Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/59

Rh formative elements—number, gender, and case; but he can tell us why one says methinks, but a child may not say me likes nurse; why an Englishman's like I do is wrong, but his give 'em (not for them) it right; why drownded, Shakspere's swounded (swooned) and once-t are no more correct than sounded (Lat. sonare) and whilst (by false analogy from whiles); and why a Scotsman uses hit for it and speaks of a cattle beast and a widow woman. The answer to these and many more such questions is found better in Gothic than anywhere else, for this reason, that it places us so near to the primitive type of Teutonic speech, undisturbed by subsequent functional derangement. Hence it is indispensable to the scientific study of English grammar, just as it in turn is illuminated by the living vernacular of Scotland.

It would be impossible, within reasonable limits, to give anything like a full account of Gothic grammar. Merely a few points can be selected, and these such as prove the essential identity of the language with our own, and at the same time elucidate modern idiom and expression. Gothic is, like German, highly inflected. Wulfila cannot equal the richness of the Greek verb, but is able to convey to his countrymen with sufficient accuracy the spirit of so subtle and flexible a language. The basis of conjugation is the familiar distinction between strong and weak verbs, or what might rather be called primary and derivative. Gothic properly makes this turn on what is the cardinal function of the verb, the expression of preterite or past time. The primitive and very natural mode of doing so is by reduplication of the root, and this is well preserved here as in Greek. The idea of past time might very well be expressed by stress on present. Tee-total is said to be the result of a stuttering orator's endeavour to emphasise total abstinence. Traces of the process exist in Latin, either obvious, as cado, cecidi, or disguised, as fac-io, fec-i for fe-fac-i. Our did, Go. di-da, is the sole English survival of this process, but we have in Gothic several specimens of the feci-type, as hold, held (Go. hald, hai-hald), take, took (têk, tai-tôk), Sc. greet, grat (grêt, gai-grot). This process must have become at an early period merely conventional, as the rule in Gothic is not to repeat the root-vowel but the initial consonant and a uniform light vowel, ai = e, in met. Even at this early stage the further step had