Direct Object Double Marking in Celtic and South Slavic Languages: Preliminary Remarks

Abstract

The phenomenon of pronominal reprise has been extensively studied in French and Spanish, languages of the Balkan Sprachbund and in Modern Welsh. In some of those languages this feature has been claimed to be specific for oral speech (for French see [Lambrecht 1981], Bulgarian [Lopashov 1978: 28], Welsh [Rowlands 1981: 424ff.]). In our paper we shall analyze how the South Slavic languages (Bulgarian and Macedonian) and the Celtic languages (Middle and Modern Welsh, and Middle Irish) vary as regards constructions they allow, the frequency of these constructions and their semantics. In this abstract we concentrate on Middle Welsh comparing it to Bulgarian. The pronominal reprise (i.e. the co-occurence within the same clause boundary of both a full NP/pronominal and a clitic replica [Dimitrova-Vulchanova 83]) in Bulgarian is obligatory only in a small numbers of contexts, and has often a semantics of contrast or emphasis: Мене ме мама не дава ‘Mother does not give me’ [de Bray 1951: 206]. This situation reminds us about the use of affixed pronouns in Welsh: Pwy bynnac a ’m metrei i yuelly… (PKM 87.2-3) ‘Whoever should smite me when so…’ T. Arwyn Watkins wrote that the difference in the usage of affixed pronouns strikingly reflects the gap between spoken and literary Welsh [Watkins 1977-8: 349]. Prof. Pr. MacCana noticed that this discrepancy might go back to Middle Welsh and noted a tendency for a more frequent usage of affixed pronouns in PKM dialogs in [MacCana 1975-6: 323]. Having analysed all the examples of affixed pronoun usage in PKM we could now refine this statement. Affixed pronouns are more frequently used in 1-2 persons also with possessive pronouns and personal endings of the inflected prepositions. It should be noted that this tendency is true also for MIr. notae augentes, but not for the Modern Welsh affixed pronouns.