Towards a Historical Treebank of Middle and Early Modern Welsh, Part I: Workflow and POS Tagging

This article introduces the working methods of the Parsed Historical Corpus of the Welsh Language (PARSHCWL). The corpus is designed to provide researchers with a tool for automatic exhaustive extraction of instances of grammatical structures from Middle and Modern Welsh texts in a way comparable to similar tools that already exist for various European languages. The major features of the corpus are outlined, along with the overall architecture of the workflow needed for a team of researchers to produce it. In this paper, the two first stages of the process, namely pre-processing of texts and automated part-of-speech (POS) tagging are discussed in some detail, focusing in particular on major issues involved in defining word boundaries and in defining a robust and useful tagset.

The Syntax of Absolute Verbal Forms in Early Welsh Poetry: A Survey

This paper undertakes a comprehensive survey of the syntax of absolute forms of verbs in the corpus of early Welsh poetry known ashengerdd. Comparisons are made with the syntax of absolute forms in Old Irish, in Old Welsh and Old Breton, in Middle Welsh court poetry of the twelfth century onwards, and with those found in Middle Welsh prose texts.

English Loanwords in the Irish of Iorras Aithneach – New Vowels in a Government and Licensing Analysis

The Irish of Iorras Aithneach differs somewhat from the other varieties of Irish. Among other things, this regional variety is slightly irregular as regards the treatment of loanwords from English. For example, in Iorras Aithneach an epenthetic vowel [e] is regularly inserted in certain clusters, but irregularly in other consonant groups (Ó Curnáin 2007). New vowels may also precede certain initial sounds and follow some final consonants in English loanwords. Since Ó Curnáin's (2007) book is the most recent and most extensive study of any Irish dialect ever undertaken, it seems a very appropriate source of information and analysis. The issues addressed in this paper are as follows. First, what are the reasons for epenthesis in loanwords in the Irish of Iorras Aithneach? Second, why is Iorras Aithneach epenthesis in borrowings from English irregular? Third, and marginal, what is the reason for prosthetic vowels on both word edges in Iorras Aithneach? The phonological model used in this paper is Government Phonology in its recent version.

Left Branch Extraction and Clitic Placement in Gaulish

The inscriptional remains of Gaulish preserve syntactic behaviours that are not expected from the perspective of the diachronic schemes usually posited for the development of early Insular Celtic syntax from Proto-Indo-European. Widespread evidence is attested, particularly for the behaviour of clitics, that does not seem reconcilable with many of the assumptions made in previous studies regarding the nature of the syntax of Proto-Celtic. Gaulish also evidently features scrambling-type phenomena such as left branch extraction that are not usually thought to appear in other Celtic languages. An analysis which begins with an assessment of these features leads to a more empirically predicated and consistent understanding of the early development of Celtic word order than has been proffered previously.

On the Etymology of the River-name Ruhr and Some of its Central-European Cognates: Celtic or not Celtic – That is the Question

Traditionally, the river-nameRuhr and its siblings are said to be derived from the root PIE *reuH - 'tear up, dig up' (outdated form of reconstruction: *reu-, *reu-, *ru - [IEW 868]) and they are regarded as part of the so-called 'Old European hydronymy'. Reviewing the literature on the river-namesRuhr, Rur, Rulles, and the place-name Ruhla, we find that two different pre-forms tend to be reconstructed, *rūr° and * rur°. It can be shown that by applying a sound-law generally accepted in Indo-European linguistics (Dybo's Law), the pre-form must be reconstructed as * rur°, even if we start from the root mentioned above (PIE *ruH-ró- > Late (Western-)PIE * ruró-). But as the semantics of that root appears to be not very satisfactory, further roots are tried as starting-points for etymologizing the names in question. The following roots are possible from a structural/phonological point of view: a) PIE *h3reuH- 'shout, roar': PIE *h3ruH-ró- > late PIE *(h3)ruró -; b) PIE *h2 reu - 'shine, sparkle (reddishly)': PIE * h2 ru- ró- > late PIE *( h2 )ruró -; c) PIE *h3 reu - 'move quickly, dash forward': PIE * h3 ru- ró- > late PIE *(h3)ruró -. Two language groups are attested in the areas, where the rivers are situated: Germanic and Celtic. But out of the three roots just mentioned none is continued in Germanic and only PIE *h2 reu- 'shine, sparkle (reddishly)' and PIE *h3 reu- 'move quickly, dash forward' are continued in Celtic. A formation from another root, PIE * preu- 'jump' (* pru-ró- > PCelt. * []ruró-) would give the correct result in Celtic, but the root does not have descendants in any Celtic language. Thus we arrive at the result that the river names, which are all on potentially Celtic territory, are most probably Celtic. The names meant either 'the quick(ly flowing) one' or 'the gleaming one' – both solutions are semantically typical for the oldest layers of hydronyms. No decision between these two results is possible. But as we can offer an etymology now anchored in a single Indo-European language (group), there is no reason anymore to regard these names as 'voreinzelsprachlich' and thus part of the 'Old European hydronymy'. It remains to be researched, whether all the hydronyms traditionally derived from the root PIE *reuH - 'tear up, dig up' (outdated form of reconstruction: *reu-, *reu-, *ru-) are really necessarily to be connected with this root, now that three other roots (PIE *h3reuH- 'shout, roar', PIE * h2reu- 'shine, sparkle (reddishly)', PIE *h3 reu - 'move quickly, dash forward') offer phonologically and semantically possible starting-points for etymologies.

Adjectival Agreement in Middle and Early Modern Welsh Native and Translated Prose

This paper investigates adjectival agreement in a group of Middle Welsh native prose texts and a sample of translations from around the end of the Middle Welsh period and the beginning of the Early Modern period. It presents a new methodology, employing tagged historical corpora allowing for consistent linguistic comparison. The adjectival agreement case study tests a hypothesis regarding position and function of adjectives in Middle Welsh, as well as specific semantic groups of adjectives, such as colours or related modifiers. The systematic analysis using an annotated corpus reveals that there are interesting differences between native and translated texts, as well as between individual texts. However, zooming in on our adjectival agreement case study, we conclude that these differences do not correspond to many of our hypotheses or assumptions about how certain texts group together. In particular, no clear split into native and translated texts emerged between the texts in our corpus. This paper thus shows interesting results for both (historical) linguists, especially those working on agreement, and scholars of medieval Celtic philology and translation texts.