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Aspect In Gothic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Philip Scherer
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Extract

It has been generally held that Gothic possessed a formal aspectual system which was very much like the system in OCS. In each language a simple imperfective is thought to have become perfective by the addition of a preverb—in Gothic especially by the addition of ga-, which in most instances did not change the meaning but merely the aspect of the basic verb (PIAG 103). And in each language every perfective verb, simple or derived, had future meaning in the present tense; though in Gothic, because there was no equivalent to the OCS iterative, a perfective verb also had present meaning. This tense ambivalence of the Gothic perfective present has been referred to as a flaw in an otherwise clear-cut aspectual system.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 30 , Issue 2-Part1: April-June , June 1954 , pp. 211 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © 1954 by the Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 For an evaluation of the literature on aspect in Gothic, see Wilhelm Streitberg, Perfective und imperfective actionsart im gotischen (PIAG), PBB 15.77-80 (1889); id., Gotisches Elemeniarbuch 6 (GE) 194 (1920). Cf. Alfred Senn, Verbal aspects in Germanic, Slavic, and Baltic, Lg. 25.402-9 (1949). Anton Mirowicz, Die Aspektfrage im Gotischen (1935), controverts Streitberg's generalization about the perfectivity of Gothic compounds.

The prevailing view is essentially the one which Streitberg expounds in PIAG 70-177. He maintains it despite the strictures of Anton Beer (GE 194), and repeats it, in condensed form, in GE 194-202. It is this view that Streitberg applies to his two editions of the Gothic Bibel (1908 and 1919) and to his Gotisches Wörterbuch (1908), now Part 2 of his Gotische Bibel. It is also the view which others have adapted to their analysis of aspect in Old and Middle High German (Senn 407 and fnn. 12-14), and which Senn uses as a basis for his diachronic extrapolation (Senn 409).

For a bibliography on aspect in the Slavic languages, see H. Chr. Sørensen, Aspect et temps en slave 186-88; C. H. van Schoonfeld, The aspect system of the Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian verbum finitum byti, Word 7.96-103 (1951); James Ferrell, The meaning of the perfective aspect in Russian, Word 7.104-35 (1951).

2 Thus PIAG 122: ‘Warum haben nicht alle perfectiven praesentien im gotischen futurischen sinn gleichwie im slavischen? Die frage ist berechtigt. Ihre beantwortung führt uns zugleich zum wundesten punkt des ganzen gotischen verbalsystems: nämlich dem schweren mangel, der in der nichtausbildung einer ilerativkategorie liegt ... Dieser mangel an iterativen vereitelt ... die consequente ausbildung des gotischen verbalsystems analog dem des slavischen und verleiht ihm einen nicht in abrede zu stellenden unklaren und schwankenden character ...‘

3 PIAG contains only four references to OCS, each supporting Streitberg's analysis: 85, in connection with the imperfectivity of ligan ‘lie’, sitan ‘sit’, standan ‘stand’; 91, to prove the perfectivity of gafraujinond ‘exercise lordship’ and gawaldand ‘exercise authority’; 94, to indicate the perfectivity of gagaggan ‘sich versammeln’; and 116, to render OHG gefullen ‘fulfill’.

4 Thus Senn asserts (402) that ‘The system of verbal aspects in Old Church Slavic is in principle identical with that now operating in Great Russian, Ukrainian, White Russian, and Polish’; hence, by classifying as imperfective (407) both primary and secondary Russian iteratives, he also includes the OCS iterative in the same category.

5 See, for instance, the imperfective thou shalt love ... hate (Gk. άγαπήσεις ... μισήσεις) in Thou shalt love they neighbor, and hate thine enemy (M 5.43), each of which is rendered in OCS by the prefixed forms but elsewhere by an appropriate imperfective: Pol. : Russ. ljubi ... nenavidi: Croat. ljubi ... mrzi.

6 Cf. fn. 1.

7 Note perfective use of Goth. bairan in iþ Aileisabeiþ usfullnoda du bairan () jah gabar () sunu ‘Now Elisabeth's full time came that she should be delivered; and she brought forth a son’ (L 1.57); also in L 2.6.

8 The abbreviations for the Gospels and the Paulinian Epistles are, with the exception of Mk. for Mark, those which Streitberg uses in Die gotische Bibel.

9 Cf. A. Vaillant, Manuel du vieux slave 306-7 (1948).

10 Streitberg, Die gotische Bibel, (1. Teil2, Heidelberg, 1919; 2. Teil, 1910); abbr. GB.

11 This total has been arrived at by adding the 5947 Gothic compounds that Alan Lake Rice cites in Chart 1 of his Gothic prepositional compounds (Language dissertation No. 11, 1932), the 1171 Gothic simplicia which render Greek compounds and which Rice also cites, and the thousands of items in my own files, which have been checked against sample counts of simplicia in GB.

12 Here belong 234 aggregates (§4.1), e.g. niman ‘take’ and its derivatives (GB 2.101-2), and all isolate simplicia and derivatives of high frequency, e.g. briggan ‘bring’, fijan ‘hate’, frijon ‘love’, leiþan ‘go’ and its derivatives (GB 2.83-4), urraisjan ‘raise, awaken’, urreisan ‘arise’.

13 The derivative forms which complement the above simplicia are all to be found in GB 2.

14 The simplicia which complement the above aggregate derivatives, as well as those cited in §5.22 and in §5.32, are all to be found in GB 2.

15 (1) either der(ivative) if ipf; (2) ga- der is ipf, P- der is pf; (3) ga- der is ipf, P- der is ind; (4) either der is pf; (5) ga- der is pf, P- der is ipf; (6) ga- der is pf, P- der is ind; (7) either der is ind; (8) ga- der is ind, P- der is ipf; (9) ga- der is ind, P- der is pf. The second and third of these combinations do not actually occur.