Re: Celtic and Afro-Asiatic?

Hallo!

Steg Belsky wrote:

> On Sep 14, 2005, at 11:52 AM, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> > Hallo!
> > The conlangy motivation for my question is that I consider making
> > the language family of the "British Dwarves" an Afro-Asiatic one.
>
> Sounds cool!
> Especially since Tolkien's Dwarves spoke a Semitic-like language :-) .
Yes, I am very aware of the triconsonantal root system etc.
of Khuzdul; and I have been pondering having triconsonantal
roots in Pictic (i.e., my version of Dwarvish) as well.
Another idea of mine is that the Pictic languages are ergative
(some scholars reconstruct Proto-Afro-Asiatic as ergative,
and the Berber languages are AFAIK ergative as well).
And Pictic is definitely VSO, and typologically similar to
Albic and Insular Celtic (initial mutations etc.).
I have come up with a Proto-Pictic consonant inventory a few
months ago which doesn't look very Afro-Asiatic, but I have
found sound laws to account of the differences.

> [17 "Celtic-Semitic" features, and comments on them]
You say that some of these are to your knowledge not found
in Semitic languages; I must say that I haven't seen some of them
in Celtic.  Perhaps that's all just snake oil.  Perhaps it is
little more than VSO word order with its typological ramifications.
Calling anyone knowledgable about VSO languages other than Celtic
and Afro-Asiatic: do these languages show the same features?

A problem with the assumption of an Afro-Asiatic substratum
in Insular Celtic is that there is no trace of Afro-Asiatic
anywhere in between (Iberian peninsula, France).  Instead we
have Basque along the way, which has nothing to do with AA,
neither genealogically nor typologically.  But that doesn't
mean that an Afro-Asiatic language in Britain is impossible.

Greetings,

Jörg.

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