ABSTRACT

Previous work has used Greenberg’s synthetism index to compare three of the Celtic languages – Irish, Welsh, and Breton – but not the other three languages, namely Scottish Gaelic, Manx, and Cornish. This paper extends this earlier work by comparing all six Celtic languages, including two periods of Irish (Early Modern and Present Day). The analysis is based on a random sample of 210 parallel psalm texts (30 for each language). However, Greenberg’s synthetism index is problematic because there are no operational standards for counting morphemes within words. We therefore apply a newer typological indicator (B7), which is based solely on lexical rank-frequency statistics. We also explore whether type-token counts alone can provide similar information. The B7 indicator shows that both varieties of Irish, together with Welsh and Cornish, tend more towards synthetism, whereas Manx tends more towards analytism. Breton and Scottish Gaelic do not show a clear tendency in either direction. Rankings using type-token statistics vary considerably and do not tell the same story.

摘要

先前的工作使用格林伯格的综合指数来比较三种凯尔特语-爱尔兰语，威尔士语和不列塔尼语-但不比较其他三种语言，即苏格兰盖尔语，曼克斯语和康沃尔语。本文通过比较所有六种凯尔特语，包括两个时期的爱尔兰语（早期和现在），扩展了早期的工作。该分析基于210个平行的赞美诗文本的随机样本（每种语言30个）。但是，格林伯格的综合指数是有问题的，因为没有用于计算单词内语素的操作标准。因此，我们应用了一种更新的类型学指标（B7），该指标仅基于词汇排名频率统计。我们还探讨了类型令牌计数是否可以单独提供类似的信息。B7指标表明，爱尔兰的这两个变种以及威尔士和康沃尔，Manx倾向于合成主义，而Manx倾向于分析主义。布列塔尼和苏格兰盖尔人在这两个方向上都没有表现出明显的趋势。使用类型标记统计数据的排名相差很大，并且不会讲相同的故事。