Present participles in the new Gothic palimpsest

Abstract

A new Gothic text has recently been discovered and it is contained in a palimpsest bifolium of the Archive of the Board of Trustees of San Petronio’s Basilica in Bologna. Two scholars of Milan, R. Bianca Finazzi and Paola Tornaghi, have studied the palimpsest. The author received their paper directly from the two colleagues, who had received word of the interest the discovery of the new Gothic text had kindled in him. In his examination of the text, the author was able to find two cases confirming and one supplementing what he had written in Melazzo (1992) about the two different Gothic forms of the nominative singular of the present participle in the masculine, of which one ends in -ndaand the other has -ndsas its tip, the former matching the -aending and the latter the -s termination of the nominative singular masculine of respectively weak and strong declension adjective