Bernard
Mees s. xx–xxi
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Contributions to journals
The inscriptional remains of Gaulish preserve syntactic behaviours that are not expected from the perspective of the diachronic schemes usually posited for the development of early Insular Celtic syntax from Proto-Indo-European. Widespread evidence is attested, particularly for the behaviour of clitics, that does not seem reconcilable with many of the assumptions made in previous studies regarding the nature of the syntax of Proto-Celtic. Gaulish also evidently features scrambling-type phenomena such as left branch extraction that are not usually thought to appear in other Celtic languages. An analysis which begins with an assessment of these features leads to a more empirically predicated and consistent understanding of the early development of Celtic word order than has been proffered previously.
The inscriptional remains of Gaulish preserve syntactic behaviours that are not expected from the perspective of the diachronic schemes usually posited for the development of early Insular Celtic syntax from Proto-Indo-European. Widespread evidence is attested, particularly for the behaviour of clitics, that does not seem reconcilable with many of the assumptions made in previous studies regarding the nature of the syntax of Proto-Celtic. Gaulish also evidently features scrambling-type phenomena such as left branch extraction that are not usually thought to appear in other Celtic languages. An analysis which begins with an assessment of these features leads to a more empirically predicated and consistent understanding of the early development of Celtic word order than has been proffered previously.
A close textual examination of case-marking and role in Gaulish suggests that the instrumental (and ablative) formants and functions inherited from Indo-European remained largely independent in use from those of the other oblique cases. Although a distinct morphological locative seems to have been given up at a prehistoric stage, the Gaulish of the Roman period appears to have preserved a much fuller and more synthetic system of grammatical case than did any of the medieval Celtic languages. The practice of projecting Insular Celtic behaviours onto Continental Celtic (or even cross-linguistic abstractions derived from broader linguistic theory) should not serve as a substitute for analysing Gaulish inscriptions from the perspective of interlingual intertextuality and of properly contextualized epigraphic genre. Gaulish should be understood principally as a closely historicized inscriptional language, its attested expressions constrained by typical ancient Mediterranean epigraphic pragmatics, yet representing an idiosyncratic development of Celtic linguistic tradition nonetheless.
A close textual examination of case-marking and role in Gaulish suggests that the instrumental (and ablative) formants and functions inherited from Indo-European remained largely independent in use from those of the other oblique cases. Although a distinct morphological locative seems to have been given up at a prehistoric stage, the Gaulish of the Roman period appears to have preserved a much fuller and more synthetic system of grammatical case than did any of the medieval Celtic languages. The practice of projecting Insular Celtic behaviours onto Continental Celtic (or even cross-linguistic abstractions derived from broader linguistic theory) should not serve as a substitute for analysing Gaulish inscriptions from the perspective of interlingual intertextuality and of properly contextualized epigraphic genre. Gaulish should be understood principally as a closely historicized inscriptional language, its attested expressions constrained by typical ancient Mediterranean epigraphic pragmatics, yet representing an idiosyncratic development of Celtic linguistic tradition nonetheless.