The Celtic Languages

AbstractWe discuss a potential case of borrowing in this paper: Breton a- ‘of’, ‘from’ marking of (internal) verbal arguments, unique in Insular Celtic languages, and reminiscent of Gallo-Romance de/du- (and en-) arguments. Looking at potential Gallo-Romance parallels of three Middle Breton constructions analyzed in some detail (a with indefinite mass nominals in direct object position, a-marking of internal arguments under the scope of negation, a [allomorphs an(ez)-/ahan-] with personal pronouns for internal arguments, subjects (mainly of predicative constructions) and as expletive subjects of existential constructions), we demonstrate that even if there are some semantic parallels and one strong structural overlap (a and de under the scope of negation), the amount of divergences in morphology, syntax and semantics and the only partially fitting relative chronology of the different constructions do not allow to conclude with certainty that language-contact is an explanation of the Breton facts, which might have come into being also because of internal change (bound to restructuring of the pronominal system in Breton). More research is necessary to complete our knowledge of a-marking in Middle Breton and Modern Breton varieties and on the precise history of French en, in order to decide for one or the other explanation.

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Language shift, bilingualism and the future of Britain's Celtic languages

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rstb.2010.0051 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 365 (1559) ◽

pp. 3855-3864 ◽

Cited By ~ 45

Author(s):

Anne Kandler ◽

Roman Unger ◽

James Steele

Keyword(s):

Census Data ◽

Language Shift ◽

Past Century ◽

Transitional State ◽

Endangered Language ◽

Basic Model ◽

Vernacular Language ◽

Celtic Languages ◽

Shift Dynamics ◽

Demographic Trajectories

‘Language shift’ is the process whereby members of a community in which more than one language is spoken abandon their original vernacular language in favour of another. The historical shifts to English by Celtic language speakers of Britain and Ireland are particularly well-studied examples for which good census data exist for the most recent 100–120 years in many areas where Celtic languages were once the prevailing vernaculars. We model the dynamics of language shift as a competition process in which the numbers of speakers of each language (both monolingual and bilingual) vary as a function both of internal recruitment (as the net outcome of birth, death, immigration and emigration rates of native speakers), and of gains and losses owing to language shift. We examine two models: a basic model in which bilingualism is simply the transitional state for households moving between alternative monolingual states, and a diglossia model in which there is an additional demand for the endangered language as the preferred medium of communication in some restricted sociolinguistic domain, superimposed on the basic shift dynamics. Fitting our models to census data, we successfully reproduce the demographic trajectories of both languages over the past century. We estimate the rates of recruitment of new Scottish Gaelic speakers that would be required each year (for instance, through school education) to counteract the ‘natural wastage’ as households with one or more Gaelic speakers fail to transmit the language to the next generation informally, for different rates of loss during informal intergenerational transmission.

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The Secret of the Celts Revisited

Religion and Theology ◽

10.1163/15743012-02401007 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 24 (1-2) ◽

pp. 130-155

Author(s):

Jacqueline Borsje

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Case Studies ◽

Irish Literature ◽

Traditional Society ◽

Dominant Culture ◽

Old Irish ◽

Celtic Revival ◽

Celtic Languages ◽

Celtic Culture ◽

Way Of Thinking

What makes the Celts so popular today? Anton van Hamel and Joep Leerssen published on the popularity of imagery connected with pre-Christian Celts, Van Hamel seeing the holistic worldview and Leerssen mysteriousness as appealing characteristics. They explain waves of ‘Celtic revival’ that washed over Europe as reaction and romanticising movements that search for alternatives from contemporaneous dominant culture. Each period has produced its modernized versions of the Celtic past. Besides periodical heightened interest in things Celtic, Van Hamel saw a permanent basis of attraction in Celtic texts, which accommodate ‘primitive’ and romantic mentalities. This article also analyses Celtic Christianity (through The Celtic Way by Ian Bradley and The Celtic Way of Prayer by Esther de Waal) on the use of Celtic texts and imagery of Celtic culture. Two case studies are done (on the use of the Old-Irish Deer’s Cry and the description of a nineteenth-century Scottish ritual). Both the current search for ‘spirituality’ and the last wave of ‘Celtic revival’ seem to have sprung from a reaction movement that criticizes dominant religion/culture and seek inspiration and precursors in an idealized past. The roots of this romantic search for a lost paradise are, however, also present in medieval Irish literature itself. Elements such as aesthetics, imaginative worlds and the posited lost beauty of pre-industrial nature and traditional society are keys in explaining the bridges among the gap between ‘us’ and the Celts. The realization that Celtic languages are endangered or dead heightens the feeling of loss because they are the primary gates towards this lost way of (thinking about) life.

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From 'Ambassador' to 'Whisky': A Note on Celtic Elements in Contemporary Polish Vocabulary

Studia Celto-Slavica ◽

10.54586/ttdb1714 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 4 ◽

pp. 125-131

Author(s):

Piotr Stalmaszczyk ◽

Keyword(s):

Romance Languages ◽

Scottish Gaelic ◽

Celtic Languages ◽

Lexical Items

The paper discusses elements of Celtic origin present in contemporary Polish vocabulary. Polish did not have any direct contacts with the Celtic languages, however, some elements of Celtic (i.e. Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Breton) origin entered it via other languages, especially English and French. Additionally, several early borrowings from Continental Celtic spread through Latin, and subsequently the Romance languages, to other languages, including Polish, thus becoming internationalisms of Celtic origin. For the purpose of this paper all such indirect borrowings will be referred to as ‘Celtic elements in Polish vocabulary’. The relevant lexical items have been extracted from a general dictionary of Polish, several other words come from specialized sources.

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Syllabic Consonants in Slavic and Celtic Languages: The Mechanism of Element Extension

Studia Celto-Slavica ◽

10.54586/wwjf8701 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 4 ◽

pp. 53-66

Author(s):

Anna Bloch-Rozmej ◽

Keyword(s):

Slavic Languages ◽

Phonological Structure ◽

Celtic Languages ◽

Government Phonology ◽

Specific Proposal

This paper addresses the problem of the syllabic consonants in the selected Slavic and Celtic languages. We shall consider this issue through the optic of Government Phonology (henceforth GP), as defined e.g. in Harris 1994, Cyran 2003 and Gussmann 2007. Within the framework of GP, the phonological structure of morphemes is constructed in terms of the licensing and governing relations between adjacent skeletal positions – the timing slots. The prosodic positions are then projected onto the syllabic constituents of nuclei (the heads of rhymes) and onsets. In such configurations, onsets are always dependent on their nuclear licensers. A specific proposal advocated in this presentation is that onset-nucleus domains are not only licensing domains but they also constitute the so-called extension domains. It will be further maintained that the phenomenon of the syllabic consonants can be analyzed in terms of segment extension occurring within such onset-nucleus extension domains. It will be demonstrated that this solution effectively accounts for the relevant linguistic facts attested to in Polish, Czech, Slovak or Serbo-Croatian. In our analysis, the distinction between the syllabic and trapped consonants will be adopted which, as will be proposed, derives from different lexical structures of either type. Apart from the available dictionary entries, we shall rely on the data provided by Scheer (2003), Dalewska-Greń (2002) and Rubach (1997). The evidence concerning the behavior of the syllabic consonants in the Slavic languages will also be compared to the Irish situation. It will be proposed that the observable differences are contingent on both structural representations and different parameter settings in the languages under discussion.

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