Uhlich (Jürgen)
- (agents)
This article examines the various accentual environments in which clusters of nasal plus voiced stop were assimilated to an unlenited nasal, focusing principally on nd > nn. It is argued that the chronological differentiation offered in GOI between (a) Early Old Irish nd > nn in proclitics and (b) Classical Old Irish nd > nn in stressed words is not sufficient. Instead, the accentual status of each syllable surrounding the cluster needs to be considered separately, and the chronological sequence needs to be enlarged to three stages: (a) Early Old Irish nd > nn between two pretonic syllables, (b) Classical Old Irish nd > nn between a stressed and a post-tonic or between two post-tonic syllables, and (c) Middle Irish nd > nn between a pretonic and a stressed syllable, occurring specifically in the article form ind and nasalised nd-. Some apparent exceptions to (c), suggesting pre-Middle Irish assimilation in this environment, are redefined as properly belonging to environment (a), and the appendix presents a complete sample, with statistical analysis, of relevant spellings (mainly of the article) from four texts of different dates of composition as preserved in the late Middle Irish manuscript Lebor na hUidre.
Middle Irish cases like Loch nEchach n-án 'shining Loch nEchach' show nasalization of the final word of the phrase that cannot have been caused by the immediately preceding word. While frequently the second word is nasalized, too, the n- of n-án etc. cannot be analysed as 'doubled' from the preceding nEchach etc., contrast Old Irish cases in which the second word cannot be nasalized phonologically, as in dliged rechto ndǽ 'of the rules of the law of God', or the nasalization is clearly absent, as in déde didiu nand 'two things, then, are therein'. Therefore, the nasalization of the final word has rather been transferred directly from the headword. An analogous transference of nasalization is found across the numeral '2', cf. Middle Irish a (n)da n-ara 'their two charioteers'. This transference to the stressed final word of the phrase can be derived from the fact that '2' is proclitic, and comparison with Old Irish shows that in other contexts, too, nasalization was largely confined to the anlaut of stressed words. This explanation is applicable to words other than '2' by positing that any stressed word could become secondarily proclitic when followed by another word that carried the main stress of the entire phrase. This process of secondary de-stressing is frequently revealed elsewhere in Early Irish and later sources either orthographically or metrically. On this basis, various further Old Irish attestations with a nasalization that cannot be justified by the immediate context may be explained, such as i ndegaid n- 'after' with irregular nasalisation after the dative degaid.
This paper is the first of two that will deal with textual problems within the metrical passage in Fingal Rónáin known as Rónán's lament (FR, 11 168-92, 197-244). After briefly characterising the shortcomings of previous editions of this tale, the paper will address various questions of textual reconstruction and interpretation in quatrains 4 and 5 (11 180-7). As part of the discussion of quatrain 4, §111 of the paper will offer a sketch of the use of the subjunctive mood in subordinate temporal clauses with simultaneous time reference.
Sources
page url: https://codecs.vanhamel.nl/Id:Uhlich_(J%C3%BCrgen)
redirect: https://codecs.vanhamel.nl/Special:Redirect/page/36781
numerical alternative: https://codecs.vanhamel.nl/index.php?curid=36781
page ID: 36781
page ID tracker: https://codecs.vanhamel.nl/index.php?title=Show:ID&id=36781
