Jon Mills

Etymology and the relexification of Cornish in the 20th Century

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the Cornish language has been undergoing a revival. Revived Cornish is based on a corpus of mainly Middle Cornish and Late Cornish texts ranging from the 14th century to the 18th century. Like English, following the Norman conquest, Cornish adopted a large number of Old Norman French loan words. Many if not most revivalists, including various lexicographers of revived Cornish, avoid words of Old Norman French origin that resemble Present Day English words. These revivalists view any semblance to English in the lexicon as a corruption of the Cornish language and adhere to an ideology of a purely Celtic Cornish lexicon. Consequently Revived Cornish has undergone a relexification in which neologisms based on Celtic roots have replaced Old Norman French loan words. Such neologisms have often been created by respelling Welsh and Breton words to allow for phonological differences with Cornish. Perversely, the avoidance of words that resemble English words is itself an example of the influence of the English language upon Cornish and is at odds with the Middle Cornish and Late Cornish corpus upon which Revived Cornish is based. This paper examines the corpus of revived Cornish, including its dictionaries and shows that present day lexical preferences are conditioned by an etymologically based ideology that eschews items that bear any resemblance to Present Day English. Follow this link for a video of the conference presentation: https://youtu.be/p0iwUqQHeWE

The Vocabularium Cornicum: a Cornish vocabulary?

The Vocabularium Cornicum is a multilingual glossary that has since the eighteenth century been regarded as a Latin-Cornish glossary.It is shown here that this glossary is in fact multilingual and includes not only Cornish glosses but also Old Welsh, Old Breton, Old Norman French and Old English glosses.This is corroborated by what is known regarding the historical development of glossography. The Old Welsh and Old Breton glosses are identifiable from their phonological features. The Old Norman French and Old English glosses lack reflexes in Middle and Late Cornish and thus cannot be assumed to have ever been loanwords into Cornish.It is concluded that the Vocabularium Cornicum was compiled from a corpus of glossed Latin texts that include Old Cornish, Old Welsh, Old Breton, Old English and Old Norman French glosses. Das Vocabularium Cornicum ist ein mehrsprachiges Glossar, seit dem achtzehnten Jahrhundert wurde es als ein lateinisch-kornisches Glossar angesehen. Hier wird gezeigt, dass dieses Glossar in der Tat mehrsprachig ist und nicht nur die kornischen Glossen, sondern auch altwalisische, altbretonische, altnormannisch-franzosische und altenglische Glossen beinhaltet. Dies wird bestatigt durch das, was uber die historische Entwicklung der Glossographie bekannt ist. Die altwalisischen und altbretonischen Glossen sind an ihren phonologischen Merkmalen zu erkennen. Den altnormannisch-franzosischen sowie den altenglischen Glossen fehlen Reflexe im mittleren und spaten Kornisch, und sie konnen somit nicht Lehnworter in das Kornische gewesen sein. Abschliesend kann gesagt werden, dass das Vocabularium Cornicum auf einem Korpus glossierter lateinischer Texte beruht, das altkornische, altwalisische, altbretonische, altenglische und altnormannisch-franzosische Glossen beinhaltete.