Comparative Analysis of Gothic Nouns with Consonantal Stem-Building Markers
Stem-building markers became the formal factors of the declensions only in the course of time. Originally, they were not indifferent to the semantics of the nouns and joined to certain names only. The comparative analysis of nouns with consonantal elements -j-, -w-, -n- in Gothic convinces us of the ancient origin of the markers -j-, -w- as the morphological structure of the word allows to reveal earlier elements. Every stem-building marker with a consonantal element possesses its specific feature and expresses more concrete lexical meaning. The original meaning of the consonantal markers -j-, -w- was connected with an earlier category – category of animateness/inanimateness, i.e. they were markers of animateness but they lost this meaning. Only the marker -n- has kept the meaning of animateness, and vowel markers show the grammatical gender.
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Issue: 9, 2006
Series of issue: Humanities (Philology)
Rubric: Topical Problems of Indo-European Linguistics
Pages: 25 — 30
Downloads: 977