[Edit] Pronouns

Gothic inherited the full set of Indo-European pronouns: personal pronouns (including reflexive pronouns for each of the three grammatical persons), possessive pronouns, both simple and compound demonstratives, relative pronouns, interrogatives and indefinite pronouns. Each follows a particular pattern of inflexion (partially mirroring the noun declension), much like other Indo-European languages. One particularly noteworthy characteristic is the preservation of the dual number, referring to two people or things while the plural was only used for quantities greater than two. Thus, "the two of us" and "we" for numbers greater than two were expressed as wit and weis respectively. While proto-Indo-European used the dual for all grammatical categories that took a number (as did classical Greek and Sanskrit), Gothic is unusual among Indo-European languages in only preserving it for pronouns.

The simple demonstrative pronoun sa (neuter: þata, feminine: so, from the Indo-European root *so, *seh₂, *tod; cognate to the Greek article ὁ, ἡ, τό and the Latin istud) can be used as an article, allowing constructions of the type definite article + weak adjective + noun.

The interrogative pronouns begin with ƕ-, which derives from the proto-Indo-European consonant *k^w that was present at the beginning of all interrogratives in proto-Indo-European. This is cognate with the wh- at the beginning of many English interrogatives which, as in Gothic, are pronounced with [ʍ] in some dialects. This same etymology is present in the interrogatives of many other Indo-European languages": w- [v] in German, hv- in Danish, the Latin qu- (which persists in modern Romance languages), the Greek τ or π, and the Sanskrit k- as well as many others.

[Edit] Verbs

The bulk of Gothic verbs follow the type of Indo-European conjugation called "thematic" because they insert a vowel derived from the reconstructed proto-Indo-European phonemes *e or *o between roots and inflexional suffixes. This pattern is also present in Greek and Latin:

• Latin - leg-i-mus ("we read"): root leg- + thematic vowel -i- (from *e) + suffix -mus.

• Greek - λυ-ό-μεν ("we untie"): root λυ- + thematic vowel -ο- + suffix -μεν.

• Gothic - nim-a-m ("we take"): root nim- + thematic vowel -a- (from *o) + suffix -m.

The other conjugation, called "athematic", where suffixes are added directly to roots, exists only in unproductive vestigial forms in Gothic, just as it does in Greek and Latin. The most important such instance is the verb "to be", which is athematic in Greek, Latin, Sanskrit and many other Indo-European languages.

Gothic verbs are, like nouns and adjectives, divided into strong verbs and weak verbs. Weak verbs are characterised by preterites formed by appending the suffixes -da or -ta, parallel to past participles formed with -þ / -t. Strong verbs form preterites by alternating vowels in their root forms or by doubling the first consonant in the root, but without adding a suffix in either case. This parallels the Greek and Sanskit perfect tenses. This dichotomy is still present in modern Germanic languages:

• weak verbs ("to have") :

  • Gothic: haban, preterite habáida, past participle habáiþs ;

  • English: (to) have, preterite had, past participle had ;

  • German: haben, preterite hatte, past participle (ge)habt ;

  • Icelandic: hafa, preterite hafði, past participle haft ;

  • Dutch: hebben, preterite had, past participle (ge)had ;

  • Swedish: ha(va), preterite hade, supine haft ;

• strong verbs ("to give") :

  • Gothic: infinitive giban, preterite gaf ;

  • English: infinitive (to) give, preterite gave ;

  • German: infinitive geben, preterite gab ;

  • Icelandic: infinitive gefa, preterite gaf.

  • Dutch: infinitive geven, preterite gaf ;

  • Swedish: infinitive giva, preterite gav ;

Verbal inflexions in Gothic have two grammatical voices: the active and the medial; three numbers: singular, dual (except in the third person), and plural; two tenses: present and preterite (derived from a former perfect tense); three grammatical moods: indicative, subjunctive (from an old optative form) and imperative; as well as three kinds of nominal forms: a present infinitive, a present participle, and a past passive. Not all tenses and persons are represented in all moods and voices - some conjugations use auxiliary forms.

Finally, there are forms called "preterite-present" - old Indo-European perfect tenses that were reinterpreted as present tense. The Gothic word wáit, from the proto-Indo-European *woid-h₂e ("to see" in the perfect tense), corresponds exactly to its Sanskrit cognate véda and in Greek to ϝοἶδα. Both etymologically should mean "I saw" (in the perfective sense) but mean "I know" (in the preterite-present meaning). Latin follows the same rule with nōuī ("I knew" and "I know"). The preterite-present verbs include áigan ("to possess") and kunnan ("to know") among others.