Studies in Brythonic Word Order

by James Fife (Editor), Erich Poppe (Editor)

While Celtic languages are nominally VSO in basic word order, the languages of the Brythonic branch have exhibited striking synchronic and historical variations from the prototype. This volume comprises the very latest research in word order in Welsh, reton and Cornish from nine of the leading scholars in the field. The studies deal with historical, typological and descriptive issues from several approaches (including philological, functional and government and binding). The scope ranges over all the Brythonic languages, as well as the entire diachronic spectrum from the proto-language up to the most recent colloquial trends. The volume provides the expert with a collection of state-of-the-art research and the non-specialist with a comprehensive survey of the problems and debates in a language grouping fraught with intricate questions of word order and word order change.

370 pages, Hardcover

First published November 30, 1991