Studia Celtica Posnaniensia

Volume 10 of Studia Celtica Posnaniensia is now available at pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/scp. We extend our sincere appreciation to all authors and reviewers for their valuable contributions. We hope you enjoy reading this issue!

Volume 9, Article 9: Raphael Sackmann "Indefinite Nominal Subjects and Objects Preceding the Negative Marker in Middle Welsh"

Abstract:
While the diachronic development of negation in Welsh has been subject to extensive research (see Willis 2006, 2013, in particular), Middle Welsh negative (matrix) clauses are under-researched in a synchronic perspective (Poppe in press). There is no consensus on syntactic analyses of verb-second negative matrix clauses, especially those with subject-verb and object-verb order. In (Modern) Irish, native speakers generally interpret comparable “Narrative Fronting” constructions with scope of negation over a fronted indefinite. However, in Middle Welsh, instances of wide-scope indefinites can be found, while scope relations are potentially ambiguous in others. For object-verb clauses, matters are further complicated by the occasional presence of an additional object clitic. This chapter draws attention to such arguably challenging Middle Welsh examples and discusses possible interpretations of indefinites with respect to the notion of topicality, as well as complexities of their related syntactic analyses. With an attempt to relativize apparently conflicting views in previous research, potential syntactic structures are specified, primarily with respect to non-topical indefinites that, at least on the surface, appear to be out of scope. For these (and other phrases occurring in this construction, occasionally also definites), a syntactic derivation is formulated, which can arguably be compared with certain Focus Fronting constructions in other languages.

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Out of Scope? – Indefinite Nominal Subjects and Objects... While the diachronic development of negation in Welsh has been subject to extensive research (see Willis 2006, 2013, in particular), Middle Welsh...

Volume 9, Article 8: Patricia Ronan "On the Relative Order of Adjectives in Old Irish"

Abstract

This study examines the relative order of adjectives in Early Irish and seeks to determine the preferred order of adjectives in the noun phrases in a corpus of Old and Middle Irish. To date, too little research exists on this topic in Early Irish: grammars of the language typically determine the outline of adjective use, and some recent research investigates factors determining pre- or post- modification (Linnemeier, 2024). Yet so far little is known about the distribution of adjectives in corpus data and which factors influence distribution. In particular, the question which role is played by date of composition or text category has not received enough attention.

Thus, the current study uses a corpus-linguistic approach to determine the distribution of adjectives in a tagged corpus of Old and Middle Irish, the POMIC corpus (Lash 2014). To do so, the corpus search interface CorpusSearch 2 (Randall 2009) is used to detect complex noun phrases which involve one or more adjectives. The study provides some evidence for diachronic variation in the use of adjectives in Old and Middle Irish corpus data, but larger databases are needed to determine the relative influence of genre and time of composition. There are some indications, however, that previous mention of a concept and the use of parallel structures in other languages may influence prefixed or postnominal position of adjectives.

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On the Relative Order of Adjectives in Old Irish This study examines the relative order of adjectives in Early Irish and seeks to determine the preferred order of adjectives in the noun phrases in...

Volume 9, Article 7: Carlos Garcia-Castillero "On the Syntax of the Light-Headed Noun Phrases in the Old Irish Glosses: Dealing with Missing Data in Corpus Linguistics"

Abstract:
The Old Irish glosses in contemporary manuscripts are the most reliable evidence for Old Irish syntax. These glosses convey discontinuous utterances that depend on the Latin text to which they are attached. One of the most obvious consequences of this discontinuous and textually dependent character is that the glosses very often convey what we could consider incomplete utterances, i.e. linguistic units that do not have the status of an independent clause or sentence.

When it comes to the study of NPs and their syntax, we face cases in which a gloss consists only of a bare NP. This paper deals with these isolated NPs, in particular, with those that are introduced by the light heads intí, aní and aN, and defends the idea that these NPs constitute utterances that may be considered as complete, as against the initial impression, and therefore, that they may be considered for an inquiry on the syntax of Old Irish NPs.

This paper covers the following points: a basic quantitative description of the distribution of isolated light-headed NPs and the introduction of the notion of ‘missing data’ (cf. Osborne 2013: 128‒129); a discussion of the notion of ‘free NPs’, i.e. apparently incomplete but meaningful linguistic units; an overview of the linguistic features of isolated NPs, in particular animacy, which is a statistically significant factor explaining the difference between isolated/dislocated light-headed NPs, which are more often animate, and intraclausal light-headed NPs, which are more often neuter; an outline of a wider investigation of all OIr. NPs in order to check if the above-mentioned statistical skew is in fact more general, i.e. that animate NPs are more likely in general to appear as free NPs.

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On the Syntax of the Light-Headed Noun Phrases in the Old... The Old Irish glosses in contemporary manuscripts are the most reliable evidence for Old Irish syntax. These glosses convey discontinuous...

Volume 9, Article 6: Aaron Griffith "Grammaticalization and the Etymology of Old Irish Ocus ‘And’"

Abstract:
This paper integrates a philological investigation of Old Irish coordination with cross-linguistic accounts of the phenomenon in order to offer an etymology Old Irish ocus ‘and’. It is suggested that Pre-Irish employed ocus in a comitative coordination strategy (i.e. ‘A with B’). This started out as a nominal and adjectival coordinator. Late in the prehistory of Irish, this coordinator grammaticalized as the all-purpose ocus ‘and’ (i.e. ‘A and B’) that is found in Old Irish texts.

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Grammaticalization and the Etymology of Old Irish Ocus ‘And’ This paper integrates a philological investigation of Old Irish coordination with cross-linguistic accounts of the phenomenon in order to offer an...

Volume 9, Article 5: David Stifter "Observations on the Use of Attention Markers in Comrac Líadaine ⁊ Chuirithir"

Abstract:
In a series of articles, Aaron Griffith (2008, 2010, 2011, 2013) and Bernhard Bauer (2018: 12-13) have shed light on the pragmatic function and the syntactic operation of the Old Irish notae augentes and the anaphoric pronoun suide/-side, which for practical purposes can be grouped together under the umbrella term ‘attention markers’. The comparatively high incidence of these elements in the late Old Irish tale Comrac Líadaine ⁊ Chuirithir ‘The Encounter of Líadain and Cuirithir’ (Stifter forthc.), provides an opportunity to test these hypotheses and to add to and refine the description of their syntactic and pragmatic functions. In addition to two previously established functions, namely 1. to direct the mental focus of the recipients and 2. to distinguish between overall and temporarily salient referents, two hitherto unrecognised usages of attention markers can be identified for Old Irish, namely 3. as argument-fillers after quotative verbs, and 4. as verbal gender-markers.

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Observations on the Use of Attention Markers in Comrac... In a series of articles, Aaron Griffith (2008, 2010, 2011, 2013) and Bernhard Bauer (2018: 12-13) have shed light on the pragmatic function and the...

Volume 9, Article 4: Ranko Matasović "Possessive Agreement in Insular Celtic".

Abstract:
Possessive agreement is a pattern of NP-internal agreement in which certain features of the possessor (usually person, number and/or gender) are marked twice within the NP: firstly, on the possessive marker itself (e. g. a possessive pronoun) and secondly, on another morpheme, which obligatorily agrees in those features with the possessive marker (Corbett 2006: 47). This type of agreement is not common in Indo-European languages, but it is in Uralic and several other language families in Eurasia (Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2003). However, Goidelic and Brittonic have constructions falling under the above definition in which the pronominal possessor can be marked by two pronominal elements which have to agree in person, number and (in the third person singular) gender. In both languages, the first pronominal element is the proclitic possessive pronoun. In Old Irish, the second pronominal element referring to the possessor is traditionally called the “emphasizing particle, or nota augens” (Thurneysen 1946: 252–3, Griffith 2008), and it distinguishes the same categories as the possessive pronouns. The second pronominal element in Middle Welsh is identical to the stressed simple personal pronouns. This paper investigates the phenomenon of possessive agreement in Insular Celtic by examining the frequencies of possessive constructions with agreement in selected Old Irish and Middle Welsh texts, and seeking to establish the pragmatic functions of these constructions. Additionally, by looking at the earliest attestations of constructions with possessive agreement it will be shown that it is unlikely that they should be reconstructed in Proto-Insular Celtic (or even Proto-Celtic). Rather, it is argued that possessive agreement in Insular Celtic developed as an areal phenomenon which arose in situations of intensive language contact that occurred in Britain and Ireland during the Early Middle Ages (Matasović 2007).

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Possessive Agreement in Insular Celtic Possessive agreement is a pattern of NP-internal agreement in which certain features of the possessor (usually person, number and/or gender) are...

Volume 9, Article 3: Marieke Meelen & David Willis "The Diachrony of Welsh Subject Pronouns"

Abstract:
In many languages, independent pronouns become reduced to inflectional affixes which are ultimately lost, resulting in the creation of new independent pronouns. The loss of null subjects therefore often goes hand in hand with a loss of agreement morphology on the verb. Inflectional morphology has remained virtually unchanged from the Middle Welsh period up to the present day, but whereas null subjects were frequently found in the earliest period, in Present-day spoken Welsh overt pronouns are generally preferred. In this article we present a pilot study of the history of subject pronouns in Welsh based on six annotated texts from the Parsed Historical Corpus of the Welsh Language (PARSHCWL) from three different time periods (fourteenth, sixteenth and eighteenth centuries), as well as in translated and non-translated texts. We show that null subjects are favoured in all periods and use a mixed-effects logistic regression model to test which factors have an effect on whether the subject pronoun is overt or null and if this distribution changes over time.

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The Diachrony of Welsh Subject Pronouns In many languages, independent pronouns become reduced to inflectional affixes which are ultimately lost, resulting in the creation of new...

Volume 9, Article 2: Elliott Lash "Prepositionless Datives in Old and Middle Irish: The Instrumental, Accompaniment/Inclusive and Appositional Dative"

Abstract:
The early Irish dative case is typically found after prepositions, but there are a number of non-prepositional usages. Three of these are explored in this chapter: the instrumental dative, the dative of accompaniment or inclusion, and the dative of apposition. The main goal of the chapter is to describe the syntactic distribution and features of these constructions, compare their similarities and differences, and ultimately to sharpen the classification of these three usages of the dative into distinct constructions. The bulk of the chapter concentrates on the third construction, the dative of apposition, in which the dative-marked nominal is found in apposition chiefly to a pronominal item. Because this pronominal is virtually obligatory, comparison between the early Irish appositional dative and a typology of similar “adnominal pronoun constructions” in other languages is made. A major contribution of the chapter is to show that there are various number and person restrictions that are placed on the pronominal antecedent but these restrictions are subject to diachronic variation. Finally, the dative of apposition is contrasted with the nominative of apposition, which is shown have a distinct syntactic structure.

Prepositionless Datives in Old and Middle Irish: The... The early Irish dative case is typically found after prepositions, but there are a number of non-prepositional usages. Three of these are explored...

Volume 9, Article 1: Elisa Roma "Differential Case Marking in Old Irish: Nominal and Pronominal Arguments in Valency Alternations"

Abstract:
This chapter addresses from a typological perspective case marking of different types of arguments in Old Irish, drawing on the framework of the Leipzig Valency Classes Project (Hartmann, Haspelmath and Taylor 2013; Malchukov and Comrie 2015, ValPaL) and using datasets from Corpus Palaeo-Hibernicum (Stifter et al. 2021, CorPH), supplemented by the Würzburg Glosses. Old Irish is first shown to score high for inflectional behaviour of person according to Nichols’ (2017b) typology of person marking, so that nominal and pronominal arguments are systematically kept apart as to their case marking. The Old Irish values for Nichols’ 42 data-points are given in the Appendix. The contribution then deals with argument marking in relation to valency changes, focusing in particular on alternations with a sample of labile verbs (notably ar·oslaici ‘open’, fercaigidir and londaigidir ‘get angry’ and ‘make angry’, fo·botha ‘get scared’ and ‘frighten’) and with a sample of ditransitives. The data show that a distinct labile behaviour is attested only with pronominal arguments indexed on the verb, so that this alternation comes close to a coded alternation, according to the typological distinction drawn in ValPaL. On the other hand, the promotion of the recipient-like argument to direct object is allowed only with a small set of verbs (notably guidid ‘ask for’, for·cain and múinid ‘teach’), it often combines with argument omission, and is again frequent with pronominal objects, but rather follows the Extended Animacy Hierarchy (Croft 2022). Since, however, the total number of occurrences of nominal arguments for each verb is not very high, a larger corpus would be necessary to conclude that these tendencies were in fact well entrenched in Old Irish grammar.

Full article available here:

Differential Case Marking in Old Irish: Nominal and... This chapter addresses from a typological perspective case marking of different types of arguments in Old Irish, drawing on the framework of the...

We are happy to announce the publication of Volume 9 of SCP. It is a Special Issue: "Noun phrase and pronominal syntax in medieval and early modern Celtic languages" edited by Elliott Lash. The issue is available on the Pressto platform https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/scp/issue/view/2797
In the next few days, it will also be available on https://sciendo.com/journal/SCP?top-tab=volumes-issues

Enjoy the articles!

Studia Celtica Posnaniensia Studia Celtica Posnaniensia is an international review of Celtic Studies appearing once a year in paper and electronic format and published by the Faculty of English, Adam...

The paper version of Volumes 7 & 8 is now out! And it's priceless! You cannot buy it anywhere but you can get a copy at events organised by the Centre of Celtic Studies AMU.