Old Irish and Latin Codeswitching in the St. Gall Priscian Glosses

Abstract

Codeswitching, as both a rule-governed linguistic phenomenon and an insight into the sociolinguistic interaction of speakers of different languages, has for many years now been of interest to linguists. However, there has been comparatively little investigation into the patterns of written codeswitching and what it can tell us about historical situations of language contact. This paper looks at one of these cases of historical codeswitching which has been recorded in writing: that of Old Irish and Latin among the monastic communities of early medieval Ireland. In particular, I focus on the Old Irish and Latin glosses to the St. Gall manuscript of Priscian’s Ars Grammatica (Stiftsbibliothek, MS 904). I describe the sociohistorical context in which the text was created as well as the linguistic context created by the text itself. I then present examples of several patterns of codeswitching within the glosses. From these examples the comfort of at least some members of the community with bilingualism can be seen, along with some of their bilingual standards. This situation also illustrates ways in which written codeswitching is necessarily distinct from oral codeswitching.No embargoAcademic Major: Linguistic