Gallo-Brittonic vs. Insular Celtic: The Inter-rela¬tion¬ships of the Celtic Languages Recon¬sidered (original) (raw)

CELTIC LANGUAGES IN THE EUROPEAN CONTEXT: IRISH AND ITS RELATION WITH BRITISH ENGLISH

The following dissertation is a description of Celtic languages in the Indo-European context, where a brief statement about this linguistic phylum is presented, along with the families and languages composing it. Subsequently, an explanation about the origin theories of Celts and their languages will be provided, as well as a classification of the languages belonging to this family. Additionally, the main features that distinguish this phylum from the rest, and the ones which are more relevant, will be presented in a concise manner, as far as its phonology, morphology and syntax are concerned. To conclude, the case of Irish Gaelic will be deeply explained, as well as the example of Hiberno-Irish, including a comparison of borrowings between Irish and English.

Chapter 38 EARLY ENGLISH AND THE CELTIC HYPOTHESIS

2012

The aim of the current chapter is to consider Celtic influence on early Old English. This issue has recently been debated in detail (e.g. in Trudgill 2010: 1–35 and Ahlqvist 2010), and it helps to throw light on general contact arguments in language change. The scholarly opinion that Brythonic, the language spoken in England by the Celtic population at the time of the Germanic invasions, had a significant effect on the development of English is known as the “Celtic hypothesis” (Filppula and Klemola 2009). The standard wisdom on contact and transfer has traditionally been that the language with more status influences that with less, that is, borrowing is from the superstrate into the substrate, as is attested by Latin and French borrowings into English. This is, however, a simplistic view of possible influence in a contact scenario. Vocabulary, as an open class with a high degree of awareness by speakers, is the primary source of borrowing from the superstrate. Again French and Latin...

The Indo European Language Family: 9. Celtic

The Indo-European Language Family: A Phylogenetic Perspective, 2022

This chapter provides an overview of the main distinguishing features of the Celtic branch of Indo-European. It furthermore discussses the internal relationship between the branches of Celtic, specifically the position of Brittonic. The main arguments in favour of Gallo-Brittonic and Insular Celtic are evaluated.

The substratum in Insular Celtic

Journal of Language Relationship, 2012

The discussion focuses on the problem of pre-Celtic substratum languages in the British Islands. The article by R. Matasović begins by dealing with the syntactic features of Insular Celtic languages (Brittonic and Goidelic): the author analyses numerous innovations in Insular Celtic and finds certain parallels in languages of the Afro-Asiatic macrofamily. The second part of his paper contains the analysis of that particular part of the Celtic lexicon which cannot be attributed to the PIE layer. A number of words for which only a substratum origin can be assumed is attested only in Brittonic and Goidelic. The author proposes to reconstruct Proto-Insular Celtic forms for this section of the vocabulary. This idea encounters objections from T. Mikhailova, who prefers to qualify common non-Celtic lexicon of Goidelic and Brittonic as parallel loanwords from the same substratum language. The genetic value of this language, however, remains enigmatic for both authors.

Exploring Celtic Origins: New ways forward in archaeology, linguistics, and genetics

Exploring Celtic Origins: New ways forward in archaeology, linguistics, and genetics, 2019

E x p l o r i n g C e l t i c O r i g i n s is the fruit of collaborative work by researchers in archaeology, historical linguistics, and archaeogenetics over the past ten years. T his team works towards the goal of a better understanding of the background in the Bronze Age and Beaker P eriod of the people who emerge as Celts and speakers of Celtic languages documented in the I ron Age and later times. L ed by S ir Barry Cunliffe and John Koch, the contributors present multidisciplinary chapters in a lively user-friendly style, aimed at accessibility for workers in the other fields, as well as general readers. T he collection stands as a pause to reflect on ways forward at the moment of intellectual history when the genome-wide sequencing of ancient DNA (a.k.a. ‘the archaeogenetic revolution’) has suddenly changed everything in the study of later European prehistory. How do we deal with what appears to be an irreversible breach in the barrier between science and the humanities? Exploring Celtic O rigins includes colour maps and illustrations and annotated Further R eading for all chapters.

Celtic from the West 3. Atlantic Europe in the Metal Ages: questions of shared language

Celtic from the West 3 Atlantic Europe in the Metal Ages: questions of shared language, 2016

CELTIC FROM THE WEST 3. The Celtic languages and groups called Keltoi (i.e. ‘Celts’) emerge into our written records at the pre-Roman Iron Age. The impetus for this book is to explore from the perspectives of three disciplines—archaeology, genetics, and linguistics—the background in later European prehistory to these developments. There is a traditional scenario, according to which, Celtic speech and the associated group identity came in to being during the Early Iron Age in the north Alpine zone and then rapidly spread across central and western Europe. This idea of ‘Celtogenesis’ remains deeply entrenched in scholarly and popular thought. But it has become increasingly difficult to reconcile with recent discoveries pointing towards origins in the deeper past. It should no longer be taken for granted that Atlantic Europe during the 2nd and 3rd millennia BC were pre-Celtic or even pre-Indo-European. The explorations in Celtic from the West 3 are drawn together in this spirit, continuing two earlier volumes in the influential series.