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Aspect in Contact
(1995)
Linguistic Contacts Across the English Channel : the Case of the History of the Retroflex <r>
(1995)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 close comparative analysis of the attrition of inflections in historical English and Welsh reveals that Welsh had already lost its entire NP inflection when it surfaces in writing in the 7c AD, while English was still fully inflected both in the NP and VP. The comparison of the modern English and Welsh morphological categories shows that English overtook Welsh in its rate of analyticising drift. This shows first in writing during the Middle English period. Thus in English, the attrition bothfully affected the NP and the VP, while in modern Welsh the attrition of the verbal inflection in the VP is much less advanced than in English. Both languages, however, share the shift in the VP from the synthetism of verbal tense, mood (and voice) marking towards analytic aspect marking, which continues to gain in importance in both languages today. The question is raised, whether this joint development may have been due to the influence of the 'Late British' speaking shifters to Old English, to prolongued areal contactin the island of Britain ("Sprachbund") and/or to a more general drift from syntheticity to analycity in (Western) IE languages in Europe, which affects some languages more than others. The Appendix prints the earliest Old English and Old Welsh texts (dated by absolute chronology) and marks their loss of inflections, in order to highlight the advanced analycity in the Old Welsh NP as opposed to the Old English NP.
The continued linguistic contact in the islands of Britain and Ireland over the past two millenia has led to linguistic convergence processes between the Insular Celtic and West Germanic languages involved. While the Latin, Old Norse and Norman French contact scenarios were recognised and have been well studied since the 19c, the Celtic component received much less scholarly attention until the 1990s because of the continued linguistic bias, once fostered by 19c Anglo-Saxonisms and the idea of racial purity of the Egnlish population. It is only in the very recent past that the many different contact areas between English and the Insular Celtic languages have received recognition after New Labour's post-1997 introduction of "devolution" politics. The closest and longest interaction took of course place between English and Welsh. The present article looks at three major types of interaction which led to convergence in a number of important linguistic features: (1) mutual retention of shared archaic features, (2) mutual shared innovations, and (3) transfer from one language to another, either by unilateral or by bilateral transfer. The exemplary contact features discussed in this article relate to the retention of interdental fricatives, the shared innovation of analycity and multi-word verb formation, and clefting as feature transfer. Transfer is likely to have taken place under the following conditions: (a) earlier written documentation in the donor language, (b) higher frequency of occurrence in the donor language, (c) conformity with other structures in the donor language, and (d) grammaticalisation in the donor language. The conclusion endorses Salikoko Mufwene's claim that the making of English in the island of Britain was subject to the same contact processes which created the English based creoles from indigenised Englishes during the colonial period.