Between Innovation and Tradition: Code-Switching in the Transmission of the Commentary to the Félire Óengusso

Abstract

This article presents a case study that explores the issue of code-switching in medieval text transmission with initial data mined in a three-year project run at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. The case study is based on a bilingual corpus of glosses and notes in Irish and Latin that accompanies the ninth-century Martyrology of Óengus. This collection of material is referred to as the Commentary to the Félire Óengusso and is found in ten manuscripts. This provides an excellent opportunity to compare different versions of a bilingual text in order to analyse the way in which different scribes dealt with the bilingual material that they copied. In my analysis, a twofold approach to the material will be adopted: first, from the perspective of linguistics, I examine whether the grammatical characteristics of a code-switch influence its transmission. For this, I use Pieter Muysken’s typology of code-mixing (2000) to distinguish between complex and simple code-switches. Secondly, from the perspective of palaeography, I examine whether highly abbreviated words that could be interpreted as either Latin or Irish (visual diamorphs) may cause so-called »triggered« code-switches in transmission. The aim of the comparison is to provide a window on scribal practice in bilingual texts.