The Celtic Languages

By: Donald Macaulay

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Synopsis: This volume describes the six modern Celtic languages. Four of these, Modern Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh and Breton, are living community languages; the other two, Manx and Cornish, survived into the modern period, but are no longer extant as community languages, though they are the subject of enthusiastic revivals. The Celtic languages sets them briefly in their Indo-European context, and states their general relationships within the broader Celtic language family. Individual linguistic studies are first placed briefly in their sociolinguistic and sociohistorical context. A detailed synchronic account of each language then follows, including syntax, morphology, phonology, morphophonology, dialect variation and distribution. Each description is based on a common plan, thus facilitating comparison amongst the different languages. This latest volume in the Cambridge Language Surveys will be welcomed by all scholars of the Celtic languages, but has also been designed to be accessible to any reader with only a basic knowledge of linguistics. It is the only modern account to deal with all surviving Celtic languages in this detail.