Gothic declension

Gothic is an inflected language, and as such its nouns, pronouns, and adjectives must be declined in order to serve a grammatical function. A set of declined forms of the same word pattern is called a declension. There are five grammatical cases in Gothic with a few traces of an old sixth instrumental case.

Grammatical cases

A complete declension consists of five grammatical cases.

Description of cases

*The nominative case, which is used to express the subject of a statement. It is also used with copulative verbs.
*The vocative case, which is used to address someone or something in direct speech. This case is indicated in English by intonation or punctuation, e.g. "Mary is going to the store" ("Mary" is nominative) compared to "Mary, are you going to the store?" or "Mary!" ("Mary" is vocative).
*The accusative case, which expresses the direct object of a verb. In English, except for a small number of words which display a distinct accusative case (e.g., who > whom, I > me, he > him), the accusative and nominative cases are identical.
*The genitive case, which expresses possession, measurement, or source. In English, the genitive case is represented analytically by the preposition or by the enclitic "–'s", which itself developed from the genitive case. This –'s is related to the common Gothic "-s".
*The dative case, which expresses the recipient of an action, the indirect object of a verb. In English, the prepositions , and most commonly denote this case analytically.
*The instrumental case, which is used to express the place in or on which, or the time at which, an action is performed. The instrumental case only survives in a few preposition forms in Gothic.

Order of cases

Gothic language grammars usually borrow the common Latin grammar orderNOM-GEN-DAT-ACC-VOC removing the unrepresented cases ablative and locative.

trong declensions

The a declension

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

The u declension

This declension counterparts the fourth declension (us) of Latin. It contains nouns of all genders. Both neutra, faihu "property" and qairu "thorn", in this declension lack plural. Feminines inflect as masculines.

¹: the first g in tuggo is pronounced [IPA|ŋ] , the Gothic language borrowed the practice to denote [IPA|ŋ] by g from Koine Greek in which the New Testament was originally written.

The in declension

This declension contains abstract feminines only.

Minor declensions

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 broþar m., "brother", fadar m., "father", daúhtar f., "daughter",

The root nouns

References

* Wolfgang Krause, 1968 Fact|date=January 2008

See also

* Gothic Language
* Proto-Indo-European noun:
** Ancient Greek grammar
** Latin conjugation
** Sanskrit nominal inflection