Studies in Welsh Word-Formation (review)

The blurb on the back cover claims that this book ‘breaks new ground in the study of the Welsh language’. In his ‘Preface’, author Stefan Zimmer is considerably more modest: ‘it is intended to provide . . . the Welsh basis for further comparative investigation of Celtic word formation . . . it should present a wider readership of linguists and all those interested in the Welsh language with reliable information on the different patterns, their history and present status’ (xxiii). Z clearly intends for others to use his data to achieve theoretical advances rather than to make any himself; the blurb does both Z and the reader a disservice by implying otherwise.

This is primarily a reference book; most of its 576 pages of main text consist of exhaustive lists of words illustrating various categories of word-formation. Chs. 1–35 (1–226) are devoted to the various types of compounds, with examples (often extensive) cited, in alphabetical order, for each separate type and subtype. A selection from a typical section (this one dealing with adjective + adjective color terms)—omitting footnotes—follows (132):

(1)

can-welw ‘pale white, whitish’ (‘whitish-pale’), 13th century +

claer-wyn ‘shining white, pallid’ (‘brightly white’), 13th century +

coch-felyn ‘copper-coloured’ (‘reddish yellow’), 17th century

coch-las ‘purple, violet’ (‘reddish blue/green’), 18th century +, as flower name already 17th century

Chs. 36–38 (227–70) deal with prefixes. Z deliberately gives these short shrift, simply listing most of them in alphabetical order with almost no examples and dealing extensively with a few chosen forms. Here is part of a long section dealing with the negative prefix di- (233):

(2)

di-acen ‘unaccented’, 19th century

di-achles ‘unprotected, succourless’, 16th century

di-achludd ‘unconcealed, public’ (‘without hiding’), 14th/15th century once

di-achos ‘without cause, unnecessary’, old formation (GBCC)

(Again, footnotes are omitted.) Chs. 39–80 (271–556) list the suffixes, in alphabetical order, with examples given for each (again in alphabetical order), in the same format as the above examples. There are a few sections dealing with additional issues, plus a general summary (557–76). Pages 579–680 constitute an index of all words (from various languages) used as examples in the book, with page references. There is a 15-page bibliography.

The book contains an enormous amount of information—for example, etymologies, literary and dictionary citations, cognates from other Celtic and Indo-European languages—both in the text itself and in the copious footnotes at the bottom of almost every page. A Celticist with enough determination to sift through it all might indeed find useful data. But the relentlessly fragmented, alphabetical-order structure makes it very difficult to get a generalized picture. Z is concerned with issues of productivity and the history of each individual word, but everything is mixed together: obsolete forms and recent coinages, unproductive and productive forms, all mostly follow each other with no overview. (There is a short section (561–66) on new uses of obsolete words, but even this consists only of a list of alphabetized words with commentary on each item.)

To give one example, I would have liked to see treated in a separate section the neologisms coined by Early Modern Welsh grammarians, lexicographers, Bible translators, poets, and so on, who were attempting to establish a Welsh literary standard. Throughout the book, Z makes tantalizing, sporadic references to these coinages—sometimes even demonstrating that the coiner made a mistake in his attempt to combine morphemes!—but, again, there is no overview. A major annoyance is Z’s failure to give a list of the Early Modern Welsh sources involved. Typically, he will cite a form in the text, then state in a footnote that it was coined by, for example, ‘Davies 1632’ (89n.) or ‘W.O. Pughe in his dict. of 1803’ (265n.). Only rarely does he give a full reference for a source. I found no citations of the references quoted above in either the extensive bibliography or the list...