -onos class).

The -an declension

Masculines and neuters belong to this declension.

There are a few neuter irregularities:

The -ōn declension

This declension is the feminine counterpart of the an declension.

Note: the first g in tuggō is pronounced [ŋ], the Gothic language borrowed the practice to denote [ŋɡ] by gg and [ŋk] by gk from Koine Greek in which the New Testament was originally written.

The -ein declension

This declension contains abstract feminines only.

The -r declension

A few family nouns inherited from Proto-Indo-European have a very archaic declension. Feminines and masculines have identical forms.

Inflected thus are also brōþar m., brother, fadar m., father, daúhtar f., daughter.

The -nd declension

These nouns are old present participles, corresponding to nouns in -nt in Latin and Greek.

The root nouns

These nouns correspond to the consonant declensions in Latin and Greek (in both cases, part of the third declension). Only traces of masculines are extant, but feminines are fairly well attested.

The only masculine nouns extant are mēnōþs "month" (gen. sg. mēnōþs or mēnōþis?, dat. pl. mēnōþum); reiks "ruler" (gen. sg. reikis, dat. pl. reikam); and weitwōds "witness" (gen. sg., dat. pl. not attested).

There are nine feminine nouns attested. Note the following irregularities:

The other five feminine nouns are alhs "temple", baúrgs "city", brusts "breast", miluks "milk", and spaúrds "racecourse".

Adjectives

Adjectives in Gothic, as in the other Germanic languages, can be declined according to two different paradigms, commonly called "strong" and "weak". This represents a significant innovation in Germanic, although a similar development has taken place in the Baltic and Slavic languages.

Adjectives in Proto-Indo-European -- as is still the case in Latin, Greek, and most other daughters—are declined in exactly the same way as nouns. Germanic "strong" adjectives, however, take many of their endings from the declension of pronouns, while "weak" adjectives take the endings of -n stem nouns, regardless of the underlying stem class of the adjective.

In general, weak adjectival endings are used when the adjective is accompanied by a definite article, and strong endings are used in other situations. However, weak endings are occasionally used in the absence of a definite article, and cause the associated noun to have the same semantics as if a definite article were present. Weak adjectives are also used when the associated noun is in the vocative case. In addition, some adjectives are always declined weak or strong, regardless of any accompanying articles.

The strong -ja declension

Similar to the situation with nouns, the ja-stem adjectives are divided into two subtypes, depending on whether the stem is short or long.

Short-stemmed -ja declension

This declension has only the following extant adjectives: aljis "other", freis "free" (stem frij-, see below), fullatōjis "perfect", gawiljis "willing", midjis "middle", niujis "new", sunjis "true", ubiltōjis "evil-doing", and unsibjis "lawless". Notes about the above adjectives:

Long-stemmed –ja declension

This declension is built out of long-stemmed -ja masculine and neuter nouns and long-stemmed -jō feminine nouns.

This declension has only five extant adjectives: aírzeis "astray", alþeis "old", faírneis "old", wilþeis "wild", and wōþeis "sweet". None of these adjectives are extent in any genitive singular forms, and hence the forms given above are reconstructions based on the behavior of the corresponding nouns. The hesitation between wilþeis or wilþjis as the neuter genitive singular form stems from the following facts:

The strong -i declension

Adjectives of this class have replaced most forms with forms taken from the -ja declension. Only the nominative singular, the neuter accusative singular and the masculine and neuter genitive singular have genuine -i stem forms.

The following adjectives of this type are extant (along with a few others): analáugns "hidden", anasiuns "visible", andanēms "pleasant", áuþs "desert", brūks "useful", gafáurs "well-behaved", gamáins "common", hráins "clean", sēls "kind", skáuns "beautiful", skeirs "clear", suts (?sūts) "sweet".

The strong -u declension

Similarly to -i stem adjectives, -u stem adjectives have replaced most forms with those taken from the -ja declension.

The following adjectives of this type are extant: aggwus "narrow", aglus "difficult", hardus "hard", hnasqus "soft", kaúrus "heavy", manwus "ready", qaírrus "gentle", seiþus "late", tulgus "steadfast", twalibwintrus "twelve years old", þaúrsus "withered", þlaqus "soft".

The weak declension

Weak adjectival endings are taken from the corresponding endings of masculine, feminine and neuter n-stems, e.g. masculine guma "man", feminine tuggō "tongue", neuter haírtō "heart". All adjectives have the same endings, regardless of the underlying stem class of the adjective. The only difference is that ja-stems, i-stems and u-stems have a -j- at the end of the stem, e.g. masculine singular nominative weak niuja "new", wilþja "wild", hráinja "clean", hardja "hard", corresponding to the strong forms niujis (short ja-stem), wilþeis (long ja-stem), hráins (i-stem), hardus (u-stem).

Relative pronouns

First and second person relative pronouns also exist, formed by compounding -ei to the normal first and second person pronouns, with final -s becoming -z. The following forms are extant: first person singular nominative ikei; second person singular nominative þuei, accusative þukei, dative þuzei; second person plural nominative juzei, dative izwizei.

Interrogative pronouns

The plural form *ƕans (masculine accusative) occurs once as part of the indefinite pronoun ƕanzuh "each, every"; see below.

The following additional pronouns exist:

Indefinite pronouns

Three indefinite pronouns are formed by appending -uh "and" to the interrogative pronouns ƕas "who, what", ƕarjis "which (of many)", and ƕaþar "which of two"; compare the analogously formed Latin pronoun quisque "each", formed from quis "who" and -que "and". Both ƕazuh and ƕarjizuh mean "each, every"; *ƕaþaruh means "each of two".

Before -uh, -s appears in the original form of -z-, and after long vowels and stressed short vowels, the u of -uh is elided. Ustressed short vowels are dropped before -uh in the declension of ƕazuh; however, in the other two pronouns, long vowels appear in place of unstressed short vowels, preserving an older state of affairs, and the u of -uh is elided. Declension tables of ƕazuh and ƕarjizuh are presented below. Of *ƕaþaruh, only a single form is extant, the dative singular *ƕaþarammēh, occurring in the compound form áinƕaþarammēh "to each one of two".

The plural form ƕanzuh (masculine accusative) occurs once, in the expression insandida ins twans ƕanzuh "he sent them forth two and two".

Additional pronominal forms are

Cardinals

áins "one" is always strong and is declined as a strong -a stem. Plural forms meaning "only, alone" also occur.

Higher numbers from fidwōr "four" through niuntaíhun "nineteen" are normally undeclined, but can be declined as -i stems, e.g. dative fidwōrim, genitive *fidwōrē.

Decades twái tigjus "twenty" through saíhs tigjus "sixty" have tigjus declined as a plural -u stem, e.g.

Decades sibuntēhund "seventy", ahtáutēhund "eighty", niuntēhund "ninety" and taíhuntēhund/taíhuntaíhund "one hundred" are normally undeclined, but genitive niuntēhundis "of ninety" occurs.

Multiples of "hundred" decline hund "hundred" as a neuter plural -a stem, with the units digit agreeing accordingly, e.g. nominative twa hunda, genitive twáim hundam "two hundred".

Multiples of "thousand" decline þūsundi "thousand" as a feminine plural -jō stem, with the units digit agreeing accordingly, e.g. nominative twōs þūsundjōs, dative *twáim þūsundjōm "two thousand".

Numbers below 20 behave as adjectives, whereas those starting at 20 behave as nouns and govern the genitive case of an associated object, e.g. dagē fidwōr tiguns "for forty days", fimf þūsundjōs waírē "five thousand men", miþ twáim tigum þūsundjō mannē "with twenty thousand men".

Ordinals

The extant numerals are fruma or frumists "first", anþar "second", þridja "third", fimfta "fifth", saíhsta "sixth", ahtuda "eighth", niunda "ninth", taíhunda "tenth", and fimftataíhunda "fifteenth". They are declined as follows:

Other numerals

"Both" is bái or bajōþs, of which the following forms are extant:

The extant forms of bái match the corresponding forms of twái "two", and evidence from other Germanic languages, e.g. Old English, indicates that all forms are constructed in this fashion.

Distributive numerals answer the question "how many at a time?". The isolated form tweihnái "two each" exists, declined as a plural strong adjective. Otherwise, distributive numerals are expressed using prepositional phrases, e.g. bi twans aíþþáu máist þrins "by twos or at most by threes"; ana ƕarjanōh fimftiguns "by fifties in each (company)"; insandida ins twans ƕanzuh "he sent them forth two and two".

Multiplicative numerals answer the question "how many times more?" and are formed by adding the adjectival stem -falþs to the stem of the corresponding cardinal. Extant are áinfalþs "onefold, simple"; fidurfalþs "fourfold" (note, not *fidwōrfalþs); taíhuntaíhundfalþs "hundredfold"; managfalþs "manifold".

Numeral adverbs answer the question "how often?" or "how many times?". They are formed by combining the cardinal or ordinal with the noun *sinþs "time" (lit. "a going"), and placing the result in the dative case: áinamma sinþa "once"; anþaramma sinþa "a second time"; twáim sinþam "twice"; þrim sinþam "thrice"; fimf sinþam "five times"; sibun sinþam "seven times". Compare Old English ǣne sīða "once", fīf sīða "five times".