"Semitic Celts" (was: Re: Genitive relationships (WAS: Construct States))

At 6:59 pm -0500 6/3/99, Steg Belsky wrote:
>On Sat, 6 Mar 1999 22:07:02 +0000 "Raymond A. Brown"
><raybrown@...> writes:
>>
>>And the consonant mutations of Biblical Hebrew are very reminiscent of
>>the
>>consonant mutations of the Gaelic langs (at least in their earlier
>>forms).
>>
>
>>Ray.
>>
>
>I'm not sure what you mean by consonant mutations....from what i think
>i've seen, the changes that Gaelic consonants go through are much more
>extreme than Hebrew things like bege"d-kefe"t fricativization and the
>different forms of the -t- in the _hitpa`eil_ paradigm.
>
>Unless you're talking about something else?
Plosives with or without 'dagesh lene'.  When they are without dagesh the
are traditionally transliterated: ph, bh, th, dh, kh and gh; but with
dagesh lene: p, b, t, d, k, g.   This is reminiscent of the lenition of the
Gaelic languages: 'soft' ph, bh, th, dh, ch, gh ~ 'hard' p, b, t, d, c, g.
Indeed, it's my understanding that in the earliest form Gaelic the softened
consonants were pronounced much the same way as, I'm told, the Yemeni Jews
still pronounce the Hebrew consonants without dagesh.

I know Gaelic also has soft mutations mh, sh /h/ and fh which Hebrew does
not have, that the _modern_ Gaelic pronounciation of the some of the
softened consonants are somewhat different (but then modern Iraeli
pronunciation is different from re-constructed ancient Hebrew); I know also
that Irish Gaelic also has nasal mutation or 'eclipsis' which Hebrew never
had.

All I said is that they are 'reminiscent' - certainly reminiscent enough
for those who are looking for correspondences between insular Celtic and
Semitic.

FWIW I believe the Hebrew and Gaelic developments are unconnected in that
neither inflenced the other & that they developed independently in both
languages.  I think it's a fairly 'natural' treatment of intervocalic
plosives that can, and has, occurred at different times in quite unrelated
languages.

Ray.