Nora
White s. xx–xxi
2022
Languages change constantly in all linguistic domains – phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexical use – and their graphic expressions are subject to fashions. Irish, a Celtic language spoken in Ireland, is in no way different. With a written history of more than 1,500 years, Irish is among the oldest attested languages in Europe. Because of its long textual tradition, its development through time is reflected in the huge amount of variation observable in the extant sources, i.e. texts in manuscripts from the 8th up to as late as the 17th and 18th century. The European Research Council-funded project Chronologicon Hibernicum (hereafter ChronHib; 2015–2021) has studied the diachronic evolution of the early medieval Irish language, best known as Old Irish. This article presents the major challenges posed by extant Old Irish texts and introduces two methods developed in the ChronHib project to study synchronic and diachronic variation in the extant material, namely variation tagging and Bayesian language variation analysis.
Languages change constantly in all linguistic domains – phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexical use – and their graphic expressions are subject to fashions. Irish, a Celtic language spoken in Ireland, is in no way different. With a written history of more than 1,500 years, Irish is among the oldest attested languages in Europe. Because of its long textual tradition, its development through time is reflected in the huge amount of variation observable in the extant sources, i.e. texts in manuscripts from the 8th up to as late as the 17th and 18th century. The European Research Council-funded project Chronologicon Hibernicum (hereafter ChronHib; 2015–2021) has studied the diachronic evolution of the early medieval Irish language, best known as Old Irish. This article presents the major challenges posed by extant Old Irish texts and introduces two methods developed in the ChronHib project to study synchronic and diachronic variation in the extant material, namely variation tagging and Bayesian language variation analysis.
2021
Website and blog for the research project OG[H]AM: harnessing digital technologies to transform understanding of ogham writing, from the 4th century to the 21st century (2021–2024). The team includes Katherine Forsyth and David Stifter (principal investigators), Deborah Hayden (co-investigator), Nora White and Megan Kasten (post-doctoral researchers), Luca Guarienti (digital officer) and Clara Scholz (student intern). The website features blogs by team members as well as guest blogs by other researchers, including Karen Murad and Chantal Kobel.
Website and blog for the research project OG[H]AM: harnessing digital technologies to transform understanding of ogham writing, from the 4th century to the 21st century (2021–2024). The team includes Katherine Forsyth and David Stifter (principal investigators), Deborah Hayden (co-investigator), Nora White and Megan Kasten (post-doctoral researchers), Luca Guarienti (digital officer) and Clara Scholz (student intern). The website features blogs by team members as well as guest blogs by other researchers, including Karen Murad and Chantal Kobel.