Bibliography
  1. Home
  2. Bibliography
  3. Parina (Elena) 2015 jceltl16ona

Parina, Elena, “Semantics of Welsh dur: synchronic analysis and language-contact considerations”, Journal of Celtic Linguistics 16 (2015): 1–39.

  • journal article
Citation details
Contributors
Article
“Semantics of Welsh dur: synchronic analysis and language-contact considerations”
Periodical
Journal of Celtic Linguistics 16 (2015)
Rodway, Simon (ed.), Journal of Celtic Linguistics 16 (2015).
Volume
16
Pages
1–39
BibTeX
Description
Abstract (cited)
This article discusses the semantic shift that can be observed in the Welsh word dur. The word is already encountered in Old Welsh (glossing the Latin adjective dirus and translated as 'hard, cruel', and it lives on in Modern Welsh, with the meaning 'steel', with Middle Welsh texts showing the polysemy stage. The distribution of senses is different in the language of poetry as opposed to the language of prose, the latter being much closer to the modern usage. It has been suggested that the polysemy 'hard; steel' was borrowed from Latin, where supposedly an ellipsis from ferrum dūrum has taken place. The same semantic shift is attested in Middle Irish crúaid 'hard', nominalized with the meaning 'steel'. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the relationship between the shifts in these three languages. First, Celtic *dūro- could either be analysed as a loanword from Latin or else could be taken as an inherited Celtic root. It could even be suggested that the 'steel' sense could be a part of this root's meaning in Celtic. If *dūro- is a Latin loanword both in the British languages and in Irish, different scenarios for the development of the polysemy of Irish crúaid 'hard' could be suggested.
Subjects and topics
web page identifiers
Contributors
Page created
October 2020
Retrieved from ‘https://codecs.vanhamel.nl/index.php?title=Parina_(Elena)_2015_jceltl16ona&oldid=208647’