Re: CHAT: Pre-Celtic substrate (was: CHAT: RE: R: Italian Particles)

Raymond Brown wrote:

<snip>

> One thing I've never been able to find the answer to is whether these
> 'Semitic' features of insular Celtic are strictly "insular" (i.e. peculiar
> to the Celtic of Ireland & Britain) or were they features of continental
> Celtic?  Did the Galatians, e.g. take these features with them into Asia
> Minor?  Were they always part of Celtic ever since its development in the
> upper Danube region?
>
> Maybe our knowledge of continental Celtic is too meagre to give any
answer.
> Do any of the Celtophiles on the list know?
Hmm, well Arvorec is derived from Continental Gaulish, but my studies of
that language are limited at best. Like most highly inflected IE languages,
word order was relatively free but _unmarked_ word order was AFAIK, VSO like
the insular languages. It's worth noting that the Insular and the
Continental Celtic languages (as opposed to Celtiberian and Hibernian) were
less archaic than the others, as Celtiberian and Hibernian both escaped the
kw -> p shift.

Another notable feature of Gaulish was the use of postponed clitics for
prepositions and conjunctions such as "with", "and", "but" and so on.

> If these traits are shown to have been integral to Celtic from the start
> (and not a Hiberno-British development), then we're looking in the wrong
> area for the 'Semitic' explanation!
I had never heard of a Semitic substrate in Celtic, it seems fascinating.

One thing that causes me some difficulty is why would Common (or later)
Celtic borrow "Semitic" grammatical traits, but not any phonological traits?
For instance, Cornish, under influence of English developed a present
continuous almost identical in form to the English (I am eating, Cornish
theram ow tybry) and also developed the sounds /tS/ and /dZ/.

Dan

> Ray.
----
Bengesko niamso.
Cursed German.
----
Dan Morrison (http://www.geocities.com/yl_ruil/index.html)