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Laudation zur Verleihung des Doktogrades ehrenhalber an Herrn Prof. em. Dr. phil. Helmut Lüdke
(2008)
realisation in form of a retroflex is not only found in the English south West ('West Country burr'), but also across the English Channel in a well circumscribed area of Trégor in Brittany. Both areas also share other phonetic features such as sonorisation of word initial fricatives, epenthesis, surnames etc. How is this to be explained? Intensive mobility and trade across the sea suggest themselves as a possible answer. Travelling by sea, aided by expert knowledge of the seasonal currents and winds, was much quicker and efficient in former times than travelling across land. In this connection, the phenomenon of the "Johnnys de Roccoff" who traded Breton onions along the English coasts until very recently is pointed ou as a type of contact which may have transported phoneme realisations and lexis across the sea, forming a linguistic area with not much contact with their respective hinterlands in England and Brittany.
In the earliest recorded poetry of the Insular Celtic literature, the occurrence intra-linear phoneme recurrences in addition to the rather common feature of alliteration suggest that they served an indexical motivation of the metrical constraints. This is in particular suggested by the indexical use of personal names. This practice may perhaps even reach back to Continental Celtic metrical practices which already seem to bear witness of the use of such language skills. It is particularly interesting to note that the initial mutations of the lexemes do not obstruct indexicality. It is suggested that the orally trained poets may perhaps have received specific grammatical instructions as part of their prolongued poetic education.
A close comparison of the use of language, style and method of composition of the sizable corpus of Old English and Old Irish vernacular sermons (10c and 11c) show that both cultures make use of a preaching rhetoric which is deeply indebted to oral styles of preaching and geared towards the aural reception of the spoken word. Both tend to resort to a flamboyant pastoralism and excel in elaborate verbal artistry. While received scholarship claims that the English were subject to Irish influence in this respect because of the existence Hiberno-Latin analogues, this short monograph argues that this is very unlikely. Rather both traditions are independently indebted to 7c to 9c Continental preaching styles, the evidence of which shows that there was both a plain preaching mode (the "fisherman's" mode) and an elaborate (or "Asian") one. The use of both was advocated,depending on the occasion, by St. Augustin's "De doctrina christiana." In the Insular context of vernacular preaching, the latter seems to have been functioned as a favoured art form.