Abstract Despite more than a century of research, the origin of the Insular Celtic double system of verbal inflection is still debated. In this paper, we defend the thesis that the set of absolute endings originated by the agglutination of a subject clitic to the verb form. This clitic marked the declarative (vs. relative) use of verbs, since its distribution was complementary to that of the relative marker *yo. The present indicative as well as the preterite (in both the absolute and conjunct inflection) of one strong verb (berid‘bring’) and one weak verb (lécid‘leave’) are reconstructed according to this theory. For compound verb forms, the clitic ~ *yoalternation can be posited as well. The cases in which the distribution of initial mutations on the verb stem after preverbs does not follow the diachronic phonological rules of Old Irish (that is, there is no lenition after preverbs originally ending in a vowel) are accounted for from a synchronic standpoint. This “anomalous” behaviour can be explained by positing that a functionally relevant (morphological) system of mutations had replaced the previous phonology-based system.

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关于 Insular Celtic 中绝对对立与联合对立的起源

摘要 尽管经过一个多世纪的研究，岛屿凯尔特语双语动词变化系统的起源仍然存在争议。在本文中，我们捍卫了绝对词尾集起源于主语附着词与动词形式的论点。这个 clitic 标志着动词的陈述性（相对于相对）使用，因为它的分布与相对标记 *yo 的分布互补。根据这一理论重构了一个强动词 (berid'bring') 和一个弱动词 (lécid'leave') 的现在指示词和过去式（在绝对和连词屈折中）。对于复合动词形式，也可以设置 clitic ~ *yoalternation。动词词干上的初始突变分布不遵循古爱尔兰语历时音韵规则的情况（即，从共时的角度来解释最初以元音结尾的谓词后没有缓和。这种“异常”行为可以通过假设一个功能相关（形态）的突变系统取代了之前基于音系的系统来解释。