Island celtic languages

According to one hypothesis, both Goidel and British languages ​​had a common ancestor that originated in the British Isles and have more in common with each other than with any of the extinct continental Celtic languages (such as Celtiberian , Gallic , Galician and Lepontian ).

Proponents of the hypothesis of the original kinship of Celtic languages, including prominent linguists such as Peter Schreiver ^[1] , point to general innovations, including pronoun inflection in prepositions, the common use of certain verbal particles, the word order of VSO, and the difference between the absolute and conjunctive verb endings, widely represented in Old Irish and to a small extent in Middle Welsh (see Morphology of the Proto-Celtic language ). Supporters also point out that the distinction between the P-Celtic (to which the British and the dead Gallic belong) and the Q-Celtic languages ​​(to which the Goidel and the dead Celtiber belong) can be superficial, associated with ancient language contact, because the same phonetic shift ( / kʷ / -> / p / ) could occur independently in the predecessor languages ​​of the Gallic and British branches, or could spread through linguistic contact between (proto) Gallic and pro-British.

According to this hypothesis, the evolutionary tree of the island Celtic languages ​​looks like this:

• Common Celtic Island
  • Protogoydelsky , ancestor of the following:
    • archaic Irish ancestor of the following:
      • Old Irish , ancestor of the following:
        • Central Irish , ancestor of the following:
          • Irish
          • Scottish Gaelic
          • menki
  • British
    • Pictish (attribution to the Celtic languages ​​is controversial)
    • british
      • Cumbrian (disappeared)
      • Old Welsh , ancestor of the following:
        • Middle English , the ancestor of the following:
          • Welsh
      • southwestern british , ancestor of the following:
        • breton
        • Cornish

Criticism

This hypothesis is often criticized. Thus, it is noted that between separate groups within the framework of island languages ​​there are deeper differences in phonetics and vocabulary than between these groups and individual continental Celtic languages.

The table below shows a sample list of cognates showing the conversion of Proto-Celtic sound * / kʷ / to sound / p / in Gallic and British, but in / k / in Goidel languages.

A significant difference between Goidel and British languages ​​is the transformation of the combination * an, am into a denazalized vowel with lengthening, é , before the original deaf explosive or fricative, cf. ancient earl. éc “death”, écath “fishing hook”, dét “tooth”, cét “hundred” and Welsh angau , angad , dant and cant . Other examples:

• the nasal is preserved before the vowel, i̯ , w , m , and fluent a:
  • ancient earl. ben "woman" (<* benā)
  • ancient earl. gainethar “he was born / she was born” (<* gan-i̯e-tor)
  • ancient earl. ainb "ignorant" (<* anwiss)
• the nasal goes into en before the other n :
  • ancient earl. benn "peak" (<* banno) (cf. Welsh bann )
  • sir ro-geinn “takes place” (<* ganne) (cf. Welsh gannaf )
• the nasal goes into in, im before the sonorous explosive
  • ancient earl. imb “oil” (cf. Breton. aman (en) n , cor . amanyn )
  • ancient earl. ingen "nail" (cf. dr.Welsh. eguin )
  • ancient earl. tengae “language” (cf. Welsh tafod )
  • ancient earl. ing “straight” (cf. Middle Sred. eh-ang “wide”)

To prove that general innovations are related to a common origin, it is necessary to prove that these innovations did not arise as a result of language contact after separation. The result of widespread bilingualism or exogamy, as well as the absence of a strict sociolinguistic separation, may be the formation of a linguistic union . In post-Roman Britain, the Goydel and British languages ​​apparently enjoyed roughly equal status; there were several Goidel borrowings in the British languages, and several British ones in the Goidel languages. There is historical evidence that during this period, Irish was spoken in Wales and England, and British in Ireland. There is also archaeological evidence of extensive contacts between Britain and Ireland during the pre-Roman and Roman periods.

Ranko Matasovich presented a list of changes that affected both branches of the island Celtic languages, but for which there is no evidence that they originated in the Proto-Celtic period. ^[2] This, in particular:

• Phonological changes
  • Deaf explosive
  • Boost / Influence i
  • Decrease / influence a
  • Apocope
  • Syncope
• Morphological changes
  • The emergence of prepositions with pronoun endings
  • Loss of case declension of personal pronouns
  • The emergence of the equalization degree of adjectives
  • The emergence of imperfect
  • The occurrence of conditional mood
• Morphosyntactic and syntactic
  • Fix VSO order
  • The emergence of the pre-definite article
  • The emergence of particles expressing confirmation and denial
  • Creating a peripheral construct
  • Creating add-on tokens
  • The use of ordinal numbers in the sense of "one of."

The verbal system of island Celtic languages ​​has a peculiarity that is not characteristic of any other Indo-European languages : verbs have different inclined forms depending on whether they occupy an independent initial place in the sentence (in the word order VSO), or they are preceded by a preverb grammatical particle. The most abundant examples of this phenomenon are known in Old Irish , however, it is to some extent represented in Scottish Gaelic , and traces of it are also noticeable in Middle English .

Forms at the beginning of a sentence are called “absolute”, and forms after a particle are called “conjunctive”, “connected” (for more details see the article en: Dependent and independent verb forms ). The conjugation paradigm of the asset present indicator of the Old Irish verb beirid “carry” is given below; the conjunctive form is given in combination with the ní “not” particle.

In Scottish Gaelic, this distinction still exists for some verb forms:

In Middle Wall, the difference is best seen in proverbs according to the formula “X happens, Y doesn't happen” (Evans 1964: 119):

• Pereid y rycheu, ny phara a'e goreu “Furrows remain, but the one who spent them does not”
• Trenghit golut, ny threingk molut “Wealth perishes, but glory does not perish”
• Tyuit maban, ny thyf y gadachan "The baby grows, but his diaper is gone"
• Chwaryit mab noeth, ny chware mab newynawc “A naked child is playing (having fun), and a hungry child is not playing (not having fun)”

According to an earlier analysis of this distinction made by R. Turneysen (Thurneysen, 1946, 360 ff.), Absolute endings come from PIE “primary endings” (used in present and future tenses), while conjunctive endings come from “secondary endings” "(Used in past tenses). Thus, the Old Irish beirid “bears” was built to * bʰereti (cf. Sanskrit bharati “carries”), and the conjunctive beir to k * bʰeret (cf. Sanskrit a-bharat “carried / carried”).

Nowadays, however, most Celtologists (Cowgill, 1975, after Pedersen, 1913, 340 ff.) Have come to a different conclusion about the origin of the difference between the absolute and conjunctive ending of the verb: an enclit that reconstructs as * es after consonants and * s after vowels, was in second place in the sentence. If the first word in the sentence was a different particle, then * (e) s appeared after it, thus, before the verb, but if the verb was the first word in the sentence, * (e) s became its clique. According to this theory, the Old Irish absolute beirid comes from the Proto-Celtic * bereti-s , while the conjunctive ní beir - from * nī-s bereti .

The origin of the particle * (e) s remains unclear. Cowgill believes that it is semantically connected with the verb-connective * esti “is, is”, while Schrijver (1994) believes that it came from * eti “and then,” attested in the Gallic language.

In continental Celtic languages, there is no distinction between absolute and conjunctive forms of the verb. On the other hand, only two word orders were observed in continental languages: SVO or SOV, as in other Indo-European languages. This confirms the assumption that the absolute and conjunctive forms of verbs could be a consequence of the VSO order that existed in the island Celtic languages.

Regardless of the medieval idea that all the languages ​​of the world were descended from Hebrew , a certain similarity of the characteristic features of the island Celtic languages ​​with the Afrasian languages ​​(pronoun suffixes, the word order of VSO) gave rise to the concept of an Afrasian substrate. This idea was first put forward by John Morris-Jones ( en: John Morris-Jones ) in 1900. ^[3] Later, Julius Pokorny , ^[4] Heinrich Wagner , ^[5] and Orin Gensler supported this hypothesis. ^[6] This theory was developed by Ariel Shisha-Galevi ^[7] and Theo Fennemann .

The theory of the Afrasian substrate has been severely criticized by linguists such as Graham Isaac ^[8] and Kim McCon . ^[9] Isaac believes that the twenty similarities that Gensler identified are either ordinary coincidences or stretch marks.

A number of modern specialists, while not rejecting the possibility of a connection between phenomena common to the island Celtic languages ​​and the substrate, prefer to speak of a purely typological similarity with Afrasian languages ​​without any kindred relationship.

• Cowgill, Warren. The origins of the Insular Celtic conjunct and absolute verbal endings // Flexion und Wortbildung: Akten der V. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, Regensburg, 9. – 14. September 1973 / H. Rix (ed.). - Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1975. - P. 40–70. - ISBN 3-920153-40-5 .
• McCone, Kim. The PIE stops and syllabic nasals in Celtic (neopr.) // Studia Celtica Japonica. - 1991 .-- T. 4 . - S. 37-69 .
• McCone, Kim. Relative Chronologie: Keltisch // Rekonstruktion und relative Chronologie: Akten Der VIII. Fachtagung Der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, Leiden, 31. August – 4. September 1987 / R. Beekes, A. Lubotsky, and J. Weitenberg (eds.). - Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck, 1992. - P. 12–39. - ISBN 3-85124-613-6 .
• Schrijver, Peter. Studies in British Celtic historical phonology. - Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995 .-- ISBN 90-5183-820-4 .