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Insular Celtic languages are the group of
Celtic languages The Celtic languages ( ) are a branch of the Indo-European language family, descended from the hypothetical Proto-Celtic language. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, following Paul-Yve ...
spoken in
Brittany Brittany ( ) is a peninsula, historical country and cultural area in the north-west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known as Armorica in Roman Gaul. It became an Kingdom of Brittany, independent kingdom and then a Duch ...
,
Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-west coast of continental Europe, consisting of the countries England, Scotland, and Wales. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the List of European ...
,
Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...
, and the
Isle of Man The Isle of Man ( , also ), or Mann ( ), is a self-governing British Crown Dependency in the Irish Sea, between Great Britain and Ireland. As head of state, Charles III holds the title Lord of Mann and is represented by a Lieutenant Govern ...
. All surviving Celtic languages are in the Insular group, including Breton, which is spoken on continental Europe in Brittany,
France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...
. The
Continental Celtic languages The Continental Celtic languages are the now-extinct group of the Celtic languages that were spoken on the continent of Europe and in central Anatolia, as distinguished from the Insular Celtic languages of the British Isles, Ireland and Brittany. ...
, although once widely spoken in
mainland Europe Continental Europe or mainland Europe is the contiguous mainland of Europe, excluding its surrounding islands. It can also be referred to ambiguously as the European continent, – which can conversely mean the whole of Europe – and, by so ...
and in
Anatolia Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...
, are extinct. Six Insular Celtic languages are extant (in all cases written and spoken) in two distinct groups: * Insular Celtic languages ** Brittonic (or Brythonic) languages *** Breton *** Cornish *** Welsh **
Goidelic languages The Goidelic ( ) or Gaelic languages (; ; ) form one of the two groups of Insular Celtic languages, the other being the Brittonic languages. Goidelic languages historically formed a dialect continuum stretching from Ireland through the Isle o ...
*** Irish *** Manx ***
Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic (, ; Endonym and exonym, endonym: ), also known as Scots Gaelic or simply Gaelic, is a Celtic language native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a member of the Goidelic language, Goidelic branch of Celtic, Scottish Gaelic, alongs ...


Insular Celtic hypothesis

The Insular Celtic hypothesis is the theory that these languages
evolved Evolution is the change in the heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, re ...
together in those places, having a later
common ancestor Common descent is a concept in evolutionary biology applicable when one species is the ancestor of two or more species later in time. According to modern evolutionary biology, all living beings could be descendants of a unique ancestor commonl ...
than any of the
Continental Celtic languages The Continental Celtic languages are the now-extinct group of the Celtic languages that were spoken on the continent of Europe and in central Anatolia, as distinguished from the Insular Celtic languages of the British Isles, Ireland and Brittany. ...
such as Celtiberian,
Gaulish Gaulish is an extinct Celtic languages, Celtic language spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the Celts of Gaul (now France, Luxembourg, Belgium, ...
, Galatian, and Lepontic, among others, all of which are long extinct. This linguistic division of Celtic languages into Insular and Continental contrasts with the P/Q Celtic hypothesis. The proponents of the Insular hypothesis (such as Cowgill 1975; McCone 1991, 1992; and Schrijver 1995) point to shared innovations among these – chiefly: *
inflected preposition In linguistics, an inflected preposition is a type of word that occurs in some languages, that corresponds to the combination of a preposition and a personal pronoun. For instance, the Welsh word ' () is an inflected form of the preposition ''i'' ...
s * shared use of certain verbal particles * VSO word order * differentiation of absolute and conjunct verb endings as found extensively in Old Irish and less so in Middle Welsh (see Morphology of the Proto-Celtic language). The proponents assert that a strong partition between the Brittonic languages with
Gaulish Gaulish is an extinct Celtic languages, Celtic language spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the Celts of Gaul (now France, Luxembourg, Belgium, ...
(
P-Celtic The Gallo-Brittonic languages, also known as the P-Celtic languages, are a proposed subdivision of the Celtic languages containing the languages of Ancient Gaul (both ''Gallia Celtica, Celtica'' and ''Belgica'') and Celtic Britain, which share ce ...
) on one side and the Goidelic languages with Celtiberian (Q-Celtic) on the other, may be superficial, owing to a
language contact Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact with and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. Language contact can occur at language borders, between adstratum ...
phenomenon. They add the identical sound shift ( to ) could have occurred independently in the predecessors of Gaulish and Brittonic, or have spread through language contact between those two groups. Further, the
Italic languages The Italic languages form a branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family, whose earliest known members were spoken on the Italian Peninsula in the first millennium BC. The most important of the ancient Italic languages ...
had a similar divergence between
Latino-Faliscan The Latino-Faliscan or Latinian languages form a group of the Italic languages within the Indo-European family. They were spoken by the Latino-Faliscan people of Italy who lived there from the early 1st millennium BC. Latin and Faliscan belong ...
, which kept , and
Osco-Umbrian The Osco-Umbrian, Sabellic or Sabellian languages are an extinct group of Italic languages, the Indo-European languages that were spoken in central and southern Italy by the Osco-Umbrians before being replaced by Latin, as the power of ancient Rom ...
, which changed it to . Some historians, such as
George Buchanan George Buchanan (; February 1506 – 28 September 1582) was a Scottish historian and humanist scholar. According to historian Keith Brown, Buchanan was "the most profound intellectual sixteenth-century Scotland produced." His ideology of re ...
in the 16th century, had suggested the Brythonic or P-Celtic language was a descendant of the Picts' language. Indeed, the tribe of the Pritani has Qritani (and, orthographically orthodox in modern form but counterintuitively written Cruthin) (Q-Celtic) cognate forms. Under the Insular hypothesis, the family tree of the insular Celtic languages is thus as follows: This table lists cognates showing the development of Proto-Celtic to in Gaulish and the Brittonic languages but to in the Goidelic languages. : In
Welsh orthography Welsh orthography uses 29 letters (including eight digraphs) of the Latin script to write native Welsh words as well as established loanwords. Welsh orthography makes use of multiple diacritics, which are primarily used on vowels, namely th ...
denotes or in northern Welsh and or in southern Welsh A significant difference between Goidelic and Brittonic languages is the transformation of , to a denasalised vowel with lengthening, ''é'', before an originally voiceless stop or fricative, Old Irish "death", "fish hook", "tooth", "hundred" vs. Welsh , , , and . Otherwise: * the nasal is retained before a vowel, ''i̯'', ''w'', ''m'', and a liquid: ** "woman" (< ) ** "he/she is born" (< ) ** "ignorant" (< ) * the nasal passes to ''en'' before another ''n'': ** "peak" (< ) (vs. Welsh ) ** "finds a place" (< ) (vs. Welsh ) * the nasal passes to ''in, im'' before a voiced stop ** "butter" (vs. Breton , Cornish ) ** "nail" (vs. Old Welsh ) ** "tongue" (vs. Welsh ) ** "strait" (vs. Middle Welsh "wide")


Insular Celtic as a language area

In order to show that shared innovations are from a common descent it is necessary that they do not arise because of language contact after initial separation. A language area can result from widespread bilingualism, perhaps because of
exogamy Exogamy is the social norm of mating or marrying outside one's social group. The group defines the scope and extent of exogamy, and the rules and enforcement mechanisms that ensure its continuity. One form of exogamy is dual exogamy, in which tw ...
, and absence of sharp sociolinguistic division. Ranko Matasović has provided a list of changes which affected both branches of Insular Celtic but for which there is no evidence that they should be dated to a putative Proto-Insular Celtic period. These are: * Phonological Changes ** The lenition of voiceless stops ** Raising/i-affection ** Lowering/a-affection ** Apocope ** Syncope * Morphological Changes ** Creation of conjugated prepositions ** Loss of case inflection of personal pronouns (historical case-inflected forms) ** Creation of the equative degree ** Creation of the imperfect ** Creation of the conditional mood * Morphosyntactic and Syntactic ** Rigidisation of VSO order ** Creation of preposed definite articles ** Creation of particles expressing sentence affirmation and negation ** Creation of periphrastic construction ** Creation of object markers ** Use of ordinal numbers in the sense of "one of".


Absolute and dependent verb

The Insular Celtic
verb A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic f ...
shows a peculiar feature unknown in any other attested
Indo-European language The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia ( ...
: verbs have different
conjugation Conjugation or conjugate may refer to: Linguistics *Grammatical conjugation, the modification of a verb from its basic form *Emotive conjugation or Russell's conjugation, the use of loaded language Mathematics *Complex conjugation, the change o ...
al forms depending on whether they appear in absolute initial position in the sentence (Insular Celtic having verb–subject–object or VSO word order) or whether they are preceded by a preverbal
particle In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscle in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, from s ...
. The situation is most robustly attested in
Old Irish Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic (, Ogham, Ogham script: ᚌᚑᚔᚇᚓᚂᚉ; ; ; or ), is the oldest form of the Goidelic languages, Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive written texts. It was used from 600 to 900. The ...
, but it has remained to some extent in
Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic (, ; Endonym and exonym, endonym: ), also known as Scots Gaelic or simply Gaelic, is a Celtic language native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a member of the Goidelic language, Goidelic branch of Celtic, Scottish Gaelic, alongs ...
and traces of it are present in Middle Welsh as well. Forms that appear in sentence-initial position are called absolute, those that appear after a particle are called conjunct (see
Dependent and independent verb forms In the Goidelic languages, dependent and independent verb forms are distinct verb forms; each tense of each verb exists in both forms. Verbs are often preceded by a particle which marks negation, or a question, or has some other force. The dependent ...
for details). The
paradigm In science and philosophy, a paradigm ( ) is a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitute legitimate contributions to a field. The word ''paradigm'' is Ancient ...
of the
present The present is the period of time that is occurring now. The present is contrasted with the past, the period of time that has already occurred; and the future, the period of time that has yet to occur. It is sometimes represented as a hyperplan ...
active
indicative A realis mood ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentence Dec ...
of the Old Irish verb "carry" is as follows; the conjunct forms are illustrated with the particle "not". In Scottish Gaelic this distinction is still found in certain verb-forms across almost all verbs (except for a very few). This is a VSO language. The example given in the first column below is the ''independent '' or ''absolute '' form, which must be used when the verb is in clause-initial position (or preceded in the clause by certain preverbal particles). Then following it is the ''dependent '' or ''conjunct '' form which is required when the verb is preceded in the clause by certain other preverbal particles, in particular interrogative or negative preverbal particles. In these examples, in the first column we have a verb in clause-initial position. In the second column a negative particle immediately precedes the verb, which makes the verb use the verb form or verb forms of the ''dependent '' conjugation. The verb forms in the above examples happen to be the same with any subject personal pronouns, not just with the particular persons chosen in the example. Also, the combination of
tense–aspect–mood Tense–aspect–mood (commonly abbreviated in linguistics) or tense–modality–aspect (abbreviated as ) is an important group of grammatical categories, which are marked in different ways by different languages. TAM covers the expression of ...
properties inherent in these verb forms is non-past but otherwise indefinite with respect to time, being compatible with a variety of non-past times, and context indicates the time. The sense can be completely tenseless, for example when asserting that something is always true or always happens. This verb form has erroneously been termed 'future' in many pedagogical grammars. A correct, neutral term 'INDEF1' has been used in linguistics texts. In Middle Welsh, the distinction is seen most clearly in proverbs following the formula "X happens, Y does not happen" (Evans 1964: 119): * "The furrows last, he who made them lasts not" * "Wealth perishes, fame perishes not" * "An infant grows, his swaddling-clothes grow not" * "A naked boy plays, a hungry boy plays not" The older analysis of the distinction, as reported by Thurneysen (1946, 360 ff.), held that the absolute endings derive from
Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...
"primary endings" (used in present and future tenses) while the conjunct endings derive from the "secondary endings" (used in past tenses). Thus Old Irish absolute "s/he carries" was thought to be from * (compare
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
"s/he carries"), while conjunct was thought to be from * (compare Sanskrit "s/he was carrying"). Today, however, most Celticists agree that Cowgill (1975), following an idea present already in Pedersen (1913, 340 ff.), found the correct solution to the origin of the absolute/conjunct distinction: an enclitic particle, reconstructed as * after consonants and * after vowels, came in second position in the sentence. If the first word in the sentence was another particle, * came after that and thus before the verb, but if the verb was the first word in the sentence, * was cliticized to it. Under this theory, then, Old Irish absolute comes from Proto-Celtic *, while conjunct comes from *. The identity of the * particle remains uncertain. Cowgill suggests it might be a semantically degraded form of * "is", while Schrijver (1994) has argued it is derived from the particle * "and then", which is attested in Gaulish. Schrijver's argument is supported and expanded by Schumacher (2004), who points towards further evidence, viz., typological parallels in non-Celtic languages, and especially a large number of verb forms in all Brythonic languages that contain a particle ''-d'' (from an older *''-t'').
Continental Celtic languages The Continental Celtic languages are the now-extinct group of the Celtic languages that were spoken on the continent of Europe and in central Anatolia, as distinguished from the Insular Celtic languages of the British Isles, Ireland and Brittany. ...
cannot be shown to have any absolute/conjunct distinction. However, they seem to show only SVO and SOV word orders, as in other Indo-European languages. The absolute/conjunct distinction may thus be an artifact of the VSO word order that arose in Insular Celtic.


Possible pre-Celtic substratum

Insular Celtic, unlike Continental Celtic, shares some structural characteristics with various
Afro-Asiatic languages The Afroasiatic languages (also known as Afro-Asiatic, Afrasian, Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic) are a language family (or "phylum") of about 400 languages spoken predominantly in West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of th ...
which are rare in other Indo-European languages. These similarities include verb–subject–object
word order In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how languages employ different orders. Correlatio ...
, singular verbs with plural post-verbal subjects, a genitive construction similar to construct state, prepositions with fused inflected pronouns ("conjugated prepositions" or "prepositional pronouns"), and oblique relatives with pronoun copies. Such resemblances were noted as early as 1621 with regard to Welsh and the
Hebrew language Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and remained in regular use as a first language unti ...
. The hypothesis that the Insular Celtic languages had features from an Afro-Asiatic
substratum Substrata, plural of substratum, may refer to: *Earth's substrata, the geologic layering of the Earth *''Hypokeimenon'', sometimes translated as ''substratum'', a concept in metaphysics *Substrata (album), a 1997 ambient music album by Biosphere * ...
(Iberian and Berber languages) was first proposed by John Morris-Jones in 1899. The theory has been supported by several linguists since: Henry Jenner (1904);
Julius Pokorny Julius Pokorny (12 June 1887 – 8 April 1970) was an Austrian-Czech linguist and scholar of the Celtic languages and of Celtic studies, particularly of the Irish language, and a supporter of Irish nationalism. He held academic posts in Austrian ...
(1927); Heinrich Wagner (1959); Orin Gensler (1993);
Theo Vennemann Theo Vennemann genannt Nierfeld (; born 27 May 1937) is a German historical linguist known for his controversial theories of a " Vasconic" and an " Atlantic" stratum in European languages, published since the 1990s. He was professor of Germa ...
(1995); and Ariel Shisha-Halevy (2003). Others have suggested that rather than the Afro-Asiatic influencing Insular Celtic directly, both groups of languages were influenced by a now lost substrate. This was suggested by Jongeling (2000). Ranko Matasović (2012) likewise argued that the "Insular Celtic languages were subject to strong influences from an unknown, presumably non-Indo-European substratum" and found the syntactic parallelisms between Insular Celtic and Afro-Asiatic languages to be "probably not accidental". He argued that their similarities arose from "a large linguistic macro-area, encompassing parts of NW Africa, as well as large parts of Western Europe, before the arrival of the speakers of Indo-European, including Celtic". The Afro-Asiatic substrate theory, according to Raymond Hickey, "has never found much favour with scholars of the Celtic languages". The theory was criticised by Kim McCone in 2006, Graham Isaac in 2007, and Steve Hewitt in 2009. Isaac argues that the 20 points identified by Gensler are trivial, dependencies, or vacuous. Thus, he considers the theory to be not just unproven but also wrong. Instead, the similarities between Insular Celtic and Afro-Asiatic could have evolved independently.


Notes


References


Sources

* * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Insular Celtic Languages