| Primitive Irish | |
|---|---|
| Archaic Irish Proto-Goidelic | |
 Ogham stone fromRatass Church, 6th century AD. It reads:[A]NM SILLANN MAQ VATTILLOGG ("[in the] name of Sílán son of Fáithloga") | |
| Native to | Ireland,Isle of Man, western coast ofBritain |
| Region | Ireland andBritain |
| Era | Evolved intoOld Irish about the 6th century AD |
Indo-European
| |
| Ogham | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | pgl |
pgl | |
| Glottolog | prim1243 |
 Map of locations where OrthodoxOgham inscriptions have been found. | |
Primitive Irish orArchaic Irish[1] (Irish:Gaeilge Ársa, Gaeilge Chianach), also calledProto-Goidelic,[2][3][4][5] is the oldest known form of theGoidelic languages, and the ancestor of all languages within this family.
This phase of the language is known only from fragments, mostly personal names, inscribed on stone in theOgham alphabet in Ireland and western Great Britain between the 4th and the 6th century AD,[6] before the advent ofOld Irish. These inscriptions are referred to asOrthodox Ogham, although scholastic use of the script continued residually until the early 19th century.
Primitive Irish is the oldest recorded form of theGoidelic languages. It was written in theOgham alphabet, the usage of which can be divided into two phases,Orthodox Ogham andScholastic Ogham.
The former represents the earlier tradition of inscriptions recording an individual's name, optionally with parentage, perhaps as a memorial or indicator of land ownership,[7] whereas the latter resulted from a tradition of scholarly restoration of the writing system as part of the development of aCeltic style ofCatholic art, in parallel with the use of theLatin alphabet in ordinary writing.[8] Primitive Irish is known only from Ogham fragments, usually personal names, the earliest being dated by academics to the 4th century, although some estimates for the earliest inscriptions range between the 1st and 5th centuries. Scholars agree that the orthodox written tradition is older than the surviving inscriptions.[9][10][11] The latest inscriptions of the orthodox tradition appear to come from the 6th century.[12] The scholastic use of Ogham continued until the early 19th century, the last inscription being found on the tomb of Mary Dempsey atAhenny inCounty Tipperary, which is written in both Irish and English.[13]
TranscribedOgham inscriptions, which lack a letter for/p/, show Primitive Irish to be similar inmorphology andinflections toGaulish,Latin, ClassicalGreek andSanskrit. Many of the characteristics of modern (and medieval) Irish, such as initial mutations, distinct "broad" and "slender" consonants andconsonant clusters, are not yet apparent.
More than 300 Ogham inscriptions are known in Ireland, including 121 inCounty Kerry and 81 inCounty Cork, and more than 75 found outside Ireland in westernBritain and theIsle of Man, including more than 40 inWales, where Irish colonists settled in the 3rd century, and about 30 inScotland, although some of these are inPictish. Many of the British inscriptions are bilingual in Irish and Latin; however, none show any sign of the influence of Christianity or Christian epigraphic tradition, suggesting they date from before 391, when Christianity became the official religion of theRoman Empire. Only about a dozen of the Irish inscriptions show any such sign.[14] There is speculation about the orthodoxy of one inscription inHampshire and two in Scotland, but there is no academic consensus on the matter.[15]
The majority of ogham inscriptions arememorials, consisting of the name of the deceased in thegenitive case, followed byMAQI, MAQQI, "[the stone] of the son" (Modern Irishmic), and the name of his father, orAVI, AVVI, "[the stone] of the grandson", (Modern Irishuí) and the name of his grandfather, e.g.DALAGNI MAQI DALI, "[the stone] of Dalagnos son of Dalos". Sometimes the phraseMAQQI MUCOI, "of the son of the tribe", is used to show tribal affiliation. Inscriptions demonstrating additional information are rare, such asQRIMTIR RON[A]NN MAQ COMOGANN, "[the stone] of the priest Ronán son of Comgán".[16] Some inscriptions appear to be border markers.[17]
The brevity of most orthodox ogham inscriptions makes it difficult to analyse the archaic Irish language in depth, but it is possible to understand the basis of its phonology and the rudiments of itsnominalmorphology.[16]
Surviving Ogham inscriptions are written exclusively with nouns. It is possible to deduce some morphological features of Primitive Irish nouns from these inscriptions. With the exception of a few inscriptions in thesingulardative case, two in the pluralgenitive case and one in the singularnominative case, most known inscriptions of nouns in orthodox Ogham are found in the singular genitive, so it is difficult to fully describe their morphology. The German philologist Sabine Ziegler, however, drawing parallels with reconstructions of theProto-Celtic language's morphology (whose nouns are classified according to the vowels that characterize theirendings), limited the archaic Irish endings of the singular genitive case to-I,-AS,-OS and-AIS.[18]
The first ending,-I, is found in words equivalent to the so-called Proto-Celtic category of*o-stem nouns. This category was also recorded in the dative case using-U, with an inscription possibly in the nominative case also using-U.-OS, in turn, is equivalent to Proto-Celtic*i-stems and*u-stems, while-AS corresponds to*ā-stems. The exact function of-AIS remains unclear.[19]
Furthermore, according to Damian McManus, Proto-Celticnasal,dental, and velar stems also correspond to the Primitive Irish-AS genitive, attested in names such asGLASICONAS,[20]CATTUBUTTAS,[21] andLUGUDECCAS.[22]
It is possible, throughcomparisons with other languages, toreconstruct aphonemic inventory for the properly attested stages of the language using the names used in the scholastic tradition for each letter of the Ogham alphabet, which are recorded in the Latin alphabet in later manuscripts.[16][23]
There is a certain amount of obscurity in thevowel inventory of Primitive Irish: while the lettersAilm,Onn andÚr are recognized by modern scholars as representing/a(:)/,/o(:)/ and/u(:)/ respectively, there is some difficulty in reconstructing the values ofEdad andIdad.[24] They are poorly attested, and scholars believe the distinction between them might be arbitrary, in the same way as therunespeorð andcweorð in theAnglo-Saxon alphabet, but they are transcribed asE andO, respectively, and probably had the respective pronunciations of/e(:)/ and/o(:)/.[25][26] There were also two diphthongs, transcribed asAI andOI.[26]
In later stages of the language, scholastic Oghamist traditions incorporated five new letters for vowels, calledforfeda (supplementary), corresponding todigraphs of the orthodox spelling, but these no longer corresponded to Primitive Irish sounds.[27]
Theconsonant inventory of Primitive Irish is reconstructed byCelticist Damian McManus as follows:[28][26]
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Labiovelar[a] | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ||||||||
| Stop | p[b] | b | t | d | k | ɡ | kʷ | ɡʷ | ||
| Fricative[c] | s,sᵗ[d] | |||||||||
| Approximant | j[e] | ʍ | w | |||||||
| Lateral | l | |||||||||
| Trill | ɾ | |||||||||
The lettersCért,Gétal andStraif,transliterated asQ,NG (orGG) andZ, respectively, were known by the ancient scholastic Oghamists asfoilceasta (questions) due to the obsolescence of their original pronunciations: the first two,/kʷ/ and/ɡʷ/, had merged with plainvelars in Old Irish, and the third, probably/st/, merged with/s/.[29][30] However, evidence of the original distinction betweenstraif andsail was still present into the Old Irish period, as theséimhiú (lenition) of/s/ produced/f/ (< Primitive Irish/w/) for lexemes originally represented byStraif but/h/ forlexemes originally represented bySail.[31]
The letterÚath orhÚath (transliterated asH), although not counted among thefoilceasta, also presented particular difficulties due to apparently being asilent letter. It was probably pronounced as/j/ in an early stage of Primitive Irish, disappearing before the transition to Old Irish.[32]
Consonant lenition and palatalisation, which feature heavily inlater stages of the language, may already have existed in anallophonic form, i.e., they were notphonemically contrastive yet.
McManus describes the following sound shifts fromProto-Celtic as being attested in the earliest Primitive Irish inscriptions:[33]
Old Irish, written in theLatin alphabet, has its earliest recorded texts possibly in the late 6th century; this is the traditional date of composition for theAmra Coluim Chille, a poeticelegy toSt Columba of Iona by St Dallán Forgaill, the first identifiable author in the Irish language. This work, however, survives only in heavily annotated manuscripts from a later time, in an old-fashioned form of the Irish language bearing little similarity to formal Old Irish.[34][35] The first texts which are widely accepted to have been written in Old Irish date from the 7th century, at the inception of a national textual tradition which was cultivated alongside that ofLatin by theCatholic Church in Ireland, and which supplanted the archaic literary traditions.[36]
The radical changes that characterize the transition from Primitive Irish to Old Irish are not uncommon in the development of other languages, but appear to have occurred rapidly in the case of Irish.John T. Koch, an AmericanCelticist, theorized that these changes coincide with theconversion of the island to Christianity and the introduction of Latin as a literary language. The Irish language would then have derogated from the formal register of the language used bydruids in their ceremonies and teachings. Koch believed that with the decline ofpaganism and the corresponding loss of influence by the druids, the language of the Irish Christian nobility would have supplanted the ancient Primitive Irish register of the pagan priests, eclipsing it completely in the 7th century. This would give the impression of rapid linguistic development, while actually representing a shift in literature to a vernacularregister which had previously been obscured by the conservative influence of the druidic language.[36][37] This new phase of the language shows influence from Latin, the latter having been introduced topre-Christian Ireland, which influence became more pronounced followingSt Patrick's ministry.
Primitive Irish has amorphology similar to otherIndo-European languages, however it did not display the most distinctive characteristics ofother phases of the language includingvelarized ("broad") andpalatalized ("slender") consonants (such consonant alterations may have existed, but they would have beenallophonic),initial mutations, some loss ofinflectional endings, but not ofcase marking, andconsonant clusters.[38] Old Irish does carry with it these distinctive features, as well as the loss of grammaticalsuffixes, the introduction of the letterp throughloanwords and proper names,[39][40] the simplification of the inflectional system,[41] the alteration of someshort vowels throughvowel harmony,[42] and, most notably,vowel elisions which resulted in distinctive consonant clusters.[42][43]
This last phenomenon, especially marked in the genesis of Old Irish proper, began with an application ofsecondary stress to the third syllable of most words with four or more syllables, and also to the fifth syllable of words with six or more, in addition to theprimary stress, which fell on the first syllable, as is typical ofCeltic languages.[42][44] This causedapocope of (final) syllables,syncope of stressless (internal) syllables, and the shortening of alllong vowels in non-initial syllables, around 500 AD and the middle of the 6th century, respectively.[42][45][46] This loss of vowels caused consonant clusters to develop.
As an example, a 5th-centuryking of Leinster, whose name is recorded in Old Irish king-lists andannals asMac Caírthinn Uí Enechglaiss, is memorialised on an Ogham stone near where he died. This gives the late Primitive Irish version of his name (in thegenitive case), asMAQI CAIRATINI AVI INEQAGLAS.[47] Similarly, theCorcu Duibne, a people ofCounty Kerry known from Old Irish sources, are memorialised on a number of stones in their territory asDOVINIAS.[48] Old Irishfiled, "poet (gen.)", appears in ogham asVELITAS.[49] In each case the development of Primitive to Old Irish shows the loss of unstressed syllables and certain consonant changes.
Gradually, the grammaticalization of consonant mutations introduced a new characteristic that Irish would eventually share with all other modern Celtic languages.[50] Old Irish phonetic conditions generated differentallophonic mutations over time, and with thediachronic loss of the conditions which caused the mutations, those mutations became the only way to distinguish between different grammatical forms. Thus, the mutations becamedifferentiated phonemes with their ownmorphosyntactic functions. For example, in the Primitive Irish phraseSINDHI MAQQI ("of the son",SINDHI being a form of thedefinite article), originally pronouncedˈsɪndiːˈmakʷiː, the initialM would havelenited to/β̃/ due to the influence of the-I ending of the preceding word. The variation in the pronunciation of the word would not have caused a difference in meaning; it would be allophonic. In a later stage of the language, the Primitive Irish wordSINDHI became Old Irishin, losing the final vowel which caused the lenition. However, in the Old Irish phrasein maicc ("of the son"), them is still lenited, so the pronunciation would be/ɪnβ̃ak/. The lenition was 'reinterpreted' as being caused by the fact thatmaicc follows the definite articlein, a rule of morphosyntax (grammar) rather thanphonology. What was originally a phonological feature of the language therefore becamegrammaticalized.[41][51]
| History | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sociolinguistics | |||||||||
| Grammar | |||||||||
| Writing | |||||||||
| Media |
| ||||||||
| Qualifications | |||||||||
| Names | |||||||||
| History | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dialects | |||||||||||||
| Grammar | |||||||||||||
| Writing | |||||||||||||
| Official support |
| ||||||||||||
| Topics | |||||||||||||
