CELTIC LANGUAGES

Scottish Gaelic William Lamb University of Edinburgh and Colaisde Bheinn na Faoghla Scottish Gaelic (ScG), along with Irish and Manx, is a member of the Goidelic branch of the Celtic family of Indo-European languages. At its peak of influence around 1000AD, it was undoubtedly the national language of Scotland, but ever since, its fate has been one of gradual decline. Today, the Gaidhealtachd or Gaelic-speaking region is confined to the islands off the west coast of the country, aside from small pockets dotted throughout the northern and western Highlands. Although now spoken by only slightly more than 1% (65,978) of the country's population, it has had a rich influence on Scotland's history, toponymy, art, literature and national folklore. Scottish Gaelic has received much prior linguistic attention for its complex phonology (one dialect distinguishing at least 5 different lateral approximates), its system of consonant mutations, and its rich dialectal variation. However, relatively little has been published on its syntax. It is a dependent-marking, nominative-accusative VSO language . The verbal system tends to be agglutinating while the nominal system is somewhat fusional. Pronominal forms are especially notable in this regard, with a large proliferation of 'prepositional-pronouns' evincing different forms according to person, number, and gender. There are two genders (M&F), three numbers (Sing., Pl., and dual) and four cases extant in the language. Stem modification and suppletion are common morphological processes. Distinctions of mood, aspect, and voice tend to be made periphrastically, employing a combination of verbal particles, auxiliaries and 'verbal-nouns' that can function differently depending upon their syntactic status. Finally, the grammar ends with sections on discourse phenomena, interjections and exclamations, the influence of English, and a full oral folktale with interlinear translation. This new grammar is the most up-to-date one available on the language. It includes many topics that have never, or only rarely, been dealt with in the available literature, for example information structure, complex clause formation, and descriptions of various types of discourse-related constructions. It has been informed by an ongoing corpus-based study of register variation in the language, highlighting some of the initial differences that have been found in this data set. It is fully-referenced throughout for further information on Gaelic grammar and sociolinguistics. Useful for the language learner, it also includes a glossary of the Gaelic words in the text and a statistically-derived list of the 100 most frequent words in the language with definitions. ISBN 9783895867279. Languages of the World/Materials 401. 118pp. 2003. Cymraec Canawl: An Introduction to Middle Welsh Jean-François Mondon Minot State University This is a graded introduction to Middle Welsh. An extensive first chapter on orthography is followed by 49 chapters each dealing with one grammatical topic. Each chapter is replete with examples exemplifying the point under discussion and nearly every chapter contains an exercise with actual excerpts from the Mabinogion along with an accompanying vocabulary list and notes. After every tenth chapter, longer reading excerpts are presented for translation practice. The book contains a glossary as well as an answer key, which makes it ideal for independent learners. ISBN 9783969390191. LINCOM Student Grammars 05. 270pp. 2020. Welsh Dictionaries in the twentieth century: a critical analysis Sabine Heinz Humboldt-Universität Berlin The book presents the first investigation of modern Welsh dictionaries in their socio-historic context. It is based on the latest lexicographical and grammatical research. It focuses pre-dominantly on the analysis of the grammatical information contained in modern Welsh general-purpose dictionaries. In the light of a rich lexicographical production in contemporary Wales, this aspect is of highest priority, since such grammatical information provides the basic knowledge of how to use lexical items in context and how to apply them in speech. An adequate linguistic description of a given language will thereby support its maintenance and the identity of its speakers, a problem area also discussed here. In view of this, Welsh nouns and verbs are presented in a new classification which aims to reflect their properties more clearly and make them more easily reflectable in dictionary entries. A plea has been made for the inclusion of comprehensive morphological information into dictionary entries, but also phonetic transcription in order to promote language acquisition and maintenance. The works pays respect to the lexicographical work which has been thus far in Wales produced under intricate socio- historical conditions. It is meant to encourage further linguistic research and thereby to contribute to the stabilisation of the language. The author of the book is a lecturer on Celtic. She has published widely on various aspects of Celtic matters. ISBN 9783895867507. LINCOM Studies in Indo-European Linguistics 21. 540pp. 2003.