The classification of Roman-Germanic language

Principal features of Gothic
As all the Germanc languages Gothic also has the stress on the first syllable.
Noun and Adjectives: Gothic has five cases:
• Nominative:for nouns acting as the subject of the sentence
• Genitive: expresses possessive relationships
• Dative: for nouns acting as the indirect object
• Accusative: for nouns acting as the direct object
• Vocative:for the person addressed (it is usually the same form as the Nominative).
Nouns: The inflectional ending depends on:
▪the stem of the word: The stems include a-, ia-, 0-, i-, u- and n-stems. These terms refer to the reconstructed Primitive Germanc (eg bird: "fug/s" is an a-stem, cf the Primitive Germanc word: *fuglaz).
▪the gender of the word: Gothic has masculine, feminine and neuter nouns.
▪whether the word is singular or plural.
Adjectives: The adjective takes the same gender, number and case as the noun.
The endings also vary according to:
- The stem to which the adjective belongs (as for the nouns above).
- Inflection: weak inflection (for the vocative and after a definite article) and
strong inflection (in all other situations).
Articles and demonstrative pronouns
The definite article is an important new development in Germanc.
It arose from the demonstrative pronoun and still has the same form in Gothic (sa = 'the' or 'that' masculine, pata neuter, so feminine). It is only the context which enables its use as an article to be recognized.
The indefinite article does not yet exist.
The possessive pronouns are inflected according to the strong inflection of the adjective.
Gothic uses the 1 st , 2 nd and 3 rd person and a three-fold number division.
Alongside singular and plural there is also a dual which indicates two people (eg wit = 'the two of us').
The familiar and polite forms of "you" use the same form of the second person, as in English, but unlike most other modern Germanc languages. (see also The Middle Dutch case system)