The linguistic preoccupations of the glossators of the st gall priscian
The existence of a native Irish grammatical tradition suggests that the intensive study of Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae by Irish scholars which is attested to by the glosses in the St Gall Priscian should have been the occasion for a contrastive analysis of Latin and Old Irish. This is not the case, however, as is apparent from the glossators’ apparent identification of themselves with Latini and their silence about Old Irish usage. Evidence of an original contribution to linguistic thought may be found only in the use of construe marks (syntactical glossing) and vernacular calques of Latin grammatical terms. This is to be explained by the glossators’ narrowly didactic focus upon Latin forms.