The Syntax of Welsh

Abstract

Welsh, like the other Celtic languages, is best known amongst linguists for its verb-initial word order and its use of initial consonant mutations. However it has many more characteristics which are of interest to syntacticians. This book, first published in 2007, provides a concise and accessible overview of the major syntactic phenomena of Welsh. A broad variety of topics are covered, including finite and infinitival clauses, noun phrases, agreement and tense, word order, clause structure, dialect variation, and the language's historical Celtic background. Drawing on work carried out in both Principles and Parameters theory and Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar, it takes contemporary colloquial Welsh as its starting point and draws contrasts with a range of literary and dialectal forms of the language, as well as earlier forms (Middle Welsh) were appropriate. An engaging guide to all that is interesting about Welsh syntax, this book will be welcomed by syntactic theorists, typologists, historical linguists and Celticists alike.

Five overarching factors central to grammatical learning and treatment in children with developmental language disorder

“…Welsh is considered a verb–subject–object (VSO) language, whose infinitive is an uninflected verb (Borsley et al . ). The past tense is expressed in one of two ways.…”

Tense and plural formation in Welsh–English bilingual children with and without language impairment

“…The lack of pronounced problems with auxiliaries may be linked to the properties of Welsh auxiliaries, which differ from the properties of English auxiliaries (Borsley et al . , Davies , Davies and Deuchar ). Among other things, Welsh auxiliaries are obligatory for the formation of periphrastic tenses, both past and present, remain syllabic forms even when reduced, and are less likely to be omitted in the context of third singular forms examined in the present study (Davies and Deuchar ) .…”

“…Auxiliary deletion is possible in Welsh (Borsley et al . ). However, this is primarily found in second‐person‐singular contexts and is more prominent in southern Welsh than in northern Welsh dialects (Davies, ).…”

“…An additional difference between Welsh and English auxiliaries is that the Welsh periphrastic past tense can be formed with the verb gwneud ‘to do’, which in some analyses has been argued to be more than just an auxiliary and have properties of lexical verbs (Borsley et al . ).…”

The four types of Welsh YN

“…Whether or not Watkins (: 303) was entirely correct in stating that no cognate of predicative yn L occurred in Breton or Cornish, it seems reasonable to follow him in regarding predicative yn L as a Welsh innovation and as a Welsh development of adverbial yn L (Watkins : 303; : 281, 289; similarly Gensler (: 721–6, 737), Isaac (: 30), Borsley et al. (: 318 n. 3) and Schumacher (: 214)). To quote Willis in Borsley et al p. 318 n. 3, ‘Presumably this spread could have been the result of reanalysis of verb phrases of the type “stand yn steadfast”, where “ yn steadfast” might reasonably [be] interpreted either as an adverb “steadfastly” or as a secondary predicate’.…”