Celtic Influence in English

[iffr762 at utxvms.cc.utexas.edu]

	Last I heard, most of what I say about this was supported by Hamp,
so whether or not it is wrong, it is not ridiculous. Of course no one
could believe that there is Celtic (grammatical) influence in English
without also believing that the features in question were suppressed as
sub-standard during the OE period.  By the way, personal communication
with Hamp on this matter got me (so I guess) a full-tuition graduate
scholarship to the University of Chicago, which I first took up then
abandoned when I decided I would rather be a rock star.  (I'm the one who
looks like a cross between Sting and Mick Jagger.)

	Here is a copy of a rather impromptu abstract I recently (and
rapidly) composed on the subject.  (On re-reading, it does not seems as
good as it once did.  Alas for its chances of acceptance.)

	Celtic Influence as a Major Force in the Development of English

	During the Middle English period, written English becomes progressivley
more similar (in syntax) to the Celtic languages, especially those in the
Brittonic half of the family.  The innovations in question arise in the West
(in the sense of a  "Greater West") and North, where Celtic influence is
historically plausible.  If this is not a coicidence, it is clear the these
innovations must have been suppressed as sub-standard during the Old English
period, only to surface during the unmasking of former peasant dialects
characteristic of the ME period.   The innovations in question fall into two
categories:  1) reduction of nominal morphology, and 2) introduction of
periphrasis (and progressives) into the verbal system.
	But these two types do not appear in the same area.  Nominal
innovations appear in the North, and verbal innovations appear in the West.
Norse influence explains this pattern, for Norse influence tended to reduce
nominal morphology, as is generally recognized, but would also have tended to
disfavor characteristically Celtic verbal constructions.  As Norse influence
occurred in the North and East, this means that the North would have two
external causes to reduce nominal morphology, Celtic and Norse, whereas the
West and East would each have only its characteristic one. This also explains
something that has long puzzled more thoughtful Anglists:  if Norse influence
is the reason for reductions in nominal morphology, why are these so much
stronger in the North than in the East, and why is the West as receptive to
them as is the East?  The answer is that Norse influence is not all that is
going on:  there is also Celtic influence.
	The theory advanced explains both why the innovations in question occur
early in English and only later or not at all in other Germanic, and why the
innovations is question occur where (and when) they do in England.  The
traditional interpretation can only offer coincidence in "explanation".
	The subject also offers opportunites for interesting observations on
secondary language acquisition and the sociolinguistics of dialects that are in
origin foreign "accents".  Striking parallels with more modern "Celtic
Englishes" are adduced, but the main conclusion is that to a surprising extent
modern English is itself a Celtic English from an earlier time.
	That innovations evidently of Celtic provenance should have been
adopted into the London Standard, where they are not native by geography and
can only have been introduced by migration,  shows that the Celtic element in
the population even in the Midlands must have been substantial, thus lending
linguistic support to the revisionist view of the Anglo-Saxon Conquest recently
advanced, on entirely non-linguistic grounds, by Higham, that there was
substantial "Celtic survival" in all but the East and Southeast of England.

				[End of Abstract]

	I must stress that "the theory advanced" explains what the
Conventional Wisdom cannot explain, save by throwing up its hands and
crying "coincidence":  1)  Why Middle English diverges from the rest of
Germanic and seemingly converges with (British) Celtic, and 2) (together
with Norse influence) why the innovations in question show the geographic
pattern that they do. So I do hereby officially issue what I call the
Bickerton challenge:  if you don't like it, come up with something better.
And "coincidence" does not count.

					DLW