The basic claim of this paper is that the noticeable variation in the positioning of the Old Irish (= OIr.) perfectivising particle ro in the verbal complex can be accounted for in terms of a process of morphological externalisation. In order to make clear the extent of this claim, I first offer a brief description of the morphological structure implied by the OIr. verbal complex and I propose a classification of the OIr. forms including the particle ro. Second, I develop a notion of morphological externalisation, specifically, of its mechanism of change, according to which externalisation involves a sequence of paradigmatic reanalysis and proportional analogy, and which may serve to explain the reordering of morphemes observed both in Haspelmath's (1993) and in Mithun's (1999) studies. Finally, I explain the assumed change in which the particle ro changes its position within the OIr. verbal complex as an example of externalisation in complex morphological structures of the type dealt with in Mithun's study.

In this paper I investigate OIr. lexical compound verbs with the basic deuterotonic (deut.) shape CV·VC‐, of the type of expected *do·ánicc ‘he, she came’ or ‘who came’ which actually occurs in the prototonic (prot.) form tánicc. On the basis of the notions of affix ordering, frequency and junctural phonotactics developed in recent works on experimental psycholinguistics, the OIr. forms of the type tánicc are explained as relatively late innovations in which the deut. are replaced by prot. forms. The extension of the prot. form in those lexical compound verbs at the expense of the deut. form is due to the phonotactically problematic hiatus of the latter and depends mainly on grammatical (in leniting relative clause forms) and lexical (in the most frequent verbs) criteria.

No abstract

This paper deals with the creation of the Old Irish oblique relative conjunct particle -(s)a N - (e.g., dianepir “for which he says” = do-(s)a N -epir) as the outcome of the internalization of a demonstrative form used as a light head, which initially stood as a morphologically independent form. The initial step of this change was the grammaticalization of that demonstrative as the oblique element of a paradigm of relative-clause type forms in which the subject and object functions of the antecedent of the relative are also distinguished. Internalization is defined as an abrupt morphological change creating grammatical elements; its specific mechanism is the mirror image of externalization and must be distinguished from other morphological changes such as incorporation.