THE INITIAL CONSONANT MUTATIONS IN THE BRYTHONIC CELTIC LANGUAGES (WALES, CORNWALL, BRITTANY).
Item
-
Title
-
THE INITIAL CONSONANT MUTATIONS IN THE BRYTHONIC CELTIC LANGUAGES (WALES, CORNWALL, BRITTANY).
-
Identifier
-
AAI8302551
-
identifier
-
8302551
-
Creator
-
WILLIS, PENNY.
-
Contributor
-
Robert Vago
-
Date
-
1982
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Language, Linguistics
-
Abstract
-
The Celtic languages have morphologically-conditioned processes, traditionally called initial mutations, in which the initial segment of a word undergoes various changes under the influence of a preceding word: thus Welsh {lcub}p(epsilon)n{rcub} 'head' : {lcub}i b(epsilon)n{rcub} 'his head' : {lcub}i f(epsilon)n{rcub} 'her head' : {lcub}v mh(epsilon)n{rcub} 'my head'. A number of scholars have attempted formal descriptions of the mutations in the Brythonic Celtic languages (Welsh, Breton, and Cornish), but none of these is adequate. In particular, they fail to account for the fact that one of the mutations, lenition, is by far the predominant one, and that in Welsh and Breton (the living Brythonic languages) it is extending itself at the expense of the other mutations and even of the radical (base form). Another frequent shortcoming of previous analyses is the inclusion among the mutations of low-level phonological rules affecting initial consonants. Since these may modify or even reverse the effects of the true mutations, the confusion prevents an adequate account of the latter.;In this dissertation, I present a detailed critique of the literature on the mutations, and propose a theory which I believe adequately accounts for them: inside a 'phonological word' (i.e., a sequence of morphemes which behaves as a single word even if it is spelled as a sequence of words), lenition is the unmarked case. Other mutations, and preservation of the radical, are triggered by morphological features assigned to the first element in the sequence, while lenition is caused by the absence of a feature. (There is also a marked type of lenition, occurring outside the phonological word, which is effected by transformational rules.).;I examine, and reject, the possibility that the mutations are phonologically conditioned, and discuss the distinction between the mutations and low-level phonological rules.;I present a detailed description of the mutations, including 'phonological' (i.e. feature-changing) rules and an exhaustive list of environments. I put special emphasis on spoken usage; dialectal data are extensively used, and differences between the literary standards and the spoken languages, and among dialects, are noted. The Welsh and Breton mutations are described in considerably more detail than those of Cornish, which is extinct.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
-
Program
-
Linguistics
