‘A man of full-sin’

Abstract It is shown that the seemingly random alternation in the position of attributive adjectives in Old Irish can be explained by a system of referent/reference modification as first described by Bolinger (1967). The correspondence is prenominal = reference modification and postnominal = referent modification, not unlike some modern Romance languages. Comparing the Brittonic evidence, the phenomenon is found to be of Insular Celtic age, where it applied to a small class of underived prototypical adjectives.