In 1908 appeared the first part of Pedersen’s Vergleichende Grammatik der keltischen Sprachen; two of the remaining three parts have since been issued. This important work is mainly comparative as its title suggests, and deals with the derivation and development of the grammatical forms of all the Keltic languages. It records the latest results of Keltic philology, but is in some respects rather markedly individual.
Strachan’s Introduction to Early Welsh appeared posthumously in 1909. It contains a Medieval Welsh grammar, reader and glossary. The grammar was written by Strachan in a few weeks in 1907, and one cannot but wonder with his editor at “the amazing rapidity with which he toiled”. The work embodies forms from texts inaccessible to Zeuss, and is naturally the product of a more advanced knowledge. Its value is somewhat lessened by the fact that a large number of forms and phrases are quoted without references.
Of the scope of the present work I have already spoken. It embraces roughly that of the grammars of Davies, Strachan, and Pedersen (so far as this relates to Welsh). The sections dealing with the derivation of Welsh sounds were planned and partly written before the appearance of Pedersen’s work; but I had the advantage of consulting the latter in filling in the detail. I have however examined each rule for myself; many new examples are adduced, and the conclusion arrived at differs in some cases from Pedersen’s. In §§ 75, 76 I have attempted a solution of the extraordinarily difficult problems presented by the development of original diphthongs in Welsh. I hope the result is in the main sound, though some of the details are tentative. In § 63 I have endeavoured to compress into a few pages an account of the Aryan vowel system, a knowledge of which is essential to an understanding of the vocalism of the derived languages. The section follows the lines of Hirt’s suggestive work Der idg. Ablaut; the notation (R, F, etc.) is an adaptation
