S, A, and P argument demotion with preverbal imm-(a-N) in Old and Middle Irish

Dedio, Stefan; Widmer, Paul

doi:10.3406/ecelt.2017.1100

Cited by 4 publications

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“…A particularly well attested form of pronominal conversion is the reciprocal construction involving the prefixation of imma N (preverb imm + 3rd sg. masculine pronoun) to a verbal root to produce various kinds of reciprocal constructions (Dedio & Widmer ). Pronominal conversion is just one of several kinds of argument structure‐changing strategies in Old Irish, such as NP‐promotion passivization, reflexive verbs (Thurneysen : 251; Irslinger : 180f.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Transitivity and Subject Positions in Old Irish

Lash

2019

Trans of the Philol Soc

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This article is concerned with some fine‐grained distinctions in the syntax of subjects in Old Irish. Old Irish (7th–9th century) is typically described as a VSO language, but there are a number of sentences in the corpus in which the subject is not immediately after the subject. In this paper two case studies are conducted the results of which show that (a) non‐final late subjects are confined to non‐transitive and ‘atypical transitive’ clauses having the general form VXSY, and (b) the position of final late subjects in the schema VXS# can understood in descriptive terms as ‘right‐dislocated’ and motivated largely in information structure terms (i.e. Topic‐Comment, Focus‐Alternative), although a small residue of examples are similar to the VXSY‐type of case in being ‘atypical transitives’. The descriptive term ‘atypical transitive’ is introduced here to cover morphologically transitive clauses (with accusative marked direct objects nouns, or pronouns that can replace such nouns) that behave syntactically more like non‐transitive clauses. There are four types: negative clauses with bare indefinite objects, clauses with object‐oriented floating quantifiers, clauses in which a pronominal object serves to ‘detransitivize’ the verb, and clauses containing a verb of motion whose direct object is the goal of movement.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Pronominal conversion is just one of several kinds of argument structure‐changing strategies in Old Irish, such as NP‐promotion passivization, reflexive verbs (Thurneysen : 251; Irslinger : 180f. ; 2017: 109, ex.10), and the anti‐passive use of imma N (Dedio & Widmer : 197).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transitivity and Subject Positions in Old Irish

Lash

2019

Trans of the Philol Soc

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“…If proclitication to em-is an MB innovation, LVB: 252-5, Lambert 2010: 177, cf. Irslinger 2014, Dedio and Widmer 2017, it reveals early the general change of object case of infinitives to accusative of late 17C-, HMSB: §54. The genitive may then have been early reanalysed as allomorph of accusative with nonfinite forms.…”

Section: 3mentioning

confidence: 99%

Mihi est from Brythonic to Breton II

Řezáč¹

2021

Indogermanische Forschungen

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Middle Breton (MB) presents an anomaly of pronominal argument coding in imperative and mihi est HAVE constructions: objects can be accusative proclitics only in 1st/2nd person, while unique enclitics appear in 3rd person. Part II traces the history of object coding: Independent > enclitic coding originates in unavailability of accusative object mesoclitics in V1 imperatives by Vendryes’ Restriction in Brythonic, and nonagreement with nominative objects of mihi est in Breton-Cornish. Restriction of enclitics to 3rd person originates with mihi est in typically nonhuman nominative object possessa in Brythonic or Breton-Cornish. It spreads to imperatives through shared enclitic coding in MB, and is circumvented by the MB innovation of accusative proclitics for mesoclitics that allows 1st/2nd person even in V1, as well as the participle in the new HAVE-perfect later in MB. “Innovative” varieties of Breton transition to regular accusative objects with or without losing dative subjects of mihi est. The developments are constrained to familiar patterns of nominative/anomalous subject + accusative/nominative object case combinations, giving rise to the imperative + HAVE construction grouping of Finnish within the history of Breton.

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“…This slot was thus only vestigial in early Middle Welsh and there is no need to include it in the description of the verbal complex proper (Rodway 2013: 110-1;Meid 1963: 78-9). There are no attestations of a co-occurrence of ym-with infixed pronouns in Middle Welsh which is at odds with the behaviour of its Middle Breton and Old Irish cognates em-and imm-(a-N ), which clearly show a tendency to co-occur with pronominal P-and T-markers (Hemon 1984: 271-3;Dedio & Widmer 2017).…”

Section: The Internal Structure Of the Verbal Stemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There are no attestations of a co‐occurrence of ym‐ with infixed pronouns in Middle Welsh which is at odds with the behaviour of its Middle Breton and Old Irish cognates em‐ and imm‐(a‐ n ) , which clearly show a tendency to co‐occur with pronominal p ‐ and t ‐markers (Hemon 1984: 271–3; Dedio & Widmer 2017).…”

Section: The Morphological Shape Of the Verbal Complexmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is This Verb a Word? A philological Study of the Distribution of Phonological and Morphological Domains in the Middle Welsh Verb

Dedio

2023

Trans of the Philol Soc

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The—for European languages—large amount of bound elements in the older Insular Celtic languages and the array of phonological interactions within morphological and phrasal structures have lead several researchers to conclude that individual words play a lesser role in the grammars of those languages. Based on current typological research on wordhood and a thorough discussion of the problems and limitations of studying wordhood in corpus languages, this article gives an in‐depth investigation of the morphological and phonological word‐like domains in the Middle Welsh verbal complex. There are several structures that could be labelled ‘word’ on the basis of the findings presented here, which leads to the conclusion that the term is not very useful for the synchronic description of this language. Die für indogermanische Sprachen große Menge gebundener Elemente in den älteren inselkeltischen Sprachen und die Prävalenz morphologischer und phonologischer Interaktion in morphologischen und syntaktischen Strukturen haben einige Forscher zu der Schlussfolgerung gebracht, dass die einzelnen Wörter in den Grammatiken dieser Sprachen eine untergeordnete Rolle spielen. Auf der Grundlage aktueller typologischer Forschung zu wordhood und einer Diskussion der Schwierigkeiten bei der Untersuchung von wordhood in Korpussprachen bietet dieser Artikel eine detaillierte Untersuchung der wortartigen Domänen im mittelkymrischen Verbalkomplex. Da es mehrere Strukturen gibt, die auf der Basis dieser Untersuchung als ‘Wort’ bezeichnet werden können, erscheint dieser Begriff für die synchrone Beschreibung dieser Sprache wenig hilfreich. [German]

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S, A, and P argument demotion with preverbal imm-(a-N) in Old and Middle Irish

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Transitivity and Subject Positions in Old Irish

Transitivity and Subject Positions in Old Irish

Mihi est from Brythonic to Breton II

Is This Verb a Word? A philological Study of the Distribution of Phonological and Morphological Domains in the Middle Welsh Verb

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