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The "e;Book of Aneirin"e; is a thirteenth-century manuscript collection of Welsh praise-poetry. In comparison with other Welsh sources of similar date, the language of this text exhibits a number of features which have been interpreted as archaisms and taken as indications of great antiquity for the text. However, particularly in syntax, claims about the status of these 'archaisms' have not been discussed in the context of the grammatical organisation of the text as a whole. This book approaches various aspects of grammar against the background of a comprehensive edition of the finite verbal clauses of the text. Syntactic analysis of the data-base so established takes its point of departure from the relationship of the verb with its arguments in the clause, and is concentrated on two issues: 1. the type and status of basic word order in the text; 2. the interaction of the semantics of the predication with the pragmatics of communication of information. It is argued that, as would be expected for a Welsh text, the basic order is VSO, but also, and more importantly, that the text does not contain 'archaic' evidence of any earlier, different basic orders. Rather it is argued that word-order variation in the text can be rigorously analysed in terms of a model of functional syntax which is sensitive to both the pragmatics of the text and the semantics of the predications involved. In the light of these results, argumentation concerning historical syntax and especially reconstruction of syntax are evaluated, both in the field of Celtic and in wider cross-language perspective. Finally, the edition of the finite clauses of the text is followed by a number of notes discussing historical and synchronic aspects of the material presented, with particular emphasis on morphology and etymology.

Old Irish is the language of Ireland in the period from the 8th to the 10th century AD, and is the oldest Celtic language well enough attested for adequate grammatical study. The book provides the only available detailed linguistic analysis of the syntactic structure of the Old Irish sentence. The basic form of the simple sentence, with the usual order of elements, verb-subject-object, is unproblematic from a synchronic viewpoint, but certain sentence types show more complex patterns of syntax, which have important implications for the typological, diachronic and comparative-historical analysis of Old Irish in particular, and Celtic and Indo-European languages in general. Sentence types which contain obligatory cataphoric pronouns referring to elements later in the same sentence are examined in detail, as well as constructions with marked initial topics, and the focussing construction of the cleft sentence. The approach is functional and typological, on the basis of a text corpus from the glosses on the Pauline epistles at Wurzburg, with further material from Old Irish legal texts. The emphasis is on the communicative content and intent of the sentences of the corpus. The book is a newly edited version of MacCoisdealbha's Bochum dissertation of 1974, previously unpublished due to the author's death in 1976, and includes textual notes by the editor indicating progress, and indeed lack of progress, in the meantime, in areas covered by the book.

The present Etymological Glossary of Old Welsh is intended to offer an alphabetically arranged list of words which are found in the manuscripts transcribed before the beginning of the Middle Welsh period, and to provide them with the most important published references. Only the records written down during the Old Welsh period have been used is the compilation of the glossary. The only text which was not used is the Book of Llan Dav, which still requires to be comprehensively discussed, and is a subject for research on its own right. The data of this very important document is used throughout as comparanda for the research. The focus has been laid on the collection of the published analysis of the rudiments of Old Welsh; thus the glossary could be viewed as an extended bibliography for Old Welsh studies. The entries are arranged alphabetically according to the Welsh standard. The glosses which contain more than one word are segmented; in those cases where the segmentation could be problematic (and this applies to several particular fragments of Old Welsh versification), the components of the phrases are explicitly cross-referenced; when the segmentation is unclear, or the reading is variable, the components of the phrase are given as a complete entry. Homographic/homophonic lexemes are treated under the different headings. Similar or identical instances which were analysed differently are normally considered separately. Parts of compounds as well as morphemes from nouns are not treated separately; their discussion can be found in the entries which contain the first element of the composite word.

Dieser Sammelband enthält Vorträge, die anläßlich des Zweiten deutschen Keltologen-Symposiums gehalten wurden, um die heutige Lage der Keltologie besonders in Deutschland darzulegen. Neben unterschiedlichen Aspekten der keltischen Literaturen und Sprachen werden in einigen Vorträgen auch die Einflüsse von Sprachkontakt besprochen. Der behandelte Zeitraum erstreckt sich von 500 v. Chr. bis heute. Besonders hervorzuheben ist der wesentliche Beitrag der großen Zahl jüngerer Wissenschaftler.

Der Band enthält eine Reihe von Vorträgen, die vom 26.--29.5.1999 im Rahmen des internationalen Symposiums »150 Jahre Mabinogion - Deutsch-walisische Kulturbeziehungen« an der Universität Bonn gehalten wurden. Gegenstand der 20 Beiträge sind zum einen jene mittelalterlichen walisischen Erzählungen, die man seit der 1849 vollendeten Übersetzung von Lady Charlotte Guest unter dem Namen »Mabinogion« kennt, zum anderen die Geschichte der deutsch-walisischen Beziehungen, wie sie in Literatur, Kunst und Musik sowie in der wissenschaftlichen Erforschung der keltischen Kultur Ausdruck gefunden haben.

Erstmalige systematische Untersuchung der Bildung nicht zusammengesetzter Substantive und Adjektive im Alt- und Mittelirischen in drei Teilen: Teil I behandelt in 11 Kapiteln (Wurzelnomina o-, a-, i-, i-, u-, n-, r-Stamme, Heteroklitika, s-, Dental- und Gutturalstamme) diejenigen Worter, die primar aus der Wurzel mittels einfachster Morpheme abgeleitet sind, in bezug auf ihre Flexion und Struktur und ihre Semantik. Teil II befat sich in 7 Kapiteln mit den vorhistorisch identifizierbaren Suffixen, jeweils nach dem ersten zugrundeliegenden Konsonanten gruppiert, und in weiteren 6 mit den deskriptiv identifizierbaren Suffixen, jeweils nach ihrer Stammbildung gruppiert; weitere 6 Kapitel sind Spezialfragen gewidmet (-as fur Nomina essendi, Suffixe mit anlautendem Vokal, Suffixoide, Mehrfachderivate, Interfixe). Teil III beschreibt in 8 Kapiteln sonstige Mittel der Ableitung: Reduplizierung, Geminierung, Dehnung, Stammbildungswechsel (einschl. Calandsches System), Innere Ableitung, Suffixersatz, Ruckbildungen, Femininmovierung durch Prafigierung. Die Analyse ist konsequent synchron (inneririsch) und diachron (gesamtkeltisch, indogermanisch) angelegt mit neuen Ergebnissen nicht zuletzt fur die historische Laut- und Formenlehre des Irischen sowie mit neuen Wegen fur die Beschreibung der Wortbildung einer Korpussprache. Die Grundlage bilden einige tausend Worter, deren Etymologien uberpruft wurden.