Linguistics
Welsh language
An Introduction to Middle Welsh: A Learner’s Grammar of the Medieval Language and Reader presents a complete course in reading Middle Welsh. The course is intended both for those who are working with a teacher and for self-learners, and assumes no prior knowledge of any Celtic language. A Learner’s Grammar introduces the grammatical constructions and vocabulary required for the person who wishes to read medieval Welsh prose, with exercises from authentic Welsh texts in each unit. The Reader in the second part presents long excerpts from texts from medieval Welsh literature and history. A full Glossary is included.
This study investigates the function of overt relative markers (yr hwn etc.) in a sample of the 16th-century Welsh translation of Gesta Romanorum. Using previous findings from a collection of 14th-century texts, the following results were obtained: (1) The relative frequency of the construction significantly increases in this text compared to the earlier period, which points to the expansion of this construction. (2) The data both from the 14th- century sample, as well as from the Gesta Romanorum, demonstrate that this construction is used to mark non-restrictive relative clauses. (3) Moreover, in Gesta Romanorum, another usage of this construction is found frequently, where overt marking is used in presentative relative clauses. This testifies that the category proposed by Lambrecht (2000) for French is valid for other languages.
This article considers how gentry antiquarian communities in later Stuart Cornwall and south-west Wales constructed distinctive local identities. It focuses on four case studies: William Scawen, the West Penwith coterie, Edward Lhuyd and the Teifi Valley group. These antiquaries conceived of the Cornish and the Welsh as ‘ancient Britons’ and established them as historically and culturally distinct from the English, usually through reference to their indigenous languages. However, the reception of their work among wider landed society was shaped by the vitality of each respective language (with still-ubiquitous Welsh contrasting with near-extinct Cornish). By exploring the relationship between intellectual culture and identity formation, the article contributes to a broader understanding of the various and overlapping identities that permeated the British archipelago.
Buske-Grammatikübungsbücher sind lehrwerkunabhängig, universell einsetzbar und eignen sich als kursbegleitende Übungsgrammatik und zum selbstständigen Lernen. Lernziele: Sichere Beherrschung der Grammatik; Niveaustufe A1/A2 des Europäischen Referenzrahmens. Konzeption: In 30 überschaubaren Kapiteln werden die wesentlichen Phänomene der walisischen Grammatik, Schreibung und Aussprache prägnant und leicht verständlich zusammengefasst sowie anhand von Tabellen, Übersichten und Beispielsätzen mit Übersetzungen veranschaulicht. Jedes Kapitel schließt mit einer Vielzahl abwechslungsreicher praxisnaher Übungen zur unmittelbaren Anwendung des gelernten Stoffes. Im Anhang dienen ausgewählte Sprichwörter als authentische Sprachbeispiele. Ein Lösungsschlüssel zu allen Übungen, ein walisisch-deutsches und ein deutsch-walisisches Vokabelverzeichnis unterstützen das Selbststudium. Ein Stichwortregister hilft beim gezielten Nachschlagen einzelner Aspekte der walisischen Grammatik.
Dr. Britta Schulze-Thulin legt in ihrem Beitrag ‘Zum Bergnamen Y Das in Wales’ dar, dass wal. das mit einiger Wahrscheinlichkeit ein Lehnwort aus dem Irischen (mir. daiss) ist, das vermutlich seinerseits auch Geber für anord. des und die anderen westskandinavischen Wörter war. Das schwankende Geschlecht und die Pluralvarianten von wal. das sind einerseits durch den Lehnwortcharakter, andererseits durch Analogie zu erklären. Hyperkorrektes tas (aus das) kann ins Englische entlehnt worden sein, vielleicht gehören die englischen Tas-Ortsnamen dazu.
This article briefly outlines the history of research into Welsh personal names and discusses the importance of Welsh data for general studies of onomastics. To illustrate this importance it also analyses the prehistory of the Venetic anthroponym Uposedos beside its Welsh comparanda. In turn, the data of other Indo-European languages is traditionally used for discussions of the Welsh onomastics, and such an analysis is carried out in the article for Welsh names containing the component (-)dog(-) as in Dogfael, Eldog. The difficult Old Welsh name Saturnbiu alongside similar early Welsh formations is treated from the point of historical linguistics, and this analysis also adduces semantic comparanda from outside the Indo-European world. The importance of extra-linguistic factors for this discussion is paramount and data from various medieval Christian traditions and ancient mythology is used to support the suggested reconstruction. The paper calls (again!) for the urgent necessity of the compilation of a Historical and Comparative Dictionary of Welsh Personal Names.
A systematic search for Celtic derivatives of IE *peug′‐ /*peuk′‐ ‘to pierce’ illustrates the extent to which Indo‐European etymological dictionaries have tended to overlook the existence of cognates in the Celtic languages.
This article investigates the fragmentary evidence for a lost church called Llanfawr, or Landa Magna in Latin, which lay in the Teifi valley in Ceredigion. It is argued that the Latin name of this church gave rise to stories about a character called Magna or Magnus. This fictional personage appears as the subject of a miracle performed by St David, and in Ireland was even transformed into a sister of David. Sources discussed include Bonedd y Saint, Progenies Keredic, the Breton-Latin Life of St Brioc, Rhygyfarch's Life of St David, the Life of St Maur by Odo of Glanfeuil, and the tract on the Mothers of Irish Saints. Possible locations of Llanfawr are discussed, but it remains uncertain where precisely it was and whether it corresponds to any church known today.
In fact, however, dyma and dyna comprise doubly two homonyms: dyma/dyna presentatives, and dyma/dyna referential pronouns, typically rhematic or focal.
Following a descriptive breakdown of the syntactic properties of the presentatives, the Presentative Narrative Tenses (PNTs) I to VI are discussed.
Functionally striking and statistically prevalent is (PNT I) # dyma + noun phrase/personal pronoun + yn-converb2#, where we encounter two homonymous sub-tenses: the first with specific scenic or theatrical ('dramatic', narratologically scene-setting) semantics; the second non-scenic, but tagmemically functional. It is noteworthy that the entire presentative clause is high-level, narratologically rhematic or focal to the preceding text: it contains the key event. The presentative signals immediacy between narrator, reader and narrated character.
Two presentative narrative tenses are non-verbal: adverbial presentates (dramatic presentation of motion) and scenic presentation of nouns.The distribution of [ɨ], both geographically and historically as well as within various dialects is discussed and purported relict survivals of the sound in southern Welsh dialects are examined. A broader comprehensive look at the vowel systems of Welsh is necessitated to understand its structural context before addressing its phonetic characteristics. Further comparison to similar sounds in other languages conclude with the proposal of a number of additional phonetic categories and symbols for the International Phonetic Alphabet in regard to the high vowel space area. Finally the discussion of the historical development of [ɨ] alongside the other high vowels from 400 AD to the present-day is undertaken with a novel conclusion as to its genesis – a much later genesis than that hitherto proposed.
Apart from featuring original analysis, the work assembles disparate information dispersed between separate subdisciplines of dialectology, phonetics, language typology and language history, as well as data from a wide assortment of relevant dialects and languages, to give a stimulating and a wide-ranging treatment to this rather singular vowel.
