Manx Studies: Language, Linguistics, and Literature [2011-2019]

The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies 81 (2021) 541–548 brill.com/ywml v Manx Studies ∵ Language, Linguistics, and Literature Christopher Lewin Aberystwyth University This survey covers the years 2018 and 2019. 1 Language and Literature A significant amount of scholarship pertaining to Manx Gaelic language and literature was published in 2018 and 2019. The bulk of it is the work of George Broderick, returning to his long-standing research interests in the Manx of the final generations of native speakers, and the collection of Manx folk-songs. Classical Manx Data and analysis concerning initial mutation in the Classical Manx of 18thcentury texts such as the Bible, particularly in the nominal system, is reproduced in a new format with commentary by George Broderick, ‘Initial Consonant Replacement in Classical Manx’, Studia Celtica, 53:153–172, from Robert L. Thomson’s 1969 Sir John Rhŷs Memorial Lecture (Proceedings of the British Academy, 55, 1969:177–210), ‘in order to facilitate an easier understanding of the importance of these developments’ (153). Spoken Late Manx George Broderick, ‘Prof. Sir John Rhŷs in the Isle of Man (1886–1893): Linguistic Material and Texts’, pp. 35–69 of Proceedings of the Second European Symposium © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/22224297-08101032 Downloaded from Brill.com02/18/2022 01:24:15PM via National University of Ireland Galway 542 celtic languages · manx studies in Celtic Studies, University of Bangor, 31 July–3 August 2017, ed. Raimund Karl and Katharina Möller, Hagen, Curach Bhán Publications, 2018, 180 pp., provides an overview of Sir John Rhŷs’s linguistic fieldwork with eighty-eight informants from all over the Isle of Man in the years 1888–1893 and details of his diaries and notes from these visits held in the National Library of Wales. Valuable biographical details and places of origins of Rhŷs’s informants are given, along with sample texts and linguistic material transliterated from Rhŷs’s notation to a transcription system based on the International Phonetic Alphabet. A full glossary of material from Rhŷs’s notebooks with headwords in standard Manx orthography together with phonetic transcription of the original notes and Irish or Scottish Gaelic cognates, as well as an introduction to the material, is provided by George Broderick, ‘Prof. Sir John Rhŷs in the Isle of Man (1886– 1893): Dictionary’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 66:15–73. In a special issue devoted to ‘John Rhys Studies’ based on conferences held in Aberystwyth in 2015 to mark the anniversary of Rhŷs’s death, Christopher Lewin, ‘John Rhys: A Pioneer in Manx Studies’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, 77:65–95, evaluates Rhŷs’s contributions to Manx linguistics in his own contemporary context as well as the lasting value of his work today, with case-studies of three linguistic features, namely grammatical gender, vowel nasalization, and Manx developments of the Gaelic vowels ao and ua. A brief description is also given of the wider Manx materials among Rhŷs papers in the National Library of Wales and the Aberystwyth University archives. In a series of papers, George Broderick discusses later recordings and transcriptions of the last native speakers of Manx made in the 20th century. George Broderick, ‘Recording Native Manx Speech (1886–1972)’, Scottish Gaelic Studies, 31 (2018):113–177, provides a detailed account of the enterprise of recording and transcribing native Manx speech from Rhŷs’s first visit to the last recordings of Ned Maddrell before his death in 1974, with biographical details of all informants. The 20th-century part of this survey is also available in George Broderick, ‘Recording the Last Native Manx Speakers 1909–1972’, pp. 37–78 of Rannsachadh na Gàidhlig 9, ed. Meg Bateman and Richard A.V. Cox, Slèite, Clò Ostaig, viii + 320 pp. George Broderick, ‘Francis J. Carmody: The Manx Recordings’, Studia Celtica, 52 (2018):157–178, provides transliteration into an ipa-based system of the transcriptions of Manx speech made by Carmody during fieldwork with six informants in July 1949 and published originally in Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 24 (1953):58–80, together with classification of the linguistic features in evidence in the material. George Broderick, ‘Manx Gaelic: The End Game’, Celtica, 30 (2018):56–182, ‘seeks to assess when the Manx language ceased to be passed on to succeeding generations’ by means of biographical profiles of all the speakers known and recorded between 1909 and 1972, The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies 81 (2021) 541–548 Downloaded from Brill.com02/18/2022 01:24:15PM via National University of Ireland Galway language, linguistics, and literature 543 as well as drawing on the testimony of Carl Marstrander and others. Through analysis of census returns regarding knowledge of Manx and English, Broderick aims to provide a terminus post quem by which point Manx is likely to have ceased to be spoken in individual households. According to the author, the picture emerging from this survey is that ‘the shift began in earnest from c. 1860 and was largely completed in the decades 1880–1900, and that the chronology was similar across the island’ (56). George Broderick, ‘Carl Marstrander’s Field Notes from the Isle of Man 1929, 1930, 1933’, Celtica, 30 (2018):183–205, presents a catalogue of Carl Marstrander’s Manx material in Manx National Heritage Library mss 05354-8 B, based on his visits to the Isle of Man in 1929, 1930, and 1933 during which he collected a significant quantity of recordings and transcriptions of Manx speech from several informants. George Broderick, ‘Sound Recording of Native Manx Speech: Twelve Manx Conversations (1947– 1952)’, Études celtiques, 45:149–249, provides phonetic transcriptions and English translation of twelve conversations between native speakers, or between native speakers and language activists, recorded between 1947 and 1952 by the Irish Folklore Commission, the Manx Language Society, and a private individual. Manx Folk-Songs George Broderick, ‘Fin as Oshin: A Reappraisal’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 65, 2018:7–25, replies to certain points in Peadar Ó Muircheartaigh, ‘Fin as Ossian Revisited: A Manx Ballad in Belanagare and Its Significance’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 63 (2016):95–127, regarding the textual history of the only surviving Manx Fenian ballad, and publishes as an appendix Carl Marstrander’s manuscript phonetic transcription of the native Manx speaker Thomas Christian reading the ballad aloud. George Broderick, ‘Manx Traditional Songs and Song-fragments in the End Phase of Manx Gaelic: From the Clague Music Collection (1890s)’, Studia Celtica Fennica, 15 (2018):28–64, edits with linguistic commentary all the known song texts in Dr. John Clague’s manuscript collection (Manx National Heritage Library ms 450A), as well as those previously published by Anne Gilchrist in the Journal of the Folk Song Society between 1924 and 1926 from a notebook of Clague’s which is now lost. In an appendix to this article, Broderick discusses remnants of a Manx version of the traditional Irish May-time song ‘Thugamar féin an samhradh linn’ preserved in John Kelly’s dictionary (1866) and in the Clague collection as ‘Hug eh my fainey sourey lhiam’, apparently preserving the second-person plural ending -amar otherwise unattested in Manx. The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies 81 Downloaded (2021) 541–548 from Brill.com02/18/2022 01:24:15PM via National University of Ireland Galway 544 2 celtic languages · manx studies Language Revitalization In an important study bringing Manx perspectives to bear on issues of interest to both scholars and activists in contemporary language revitalization, Noel Ó Murchadha and Tadhg Ó hIfearnáin, ‘Converging and Diverging Stances on Target Revival Varieties in Collateral Languages: The Ideologies of Linguistic Variation in Irish and Manx Gaelic’, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 39, 2018:458–469, present a discussion based on interviews with speakers of Irish and the revived variety of Manx, revealing ‘both their overt and more hidden beliefs about the utility and legitimacy of traditional and revival speech’ (458), focusing especially on speakers’ perceptions of and feelings towards different models for pronunciation and ‘accent’ (465). The authors conclude that ‘contemporary speakers contest the prestige of both traditional and innovative varieties in a multifaceted fashion’ (458). 2011–2017 The following is a supplement to the coverage in ywmls 79:524. 3 Language and Literature Medieval and Early Modern Period Christopher Lewin, ‘A Manx Sermon from 1696’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 62 (2015):45–96, presents an edition of the second-oldest known Manx text, and the only surviving text from the 17th century beside Bishop Phillips’ Prayer Book translation, namely a previously unstudied manuscript sermon from 1696. The text is significant as a ‘missing link’ both linguistically and orthographically between the Early Manx of Phillips and the Classical Manx of later 18th-century material, and is edited with a historical, linguistic, and palaeographic introduction, linguistic notes, and English translation. A brief but important posthumous contribution by one of the most notable Manx scholars of the last century appears as Robert L. Thomson, ‘Language in Man: Prehistory to Literacy’, pp. 241–256 of A New History of the Isle of Man, vol. 3: The Medieval Period 1000–1406, ed. Seán Duffy and Harold Mytum, Liverpool u.p., 2015, xii + 606 pp., providing a concise summary of the linguistic history of Brythonic, Norse, Gaelic, and English in the Isle of Man from the medieval to early modern period. The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies 81 (2021) 541–548 Downloaded from Brill.com02/18/2022 01:24:15PM via National University of Ireland Galway language, linguistics, and literature 545 Late Manx George Broderick, ‘The Last Native Manx Gaelic Speakers. The Final Phase: ‘Full’ or ‘Terminal’ in Speech?’, Studia Celtica Fennica, 14 (2017):18–57, discusses the question of the nature of the Manx spoken by the last native speakers recorded in the mid-20th century. After surveying the linguistic data, and comments by interviewers and field-workers, Broderick concludes that ‘all fifteen of our speakers are to be regarded as ‘full’ (i.e. ‘formerly fluent’) speakers of Manx … but that there is clearly some loss to be seen is due, in my view, not to imperfect learning when young, but to lack of use in later life’ (original emphasis) (54), in contrast to the view expressed, for example, in Christopher Lewin, ‘‘Manx Hardly Deserved to Live’: Perspectives on Language Contact and Language Shift’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 64 (2017):141–205, who argues that incomplete acquisition in childhood likely accounts for some of the features seen in these speakers’ Manx. Syntax and Morphology Christopher Lewin, ‘The Syntax of the Verbal Noun in Manx Gaelic’, Journal of Celtic Linguistics, 17, 2016:147–239, is a substantial article covering a range of matters pertaining to the diachronic and synchronic syntax of the ‘verbal noun’ in Manx, including the expression of personal pronoun objects as historical possessives, object pronouns, or combinations of both; the ‘preceding object’ construction; the generalisation of progressive g- (Irish ag ‘at’) as a marker of the non-finite verb, including when functioning as an infinitive or gerund; and the question of whether the ‘verbal noun’ is really to be regarded as a noun at all in Manx and in the other modern Celtic languages. George Broderick, ‘The Manx Verbal Noun Revisited’, Journal of Celtic Linguistics, 18 (2017):117–125, briefly responds to some of the claims made in Lewin’s article. Lewin returns to the topic of the verbal noun in ‘Syntactic Innovation in Manx and Sutherland Gaelic’, pp. 237–249 of Rannsachadh na Gàidhlig 8, ed. Wilson McLeod, Anja Gunderloch, and Rob Dunbar, Edinburgh, Dunedin Academic Press, 2016, x + 314 pp., making comparisons between the Manx developments and similar features in certain Scottish Gaelic dialects. 4 Language Revitalization The period under review here saw a number of significant publications relating to Manx language revitalization. Gary N. Wilson, ‘Social Change and Language Revitalisation in the Isle of Man: A Post-materialist Perspective’, Language Documentation and Description, 9 (2011):58–74, discusses the Manx lanThe Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies 81 Downloaded (2021) 541–548 from Brill.com02/18/2022 01:24:15PM via National University of Ireland Galway 546 celtic languages · manx studies guage revival movement in terms of ‘[p]ost-materialist interpretations of social change’, which ‘argue that relative economic stability and growth in the postwar period have provided a foundation for a shift from what Abraham Maslow (1943) identified as safety and physiological needs to so-called higher needs of love and belongingness, self-esteem and self-actualization’ (58). In relation to Manx specifically, Wilson argues that ‘general economic stability throughout the post-war period and, in particular, significant growth since the start of the island’s economic transformation in the 1980s, have created the conditions for the emergence of a post-materialist generation of islanders who value language and culture. It is the support of these individuals that will be one of the critical factors in sustaining the linguistic revitalisation process in the future’ (71–72). On a more cautious note, Wilson concludes with a warning about the potential negative impact of economic downturns on government funding for language revitalization. George Broderick, ‘The Revival of Manx Gaelic in the Isle of Man’, Scottish Gaelic Studies, 29 (2013):132–171, provides a general description of recent language policy and planning developments, as well as examining processes by which neologisms are coined in Revived Manx. The latter topic is also explored in George Broderick, ‘Neologisms in Revived Manx Gaelic’, Studia Celtica Fennica, 10 (2013):7–29. There are two contributions on Revived Manx in Minority Languages in Europe and Beyond—Results and Prospects, ed. P. Sture Ureland, Berlin, Logos, 2015, xx + 300 pp. Christopher Lewin, ‘Classical Manx, Revived Manx and English: Competing Standards’ (23–31) examines the three major linguistic influences on contemporary Manx and the tensions between them: the historical language as spoken and written by native speakers prior to language shift (‘Traditional Manx’); innovations and changes introduced either deliberately or inadvertently during the process of language revival; and the dominant language and mother tongue of most revivalists, English. Two broad ideological stances among Manx revivalists with regard to lexicon, idiom, and grammatical constructions are identified: a dominant ‘purist’ ideology which favours removing even long-established English loanwords and importing Irish or Scottish Gaelic loanwords and idioms to fill lexical gaps or replace forms felt to be insufficiently ‘Gaelic’, and a minority ‘authenticist’ view which prefers closer adherence to the evidence of the traditional language, including the maintenance of English loanwords which were current in Traditional Manx. The latter ideological current is suggested to have gained ground in recent years with greater accessibility of Traditional Manx sources, such as digitized native speaker recordings and an online searchable version of the Manx Bible. George Broderick, ‘The Revival of Manx Gaelic in the Isle of Man’ (33–58) covers similar ground to his two publications discussed above. Christopher Lewin, The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies 81 (2021) 541–548 Downloaded from Brill.com02/18/2022 01:24:15PM via National University of Ireland Galway language, linguistics, and literature 547 ‘Scholarship and Language Revival: Language Ideologies in Corpus Development for Revived Manx’, Studia Celtica Posnaniensia, 2 (2017):97–118, builds on the themes explored in his contribution in the Ureland volume, with a specific focus on corpus development and an analysis of the ideological positions and lexicographical outputs of two prominent figures in the Manx movement in the second half of the 20th century, Robert L. Thomson and Douglas Fargher, together with a consideration of the implications of these matters for the contemporary language community. Christopher Moseley, ‘Manx and Livonian: Attention and Revival in Endangered Languages of Two European Fisherfolk Communities’, Journal of Celtic Language Learning, 17 (2012–2013):11–30, compares aspects of language revival in Manx and the Finnic language Livonian, formerly spoken in a region of Latvia. Tadhg Ó hIfearnáin, ‘Sociolinguistic Vitality of Manx after Extreme Language Shift: Authenticity without Traditional Native Speakers’, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 231 (2015):45–62, compares Manx and Monégasque, the native language of Monaco, and introduces the concept of ‘extreme language shift languages’, in which ‘communities underwent a language shift from their historical native language to a new dominant one with the loss of what linguists and socio-linguists have traditionally described as their “last native speakers”, but where the language has nevertheless never ceased to be spoken and transmitted to new speakers without any break in that continuity of language practice’ (45–46). This is argued to be different from the situation of languages such as Cornish where a significant period of time elapsed between the demise of the last native speakers and the beginning of the revival movement. The article draws on data from quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews collected between 2003 and 2012 regarding speakers’ perspectives on what it means to be a ‘speaker’ of Manx with regard to authenticity, role models and target varities, including a survey of ‘[e]ssential qualities in identifying “good” Manx’ (56), according to 34 Revived Manx speakers. Tadhg Ó hIfearnáin, ‘Back to the Future: Standard and Language Standards in Contemporary Manx Gaelic’, Sociolinguistica: Internationales Jahrbuch für europäische Soziolinguistik, 29 (2015):99–120, investigates the topics of standardization, orthography, and terminology development in Manx and the language’s relation to the ‘collateral’ Goidelic languages, Irish and Scottish Gaelic. Ó hIfearnáin explores speaker stances drawing on qualitative fieldwork and a sociolinguistic survey conducted in 2013–2014 among 110 speakers and learners of Manx, as well as earlier fieldwork from 2003. He also discusses the ‘purist / authenticist’ dichotomy identified by Lewin (see above), commenting that ‘[t]here is, however, little or no evidence of conflict between the purist and authenticist tendencies of speakers … the purist/authenticist debate has The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies 81 Downloaded (2021) 541–548 from Brill.com02/18/2022 01:24:15PM via National University of Ireland Galway 548 celtic languages · manx studies always been ongoing and … the older speakers have all gone through periods favouring either one approach or the other in their personal language journeys’ (113). An extremely valuable monograph by Julia Sallabank, Attitudes to Endangered Languages: Identities and Policies, cup, 2013, xiv + 229 pp., provides extended comparative ethnographic case studies of language revitalization in the Isle of Man (Manx), Guernsey and Jersey (varieties of Channel Islands Norman French). This is a cutting-edge work of linguistic anthropology, especially with regard to researcher positionality, with detailed reflections on Sallabank’s own position as an individual with Guernsey heritage and an active participant in language planning initiatives. The author’s stance is broadly sympathetic to the tradition of ‘postmodern’ or critical sociolinguistics, although she expresses some reservations, suggesting that it is ‘time to move on from both essentialism and “mud-slinging” to examine the ideological bases of reactions to language endangerment by those involved most closely’ (24). The volume provides many insights, commentary and fresh data regarding language policy and planning for Manx in recent years. Gary N. Wilson, Henry Johnson, and Julia Sallabank, ‘“I’m Not Dead Yet”: A Comparative Study of Indigenous Language Revitalisation in the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey’, Current Issues in Language Planning, 16, 2015:259–278, is a briefer co-authored publication exploring the same three small-island language case studies as in Sallabank’s full-length volume. The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies 81 (2021) 541–548 Downloaded from Brill.com02/18/2022 01:24:15PM via National University of Ireland Galway