The dissertation develops a new quantitative-distributive approach to the study of the phonemic structure of word-forms in the Gothic language and their combinatorial models, from the standpoint of which the theoretical provisions of
the system-structural organization of language units at all levels and, above all, phonological are supplemented
Through the prism of structural phonology, the work elaborated the ideas of
the kinemic theory, according to which the kineme is defined as the smallest articulatory unit, on the one hand, and the smallest perceptual unit, on the other, and the phoneme is considered as a standard block of kinemes for a particular language.
The combinatorics of kinemes is of two types: intraphonemic, realized
within the structure of the phoneme simultaneously, and interphonemic, actualized
in the combinatorics of adjacent phonemes sequentially over time. The rules of
the former and the latter are specific to each particular language and provide clues
to revealing the mechanisms of 1) combinability, 2) limited combinability and
3) non-combinability of phonemes.
The Gothic phonemic system reflects the laws of both the Common
Indo-European language and the factors that influenced its divergence and were laid in the foundation for the Common Germanic language. This lengthy process took place alongside a change in the grammatical type of language from root isolation through the stage of agglutination to inflection in the pre-writing era. The relics of
the features inherent in the first two of these grammatical types have been confirmed in the Gothic manuscripts.
The analysis of the Gothic textual material testifies to the disintegration of
the inflectional system and the beginning of the Gothic language system dynamics
to the root (analytical) type. Unfortunately, the evolutionary line of the Gothic language was discontinued in the outset of the VIII century AD, and Gothic written records
of the IV-VI centuries, which are the oldest among other Old Germanic manuscripts, are available to researchers only in one synchronous state of the language.
The quantitative-distributive approach postulated in the study made it possible to characterize the phonemic structure of the Gothic word-forms and their phonemic combinatorics on the basis of such criteria, as length in phonemes, combinatorics
of two classes of phonemes – vowels and consonants – in the initial, medial and
final positions. It has been proven for the first time that the Gothic language system prefers covered closed (CVC) and covered open syllables (CV), which is evidenced by their high frequency. Uncovered closed syllables (VC) are typical of the functional parts
of speech (particles, prepositions and conjunctions) and for pronouns that were inherited from the Proto-Indo-European and Common Germanic languages.
Canonical types of the Indo-European root phonemic structures were represented by one-syllable morphemes CVC and VC. The root morpheme CVC together with the phoneme of its suffix became a two-syllable stem with the phonemic structure of CV-CV. Uncovered open syllables are realized in the initial position
of word-forms.
The frequency of such word-forms is low, since this type of syllable was not typical of the Proto-Indo-European language, it was not characteristic of the Common Germanic language, and as a consequence of this did not receive functional support in the Gothic language.
The sequential realization of vowel and consonant phonemes in uncovered closed syllables and consonant phonemes in closed open syllables was not accompanied by articulatory (pronunciation, anthropophonic) or auditory (perceptual) difficulties, since phonemic combinatorics in such word-forms had no limitations.
The application of quantitative-distributional method with the elements
of statistical analysis confirmed the reliability of the obtained results; the accuracy
of statistical characteristics is 99.5%.
The proposed methodology can be used in theoretical phonological developments of the Germanic languages and other genetically close and distant Indo-European languages, as well as languages belonging to different grammatical types.
