Re: Genitive relationships (WAS: Construct States)

At 11:49 am -0800 7/3/99, Sally Caves wrote:
>Raymond A. Brown wrote:
......
>> Inter alia
>> - only two genders - masc. & fem.
>
>This wasn't something Orin noted.  Lots of languages besidesCeltic and Semitic
>have only two genders.
Indeed - e.g. the Romance langs (generally, tho Romanian does have a 3rd
gender), Hindi/ Urdu & the other IE langs of north India.  Therefore, I
find this "evidence" too circumstantial.

>> - adjectives follow the noun
>
>Again, not noted; too many other languages are VSOwith adjectives
>following the
>nouns..
..and even quite a few with SVO order, e.g. the Romance langs (and Breton).

>> - verb is put first
>
>Ditto.
>
>> - definite article but no indefinite one
>> - conjugated prepositions
>
>This was noted.  Ray, see my post, just sent to the list, called"The CHS
>Problem" (the Celto/Hamito-Semitic Problem).
I have.

>I've copied out the 17 similarities.   More interesting is the fact that
>the initial verb can be singular when the subject is plural.
But in ancient Greek the verb was regularly singular with plural neuter
subject.  This was prob. of PIE feature.  The Celtic use might be a
generalization of this (and there are probably other possible theories).

>Both
>Celtic and Semitic do this, too (and probably other VSO
>languages).
....and non-VSO languages.

>Also shared by both language groups:  the fact that
>you can apply the definite article in the genitive juxtaposition but
>only to the possessor, never the possessed:  "book the boy,"
>never "the book boy," or even "the book the boy."
This, I admit, is a more striking similarity and one which, together with
the verb-first business got me thinking in terms of a Semitic-Celtic
relation many, many years ago.  Indeed, it seems many people have quite
independently noted these things and at some stage wondered about a
Celtic-Semitic connexion.

[snip]
>>
>> There was long contact between the Semitic world & Britain: the Phoenicians
>> traded with the "Tin Isles" (i.e. the Cornish peninsular) for several
>> centuries I believe.  A Semitic based trade jargon could have developed in
>> this area.
>>
>
>So says John.
No - John was talking about Celtic-Semitic contacts in the _Iberian_
peninsular. By the 2nd cent. BC. there were important Carthaginian (i.e.
Semitic) settlements in western part of the Iberian peninsular; so much so,
that the growing power of Rome saw them, certainly correctly, as major
threats.  There is little doubt in my mind that the long struggles between
Rome & Carthage were very much about which of these two rival powers would
survive & dominate the western Mediterranean.

Be that as it may, there were Celts in the northern & north eastern parts
of the Iberian peninsular at that time.  It is inconceivable that there
were no contacts between these people.

>But I can't remember without rereading major portions of the
>dissertationwhether Orin and others agree with this or not.
If Orin denies these contacts he's flying in the face of all known evidence.

>It seems
>completely sensible.  I think
>there is a split in traditional thinking about this phenomenon between the
>"substratal"
>theory and the "non-substratal," or "contact" theory.
Substratal & superstratal theories are a different matter and the evidence
is often much more tenuous, I agree.

>Orin goes into a long
>discussion
>about the tenuous evidence amassed on either side.  If there was a substratum,
>for
>instance, say in Eurasia, then we have no evidence for it.
Indeed we haven't - and I've not met that theory.

>And contact?
>well....
Well?

>
>> Also, of course, these islands were inhabited long before Celts arrived
>> here.  The builders of stone Henge & the megaliths belong to a western
>> European civilization which predated the arrival of the Celts.  One theory
>> ascribes a north African origin to this "Iberian" strain which would link
>> them with the Berber peoples of north Africa.  Thus the connexion would be
>> Hamito-semitic rather than directly Semitic and the apparently 'Semitic'
>> features of insular Celtic would be due to the influence of an underlying
>> "Iberian" stratum.
>
>Yes.  Interesting.
I think so - I wonder if anyone's thought of doing any DNA testing to test
such a theory.

>> Personally, I find neither theory proven. And there are features shared by
>> all the modern Celtic langs which AFAIK are not found in the Semtic langs,
>> in particular the extensive use of the verbnoun which gives rise to a whole
>> host of periphrastic verbal forms.
>>
>
>Yes, but Orin is addressing other specific similarities.  Obviously, over
>time,
>twowidely separated languages will take their grammatical features in
>different
>directions.A good place to start would be by reading this dissertation,
>which I
>hope Orin hashad the good sense to get published.  He spent seventeen years on
>it, for godsake
Relectantly, I have say that 17 years work is no criterion that the work is
sound (nor that it is not - I'm _not_ prejudging Orin).  Several years back
I spent quite a few years (not 17, I admit) researching evidence of
pre-Greek speech on Crete.  This led me into many interesting and (often
vaguely) related by-ways.  I discovered more than one theorist who'd spent
the best part of a life-time amassing data & "evidence" for his pet theory
(they were IIRC all male :)

Most of them convinced few people but the theorists.

>And it is a good, consolidated source for all the critical opinions expressed
>on this
>subject for the past hundred years.
That could be very interesting.

>In manuscript form, it is exactly 666
>pages!
Sounds interesting - I'd certainly be interested to see Orin's dissertation.

Ray.