MUTATION AS MORPHOLOGY: BASES, STEMS, AND SHAPES IN SCOTTISH GAELIC DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Thomas W. Stewart, Jr., M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 2004 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Brian D. Joseph, Adviser Professor Richard D. Janda ____________________________ Professor Gregory T. Stump Adviser Department of Linguistics Copyright by Thomas William Stewart, Jr. 2004 ABSTRACT The description of initial consonant mutations in the Celtic languages has frequently been attempted. Theoretical treatments have tended to focus on either the phonological aspects of the alternations or the syntactic aspects of distribution. Both of these perspectives, however, leave the topic incompletely covered. On the one hand, there is no reliable synchronic phonetic conditioning generally to be found in the modern Celtic languages. On the other, the syntactic conditions are not unified and frequently make reference to strictly local, rather than hierarchical, relations between “triggers”, which seem to condition the mutations, and “targets”, the word or words which actually instantiate the particular mutations. Attempts to bridge the theoretical gap directly by means of a so-called “syntax-phonology interface” consistently miss the functions of the mutations as part of word formation, i.e. the morphological function of mutations. This dissertation treats consonant mutation in Scottish Gaelic (SG) as a set of morphological processes, operative in relating one lexeme to another, a lexeme to its various inflected word-forms, and word-forms to particular shapes of those word-forms required by particular syntactic constructions or collocations. In this way, mutations are shown to be deeply integrated in the realizational and demarcative morphological systems of SG. Mutations are used in constellations of functions that are characterized by partial formal generalizations, and so they are unified only abstractly. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am honored to have had the guidance of Brian Joseph, Rich Janda, and Greg Stump on this dissertation. I couldn’t ask for a finer constellation. Thanks also go to Prof. Seumas Grannd who was my first Scottish Gaelic teacher at Aberdeen University in 1987. My personal interest in the structure of language goes all the way back, but Prof. Grannd’s course caught me at a very good time and opened up my eyes to what a language could be and mean. I had the privilege to study Scottish Gaelic with Prof. Ken Nilsen at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, in 1991-92. With him, I had the opportunity to attend Gaelic immersion weekend events at the Gaelic College on Cape Breton, and there to interact with a number of native speakers. Prof. Nilsen also gave me the chance to help in the organization of the Celtic Studies Association of North America (CSANA) conference at St. F. X. U. It was during that conference that I discovered that the intersection of Celtic Studies and linguistic theory was something I had to pursue. At West Virginia University, Prof. Johan Seynnaeve was very supportive of my M.A. thesis work, a forerunner of this dissertation. At Ohio State, I had the pleasure to take two morphology courses from Arnold Zwicky. He showed very clearly that adopting classical sign-like morphemes does not always help in morphological analysis, and that a realizational perspective is much more iii adequate when processes beyond clear, segmentable concatenation are considered morphological. He also encouraged me to look into Greg’s theoretical work. On a personal note, I wish to acknowledge the support of my parents, my grandmother, my sister, and my friends and loved ones. Nobody questioned my commitment to this project, but every one of them helped me to maintain (and sometimes to regain) my focus and momentum. iv VITA December 28, 1967............................................................Born – Wheeling, West Virginia 1989.........................................B.A. French and Psychology, The College of Wooster, OH 1991-1992......Visiting student, Celtic Studies, St. Francis Xavier University, NS, Canada 1995.....................................................M.A. Foreign Languages, West Virginia University 2000................................................................M.A. Linguistics, The Ohio State University PUBLICATIONS Language Files: Materials for an Introduction to Language and Linguistics [8th ed.]. Edited with Nathan Vaillette. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press (2001). “Georgian agreement without extrinsic ordering.” OSU Working Papers in Linguistics 56: 107-33 (2001). “The mind and spirit of Old English mod and fer(h): The interaction of metrics and compounding.” OSU Working Papers in Linguistics 52: 51-62 (1999). FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Linguistics v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract....................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgments..................................................................................................iii Vita...........................................................................................................................v List of Tables..........................................................................................................ix Chapters: 1. Introduction..................................................................................................1 2. Context for the discussion of Scottish Gaelic initial mutations.................10 2.1...............................................................................................................10 2.1.1................................................................................................10 2.1.2................................................................................................11 2.2...............................................................................................................12 2.2.1................................................................................................12 2.2.2................................................................................................13 2.3...............................................................................................................15 2.4...............................................................................................................18 2.4.1................................................................................................18 2.4.1.1.................................................................................20 2.4.1.2.................................................................................21 2.4.1.3.................................................................................24 2.4.2................................................................................................24 2.4.2.1.................................................................................24 2.4.2.2.................................................................................26 2.4.2.3.................................................................................28 2.4.3................................................................................................29 2.4.4................................................................................................30 2.5...............................................................................................................31 3. Celtic mutations, phonological theory, and chronic anachronism.............36 3.1...............................................................................................................36 3.2...............................................................................................................39 3.3...............................................................................................................42 3.4...............................................................................................................46 3.5...............................................................................................................47 3.6...............................................................................................................48 vi 3.7...............................................................................................................49 3.8...............................................................................................................50 3.9...............................................................................................................51 3.10.............................................................................................................52 3.11.............................................................................................................57 3.12.............................................................................................................61 3.13.............................................................................................................63 4. Mutations in syntax: Some of the where, none of the how, and forget about the why............................................................................69 4.1..............................................................................................................69 4.2..............................................................................................................72