Theory, empiry, and textual witnesses: acutes in the 'Lindisfarne Gospel' and Early English vowel quantity

This paper deals with the relation between theoretically reconstructed lang uage histories and empirical evidence of historical language stages. Taking the Northumbrian glosses to the 'Lindisfarne Gospel' as a paradigmatic cas e, it attempts to show that even the best textual 'witnesses' tend to be mo re ambivalent than is often assumed, and that their philological interpreta tions often reflect theoretical a-priori assumptions held by observers. It argues that in cases where theoretically well-motivated re-constructions of historical developments find themselves at odds with canonical interpretat ions of assumedly straightforward textual evidence, it pays to re-consider established interpretations of the evidence instead of rashly considering a theoretical account to be empirically falsified.