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The relative weight which is accorded to internal and external factors in language change is an ongoing debate. In this paper the claims made by Lass in several papers, in which he downplays the role of contact as a source of new features, are subjected to scrutiny. The double position that core structural features of a language always have priority and that inherited features remain unaltered is considered with evidence produced to show that this is not necessarily always the case. The parallels in the internal mechanisms suggested for the attested word order changes in both Old English and Old Irish are examined critically.

This paper sets out to discover a means to undertake corpus based semantic analysis of lexical items in a language that has no speakers who possess first language intuition. Two Cornish language lexical items, luf and dorn, were chosen for trial analyses. These items share the semantic field of “hand - part of body”. Concordances of these items were produced and compared. Criteria were then sought that distinguish the items in question. Differences were found in the case roles and collocations that are entailed by these words.