re Northern Subject Rule

David L. White dlwhite at texas.net
Thu Dec 14 18:59:41 UTC 2000


> What about one of the basic rules of classical Greek - neuter plural nouns
> take a singular verb, which I think was presented to us in my first lesson in
> the early '60s (well 'before the Beatles first LP')?

> The construction is similar (but not entirely so) in Gaelic - it could be
> formulated as plural nouns take singular verbs - but the synthetic forms
> are not common in Scots, and may be relatively rare in some Irish dialects.

            Thinking that (the last bit) is precisely the error I made,
which Dr. Orr will no doubt point out to us all very soon.   In Irish, as
defined by O'Siadhail, the rule does occur in the habitual present, among
other places.  So Klehmola was wrong on this (and I was wrong to take his
word for it, when I should have known better.)
        Hamp has an article on all this, "Miscellanea Celtica ..." in Studia
Celtica10-1: 54-73, that interested members may wish to consult (and perhaps
refresh my memory on: it's been nearly 13 years).

> How much are the similarities (between English and Insular Celtic) areal?
> And how far apart were Brittonic and Gadelic before moving into Old Welsh and
> Old Irish respectively -

        The rule occurs in Breton (p.108 of Hardie's grammar, for those of
you who are beginning to suspect, quite rightly, that my grasp of facts
cannot necessarily be trusted), so it could be quite old in Brittonic.  Or
it could conceivably be a common innovation impelled by similar causes, like
umlaut in Germanic, though as far as I know there is no partcular reason to
believe this.  Does anybody out there know whether the rule occurs in Middle
Breton, or what a good grammar of Middle Breton might  be?  Having to rely
on Modern Breton alone is risky business.

> if they were quite close, and the influences which are supposed to be
> substrates were common to both islands, why should there be a difference
> between the two?

           If the origin, whatever it is, of this rule (or set of related
rules) is remote, there is no particular reason to think that the languages
in question might not have drifted apart in detail over the intervening
years.   Furthermore, the rule is not necessarily directly due to external
influences (though it probably is), but might have been an independent, or
semi-independent, reaction to verb-initiality.

                                                            Dr. David L. White



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