Celtic adjectives (fwd)

[Andrew Carnie]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 10:05:29 -0500
From: Denis Bouchard <bouchard.denis at uqam.ca>
To: CELTLING at MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Celtic adjectives

----
Would some native speaker of a Celtic be so kind as to help me with some
data? I have been working on adjectives for some time and a few colleagues
have pointed out some
facts about postnominal adjectives in Celtic languages that I would like to
understand a bit better. It concerns cases with two or more postnominal
adjectives. I am told that the order is the same as that of prenominal
adjectives in English, in contrast with French, where postnominal adjectives
have a mirror order of English prenominal adjectives. I have checked in
descriptive grammars of Welsh, Breton and Irish, and the few examples they
give corroborate this.

English order: a black horned cow
Celtic order: cow black horned
French order: une vache cornue noire

What seems to go on in English and French is that the adjective closest to
the N combines with the N first, and then the furthest adjective modifies
this constituent. In Celtic, a simple analysis is to say that the basic
structure is like English, but the N raised in front of the adjectives.
But there is a second important factor: mutation. The initial consonant of
the two adjectives in Celtic undergo lenition. Now, I found one example with
two postnominal adjectives in Breton in which lenition does not occur in the
second adjective. The intriguing fact is that the order of the adjectives is
then as in French rather than as in English. Since I have found only a very
few examples of two postnominal adjectives, and that they are usually
brought up to illustrate the phenomenon of mutation, I do not have enough
data to make out what is going on at the factual level. So here are a few
questions I would be very
grateful if anyone could answer. What I¹m trying to see is if there is
always a
correlation between order and mutation. I know that mutation is triggered
only with certain classes of Ns (feminine singular in Welsh, for example).

-When a N does trigger mutation, must all postnominal adjectives
obligatorily undergo mutation?

-If mutation occurs on all postnominal adjectives, is the order obligatorily
the English order (as it would be for English prenominal adjectives)?

-If mutation can occur on only the first adjective (or maybe even none), is
the order of postnominal adjectives still as in English, or is it a mirror
of that order as in French?

-When a N belongs to a class that does not trigger mutation, is the order of
two postnominal adjectives as in French or English?

Finally, I know that some adjectives may appear in prenominal position in
Celtic. What is the interpretation if there is also a postnominal adjective?
For example, in French, a noun phrase like ³une nouvelle proposition
intéressante² has two possible interpretations, with either adjective taking
³scope² over the other: it can mean either ³a new interesting proposition²
or ³an interesting new proposition². What is the interpretation of a Celtic
NP of the form ADJ-N-ADJ? Is it ambiguous as in French?

Thank you very much for your help. If you can think of anything additional I
should know about this construction (data, references), please let me know.

Please reply to me directly at:
bouchard.denis at uqam.ca

Denis Bouchard