The Celtic LanguagesMartin J. Ball, Nicole Muller This comprehensive volume describes in depth all the Celtic languages from historical, structural and sociolinguistic perspectives, with individual chapters on Irish, Scottish, Gaelic, Manx, Welsh, Breton and Cornish. Organized for ease of reference, The Celtic Languages is arranged in four parts. The first, Historical Aspects, covers the origin and history of the Celtic languages, their spread and retreat, present-day distribution and a sketch of the extant and recently extant languages. Parts II and III describe the structural detail of each language, including phonology, mutation, morphology, syntax, dialectology and lexis. The final part provides wide-ranging sociolinguistic detail, such as areas of usage (in government, church, media, education, business), maintenance (institutional support offered), and prospects for survival (examination of demographic changes and how they affect these languages). Special Features: * Presents the first modern, comprehensive linguistic description of this important language family * Provides a full discussion of the likely progress of Irish, Welsh and Breton * Includes the most recent research on newly discovered Continental Celtic inscriptions |
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Common terms and phrases
adjectives adverb andthe areas auxiliary bilingual Botorrita Breton bythe Celtiberian Celtic languages Celtiques Celtische cent century Chamalières clauses common consonant Continental Celtic copula dative definite article dialects diphthongs Dublin English Eska Evans example feminine Fleuriot forexample Gaelic speakers Gaelicspeaking Gaeltacht Gaulish gender genitive Goidelic grammars HispanoCeltic IndoEuropean inflected initial inscriptions Insular Celtic inthe language shift Late Cornish Latin Lejeune lenition Lepontic linguistic Literary Welsh loanwords Manx masculine Middle Cornish Middle Welsh Mod.Ir Modern Irish morphological nasal nominative noun phrase occur ofthe Ogam Old Irish onthe orthography palatalized participle particle periphrastic phonemes phonological plural position preceded predicate preposition preterite pronominal pronoun relative Schmidt schools Scottish Gaelic ScottishGaelic sentence soft mutation spirants stressed structure subjunctive suffix syllables syntax Table tense thirdperson singular tothe unstressed verb verbal noun verbnoun vowel Wales Welsh language Welsh speakers withthe words