Cover not available
Article published In:
Diachronica
Vol. 35:1 (2018) ► pp.35–70

On morphological internalization

The origin of the Old Irish oblique relative conjunct particle -(s)aN-

| University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU)
This paper deals with the creation of the Old Irish oblique relative conjunct particle -(s)aN- (e.g., dianepir “for which he says” = do-(s)aN-epir) as the outcome of the internalization of a demonstrative form used as a light head, which initially stood as a morphologically independent form. The initial step of this change was the grammaticalization of that demonstrative as the oblique element of a paradigm of relative-clause type forms in which the subject and object functions of the antecedent of the relative are also distinguished. Internalization is defined as an abrupt morphological change creating grammatical elements; its specific mechanism is the mirror image of externalization and must be distinguished from other morphological changes such as incorporation.
Keywords: Old Irish, verbal complex, relative clause, NPrel function, light head, morphological internalization and externalization, incorporation, morphophonological marker
Article outline
  • 1.General and specific goals and structure of the paper
  • 2.Old Irish and the definition of a morphological change
    • 2.1Old Irish and its contribution to the diachrony of complex morphological structures
    • 2.2Internalization in Old Irish
  • 3.The Old Irish oblique relative conjunct particle -(s)aN-
    • 3.1The notation -(s)aN-: Formal aspects of the particle
    • 3.2What is a ‘conjunct particle’ in Old Irish?
    • 3.3The particle -(s)aN- and other verbal complexes expressing relative-clause type
    • 3.4Interim summary
  • 4.The diachronic problem of the conjunct particle -(s)aN-
    • 4.1Old Irish cognates of the conjunct particle -(s)aN- and the notion of ‘light head’
    • 4.2Previous scholarship on the diachronic process leading to Old Irish -(s)aN -
  • 5.Internalization as a morphological change
    • 5.1Internalization and univerbation
    • 5.2Internalization and incorporation
    • 5.3Morphological externalization in the Old Irish verbal complex
    • 5.4Interim summary: Internalization as a morphological change
  • 6.Morphological internalization of the oblique relative independent conjunction *-(s)aN
    • 6.1Internalization of the oblique relative independent conjunction *-(s)aN
    • 6.2Favoring contexts for the internalization of *-(s)aN
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 16 April 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.16036.gar
References (29)
References
Ahlqvist, Anders. 1985. The syntax of relative marking in Old Irish. Folia Linguistica Historica 6(2). 323–346.Google Scholar
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2007. Typological distinctions in word-formation. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, vol. 3: Grammatical categories and the lexicon, 2nd edn., 1–65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Andrews, Avery D. 2007. Relative clauses. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, vol. 2: Complex constructions, 2nd edn., 206–236. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bauer, Laurie. 2001. Morphological productivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Breatnach, Liam. 1980. Some remarks on the relative in Old Irish. Ériu 311. 1–9.Google Scholar
Citko, Barbara. 2004. On headed, headless, and light-headed relatives. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 221. 95–126. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Diessel, Holger. 1999. Demonstratives: Form, function and grammaticalization. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
DIL: Dictionary of the Irish language. Based mainly on Old and Middle Irish materials (and contributions to a dictionary of the Irish language). Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1913–1975 (compact edition 1983). The edition quoted is the electronic version of 2013 (‘eDIL’) available at [URL] (18 December, 2017).
Eska, Joseph F. 2007. Bergin’s rule: Syntactic diachrony and discourse strategy. Diachronica 24(2). 253–278. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
García-Castillero, Carlos. 2012. The paradigm of clause types in Old Irish: The morphological encoding of illocutionary force. In H. Craig Melchert (ed.), The Indo-European verb: Proceedings of the Conference of the Society for Indo-European Studies, Los Angeles, 13–15 September 2010, 61–72. Wiesbaden: Reichert.Google Scholar
. 2013a. Morphological externalisation and the Old Irish verbal particle ro . Transactions of the Philological Society 111(1). 108–140. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2013b. Old Irish tonic pronouns as extraclausal constituents. Ériu 631. 1–39. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014. De-adjectival preverbs in the Old Irish verbal complex: A synchronic and diachronic study. Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 611. 57–100.Google Scholar
. 2017. The split for, a gecko morpheme in the Old Irish verbal complex. In Ivo Hajnal, Daniel Kölligan & Katharina Zipser (eds.), Miscellanea Indogermanica. Festschrift für José Luis García Ramón zum 65. Geburtstag, 195–206. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen der Universität Innsbruck Bereich Sprachwissenschaft.Google Scholar
. Forthcoming. Clause typing in the Old Irish verbal complex: Morphological expression, paradigmatic organization and syntactic implications.Google Scholar
Gerdts, Donna B. 1998. Incorporation. In Andrew Spencer & Arnold M. Zwicky (eds.), The handbook of morphology, 84–100. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Haugen, Jason D. 2015. Incorporation. In Peter O. Müller, Ingeborg Ohnheiser, Susan Olsen & Franz Rainer (eds.), Word-formation: An international handbook of the languages of Europe, vol. 11, 413–434. Berlin: De Gruyter-Mouton.Google Scholar
Heath, Jeffrey. 1997. Lost wax: Abrupt replacement of key morphemes in Australian agreement complexes. Diachronica 14(2). 197–232. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lambert, Pierre-Yves. 1992. La relative ‘nasalisante’ en vieil-irlandais. Bulletin de la Société Linguistique de Paris 861. 226–264.Google Scholar
McCone, Kim. 2006. The origins and development of the insular Celtic verbal complex. Maynooth: National University of Ireland.Google Scholar
Mithun, Marianne. 2000. Incorporation. In Geert Booij, Christian Lehmann & Joachim Mugdan (eds.), Morphologie / Morphology: Ein internationales Handbuch zur Flexion und Wortbildung / An International Handbook on Inflection and Word-Formation, vol. 11, 916–928. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Ó hUiginn, Ruairí. 1983. On the Old Irish figura etymologica. Ériu 341. 123–133.Google Scholar
. 1986. The Old Irish nasalizing relative clause. Ériu 371. 33–87.Google Scholar
Schrijver, Peter. 1994. The Celtic adverbs for ‘against’ and ‘with’ and the early apocope of *-i . Ériu 451. 151–189.Google Scholar
Stokes, Whitley & John Strachan (eds.). 1901–1903. Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus. A collection of Old Irish glosses, scholia, prose and verse. (With a supplement by Whitley Stokes.) Dublin: Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies.Google Scholar
Thurneysen, Rudolf. 1946. A grammar of Old Irish. Revised and enlarged edition. Translated from the German by Daniel A. Binchy & Osborn Bergin. Dublin: Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies (reprinted with supplement 1975).Google Scholar
Watkins, Calvert. 1963. Preliminaries to a historical and comparative analysis of the syntax of the Old Irish verb. Celtica 61. 1–49.Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Stoynova, Natalia
2022. A nonstandard type of affix reordering. Studies in Language 46:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 1 august 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.