Ériu

Abstract:

The words etar and ceta have a first syllable with a variable vowel: either e (e-variant) or i (i-variant). This paper investigates the diachronic distribution of these two variants. The innovation of the i-variants occurred by the eighth century at the latest in ‘pretonic complexes’: preverbal and prenominal proclitic strings consisting of more than one element (for instance: preverb + relative mutation/pronoun, for example a n-itir·n-ūara ‘when it cools’ Ml. 71b5, or preposition + article, for instance hitar na doinmecha ‘among the adverse things’ Ml. 38a12). A statistical analysis of the Würzburg, Milan, St Gall, and certain minor ninth-century sets of glosses shows that the i-variant of ceta became more common than the e-variant in the late eighth century. Afterwards, in the ninth century, the i-variant of etar became statistically more common than the e-variant. A textual dating criterion is proposed on the basis of these results and comparison with other pretonic raising processes (do > du, ro > ru, tremi > trimi, etc.) is suggested.