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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.
Linguistic Contacts Across the English Channel : the Case of the History of the Retroflex <r>
(1995)
Aspect in Contact
(1995)
The earliest types of versification of the Insular literatures in the early middles ages (Old English, Old Welsh, Old Irish, Middle Breton) were oral-derived, i.e. orally composed and intended for listening audiences. The written records of such early poems, poreserved in the manuscripts, still reflect the flexibility of the metriccal constraints. This type of poetry is characterised by the avoidance of the total identity of the recurrent phonetic features. Rhyme is 'only' near-rhyme, alliteration only near-alliteration, accentuality only near-accentual recurrence, syllabicity only near-syllabicity etc.. This type of oral-derived aesthetics requires a very fine ear for the distinction and appreciation of the metrical near-samenesses and probably a prolongued training in the acquisition of metrical skills on teh part of the poet. In the later written poetries, which were both literate in composition and reception ("reading"), the ear was replaced by the eye. THis seems ot have required identical recurrence of metrical ffeatures rather than near-identities, ultimately leading to forms like 'rime riche' (like in French poetry), which would have been considered to be cloying in the early oral(-derived) context. In other words, the aesthetic potential of the metrical constraints depends on the medium of communication.
DO in Contact?
(1997)
Periphrastic English constructions involving the verbs BE/HAVE + a nominalised verb form expressing [+imperfectivity] and [+perfectivity] have close analogues in the Insular Celtic languages, where Celtic analogues of the English verb BE + a prepositional construction marker + Verbal Noun are used. The two constructions in English and teh Celtic languages are not identical and cannot be so, because the Celtic languages do not feature present and past participles and English has no verbal nouns. But the two types of the periphrastic mode of expressing aspect are close enough to suggest either a shift scenario, a borrowing scenario and/or an areal spread by diffusion over a long period of time. Since Old English did not mark aspect, neither morphologically nor syntactically, but Old Welsh and Old Irish already did so syntactically, it is suggested here that a unilateral transfer process was involved here, which proceeded from the Celtic languages to the English language. Aspectual transfer is even more pronounced in the so-called 'Celtic Englishes,' where in addition to the periphrastic marking of [+ imperfectivity] and [+perfectivity] the marking of [+habituality] is a grammaticalised feature and is periphrastically expressed.
The great Old English epic 'Beowulf' has been dated to practically every century between the 6th and the 11th century, depending on the criteria of dating adopted and the approaches advocated by the respective scholars. As the text successfully avoids to provide definite cues or evidence for a definitive date, these scholarly attempts reveal more about the respective scholars' research interests than offering uncontroversial dates. The point of dating 'Beowulf' then seems to provide scholars with the opportunity to anchor their own personal understanding of the poem within the century of their own personal predilection.
At the suggestion of the then editor of 'Studia Celtica Japonica,' Professor Toshio Doi, this bibliography lists the returns of a questionnaire sent to all scholars in Germany who were actively involved in Celtic Studies between 1980 and 1995. They were asked to list all their publications in the field of Celtic Studies, so as to allow to carry out a survey of their research activities during this period. While most scholars kindly obliged by returning their lists, there were notable exceptions who never answered the query. Regretably, the present bibliography therefore contains important gaps, which, however, may be quite telling as far as the research situation in Germany was concerned during that period.
In this brochure, Tristram argues that Standard English may be more indebted to the influence of 'Late British' than hitherto acknowledged by mainstream historical scholarship. By 'Late British' the native (or source) language of the about 2m language shifters in the wake of the Anglo-Saxon Conquest is meant who constituted the bulk of the native population of the island of Britain in the early middle ages. Although predictably, the influence of 'Late British' on Old English neither shows in the lexis of written Old English nor in its core grammar, it does show in the phonology (Peter Schrijver) and the inflectional syncretism of the Northern dialect texts. The influence of the interlanguage of the shifters only really surfaces in Middle English texts, after the diglossia between the language of the HIGH variety of Old English of the ruling elite and the LOW variety of the working population was discontinued under Norman rule. A number of grammatical features are listed in this brochure, which show that Present Day Standard English typologically sides with the Celtic languages, and with the Neo-Brittonic languages in particular, rather than with the other Continental Germanic languages. The brochure also calls for more research into this matter and in particular detailed investigations into the individual features mentioned.
A report of Mikhail Gasparov's 1989 book on the 'History of European Versification' is the starting point of the discussion in this article of the types of versification found in the Insular Celtic literatures from their first documenation in the early middle ages to the present day, as Gasparov's survey does not cover these poetries. It is claimed here that their metrical constraints were pre-literate and first and foremost geared at aural reception. The introduction of writing led to an increase in metrical sophistication which, while still basically oral, because of the process of "prelecting" (i.e. reading out aloud to illiterate or semi-literate audiences), required a very careful appreciation of their metrical skills. Contact with English and French syllabic poetry in the later middle ages and particularly in the modern period produced so-called "free verse" poetry. The word "free" in this particular context meant that the rather loose metrical constraints of these majority literatures in no way compared with the extraordinarily high metrical sophistication of the native oral derived or "bardic" poetry.
DO-Periphrasis in Irish
(2002)
Periphrastic DO constructions are very common both in English and in the Neo-Brittonic languages and are used for various functional purposes. These form part of a larger linguistic area in western and northern Europe. The literature does not mention comparable constructions for Irish and Scottish Gaelic. Irish informants, however, confirm orally that they are in common use among present day Gaeltacht speakers. They appear also to have been common in late spoken Manx. This study is based on the "Caint Chonamara" electronic corpus, the field work for which was first untertaken by Hans Hartmann (Hamburg) and Tomás de Bhaldraithe (Dublin) in the early 1960s und brought to a close by Arndt Wigger (Wuppertal) in the 1990s. The file for the Ros Muc dialogues yielded a very low return of potential DO constructions, i.e. 14 tokens of DÉAN + VN out of 494 DÉAN tokens altogether in the file. This shows that the DÉAN + VN construction was grammatically correct and acceptable to the native speakers, but was not grammaticalised and had a very low frequency. This result is interesting, but not surprising, since the informants chosen for this file conformed to the NORMS category (non-mobile old rural males. They were born around the turn of the 19c/20c and acquired their language now more than 100 years ago. This was well before the independence of the Republic. They would have acquired their Irish orally from native speakers and underwent very little formal training in Irish, or none. This small sample confirms that Irish did not belong to the broad linguistic area in Western Europe which makes use of periphrastic DO constructions, at least not until very recently.