Re: Bronze age British languages

staving Jörg Rhiemeier:
>Hallo!
>
>On Thu, 27 Apr 2006 11:33:02 +0100, Peter Bleackley wrote:
>
> > Our recent discussion of Celtic languages has established that the word
> > order VSO is peculiar to Insular Celtic languages, while Continental
> Celtic
> > languages are typically SOV. This suggests that prior to adopting the use
> > of Celtic languages, the British may have spoken VSO languages, and
> adapted
> > the Celtic language to the syntax they were used to.
>
>This is at least possible.
>
> >       Do we have any other
> > evidence of what these languages may have been like - for example, are
> > there words found in Insular Celtic that do not have cognates in other IE
> > languages?
>
>Theo Vennemann proposed that the languages of Bronze Age Britain were
>Afro-Asiatic, based on typological similarities which chiefly revolved
>around VSO word order.  But VSO word order isn't all that rare, and many
>of the similarities between Insular Celtic and Afro-Asiatic (which, BTW,
>is not VSO in its entirety, only the northern group consisting of Semitic,
>Egyptian and Berber) seem to be general typological correlates of VSO order
>found in VSO languages all around the world.
Presumably this Afro-Asiatic language was Trojan, spoken by Brutus and his
followers when they arrived in Britain after the fall of Troy, and defeated
the giants Gog and Magog.

Pete