Prolegomena to the study of code-switching in the Old Irish Glosses

Abstract

This article investigates the frequent alternation of Latin and Old Irish in several collections of Early Medieval Irish glosses (especially focussing on the glosses to the Epistles of St Paul in Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, MS M.p.th.f.12), in the attempt to ascertain how modern language contact and code-switching theories (Myers-Scotton s Matrix Language Frame or MLF model in primis) may help us understand this phenomenon, as well as the exact nature of the linguistic relationship between Hiberno-Latin and the vernacular among the Medieval Irish literati. Criteria for identifying what can be legitimately defined as written code-switching are discussed, and a methodology for the study of code-switching in Medieval glosses is proposed.