Re: Celtic languages?

responding to:
> >Some people consider it likely that Etruscan is
> related to IE, but
> >apart from the fact that the evidence is too
> tenuous, if "Celtiberian"
> >is most closely related to Etruscan, it is
> definitely not "Celtic"
> >in any linguistically meaningful sense of the word
> - even if Etruscan
> >was related to IE.
Joe <joe@...> wrote:
> Indeed.  Celtiberian is quite patently IE,
> Celtic(removes /p/, most
> prominently, among other things), and Q-Celtic(/k_w/
> does not > /p/).
I'll second this. It's pretty much agreed that
Celtiberian is IE.

Here are some evidences from the Botorrita inscription
and other inscriptions:

 "*SO-" THIS/THAT (in Old Irish -so, -se)

somui "this" (might be dative singular)
somei "this" (might be locative singular)
soisum "of these" (genitive plural, masculine neuter?)
 (same formation as Sanskrit: tesam "these")
saum   "of these" (genitive plural, feminine)

(all of the above so the same levelling of the
suppletive demonstrative *so- *to- as Old Latin. That
is, they are plausibly related to Old Latin: sum, sam,
sos, sapsa sumpse, etc.)

sos / soz (Kim McCone, in Celtica 24 debates the final
consonant) may be from *sos (therefore masculine
singular nom.) or *sod (therefore, neuter singular)

Celtic superlative ending *-isamo  in:
letaisama
sekisamos

noviza "new" is directly comparable to Welsh newydd
and Gaulish noviio, and probably goes back to Celtic
*nowiyo. Incedentally, both sos/soz and noviza show
the phoneme /z/ to which many have given the supposed
pronunciation of /D/, giving some evidence for a
Proto-Celtic lenition of IE /d/ to /z/ or /D/ in the
case of <sos/soz>. Also, noviza shows the same sort of
strengthening of Celtic *-iyo as Welsh.

Another example from Botorrita is:
 cabiseti, which may represent either some sort of -s-
subjunctive of the stem *gab- (as seen in Old Irish
gaibid, -gaibet) or it may be an orthographical
variant for cabizeti < *cabiyeti, maybe a -y- present
from the same stem, with the -ti 3rd person singular.

Lastly, you find uer- "over" in the inscription,
showing the loss of /p/ from *uperi

Anyway, see such sources as Kim McCone in Celtica 24,
Wodtko in Untermann 1997, F.Villar, C. Jordan et. al
2001, J. Eska 1989, among others for more info.

Elliott.









	
		
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