Maynard Savannah. Aspectual predictors of mood selection in specialized imperative verbal forms in Gothic

Iowa State University, 2022. — 35 p.This thesis project investigates potential aspectual features that may predict the selection between the optative mood and the imperative mood in verbs that carry imperative meaning in the Gothic language. In Gothic, the imperative meaning (i.e., commands) can be expressed with multiple grammatical means, but mainly two verbal moods: the optative and the imperative. While there has long been speculation, the full distinction between the two moods as well as the factors that influence the selection of one mood over the other are not certain. Moreover, quantitative methods have not yet been applied to this end. Based on previous literature, ten semantic and lexical features relating to verbal aspect were identified as those that have the potential to affect mood selection in Gothic. Thus, a framework was created for annotating all verbal forms with imperative meaning in the Gothic Bible for the ten aspectual features that are hypothesized to predict mood selection. Each verb with imperative meaning in the Gothic Bible was annotated for these ten aspectual features plus negation. Generalized mixed-effects regression modeling was used for statistical analysis in order to control for some of the random irregularities in the Gothic Bible corpus. The dataset was divided into two categories for analysis: negative contexts (i.e., prohibitions) and positive contexts. Findings suggest that the aspectual feature of actuality predicts the selection of the optative versus the imperative moods in negative contexts, while actuality, stativity, and gnomicity influence the choice between the two moods in positive contexts. These findings contribute to the reconstruction of Gothic grammar and also have theological applications as they relate to an early translation of the New Testament.