Insular Celtic languages
Encyclopedia
Insular Celtic languages are those Celtic languages
that originated in the British Isles
, in contrast to the Continental Celtic languages
of mainland Europe
and Anatolia
. All surviving Celtic languages are from the Insular Celtic group; the Continental Celtic languages are extinct. The six Insular Celtic languages of modern times can be divided into:
together in those islands, having a common ancestor more recent than any shared with the Continental Celtic languages
such as Celtiberian
, Gaulish
, Galatian and Lepontic
, among others, all of which are long extinct.
The proponents of the Insular Celtic hypothesis (such as Cowgill 1975; McCone 1991, 1992; and Schrijver 1995) point to shared innovations among Insular Celtic languages, including inflected preposition
s, shared use of certain verbal particles, VSO word order, and the differentiation of absolute and conjunct verb endings
as found extensively in Old Irish and to a small extent in Middle Welsh (see Morphology of the Proto-Celtic language). They assert that a partition that lumps the Brythonic languages and Gaulish (P-Celtic) on one side and the Goidelic languages with Celtiberian (Q-Celtic) on the other may be a superficial one (i.e. owing to a language contact
phenomenon), as the identical sound shift (/kʷ/ to /p/) could have occurred independently in the predecessors of Gaulish and Brythonic, or have spread through language contact between those two groups.
The family tree of the Insular Celtic languages is thus as follows:
The following table lists cognates showing the development of Proto-Celtic */kʷ/ to /p/ in Gaulish and the Brythonic languages but to /k/ in the Goidelic languages.
A significant difference between Goidelic and Brythonic languages is the transformation of *an, am to a denasalised vowel with lengthening, é, before an originally voiceless stop or fricative, cf. Old Irish éc "death", écath "fish hook", dét "tooth", cét "hundred" vs. Welsh angau, angad, dant, and cant. Otherwise:
, and absence of sharp sociolinguistic division. In Post-Roman Britain Goidelic and Brythonic seem to have been of roughly equal status, with several Goidelic loan words in Brythonic and several Brythonic loan words in Old Irish. There is historical evidence of Irish in what are now Wales and England, as well as of Brythonic in Ireland, during this period. There is also archaeological evidence of substantial contact between Britain and Ireland in the Pre-Roman period and of Roman period contact.
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:
shows a peculiar feature unknown in any other attested Indo-European language: verbs have different conjugation
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
. The situation is most robustly attested in Old Irish
, but it has remained to some extent in Scottish Gaelic
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
for details). The paradigm
of the present
active
indicative of the Old Irish verb beirid "carry" is as follows; the conjunct forms are illustrated with the particle ní "not".
In Scottish Gaelic this distinction is still found in certain verb-forms:
In Middle Welsh, the distinction is seen most clearly in proverbs following the formula "X happens, Y does not happen" (Evans 1964: 119):
The older analysis of the distinction, as reported by Thurneysen (1946, 360 ff.), held that the absolute endings derive from Proto-Indo-European
"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 beirid "s/he carries" was thought to be from } (compare Sanskrit bharati "s/he carries"), while conjunct beir was thought to be from } (compare Sanskrit a-bharat "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 beirid comes from Proto-Celtic }, while conjunct ní beir 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.
Continental Celtic languages
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.
in 1900. Some well-known linguists have been adherents such as Julius Pokorny
, Heinrich Wagner, and Orin Gensler. There has been further work on the theory by Shisha-Halevy and Theo Vennemann
.
However, the theory has been strongly criticised by Graham Isaac and by Kim McCone. Isaac considers the twenty points identified by Gensler as trivial, dependencies or vacuous. Thus he considers the theory to be not just unproven but wrong.
Celtic languages
The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic"; a branch of the greater Indo-European language family...
that originated in the British Isles
British Isles
The British Isles are a group of islands off the northwest coast of continental Europe that include the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and over six thousand smaller isles. There are two sovereign states located on the islands: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and...
, in contrast to the Continental Celtic languages
Continental Celtic languages
The Continental Celtic languages are the Celtic languages, now extinct, that were spoken on the continent of Europe, as distinguished from the Insular Celtic languages of Britain and Ireland. The Continental Celtic languages were spoken by the people known to Roman and Greek writers as Keltoi,...
of mainland Europe
Continental Europe
Continental Europe, also referred to as mainland Europe or simply the Continent, is the continent of Europe, explicitly excluding European islands....
and Anatolia
Anatolia
Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...
. All surviving Celtic languages are from the Insular Celtic group; the Continental Celtic languages are extinct. The six Insular Celtic languages of modern times can be divided into:
- the Goidelic languagesGoidelic languagesThe Goidelic languages or Gaelic languages are one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic languages, the other consisting of the Brythonic languages. Goidelic languages historically formed a dialect continuum stretching from the south of Ireland through the Isle of Man to the north of Scotland...
: IrishIrish languageIrish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
, ManxManx languageManx , also known as Manx Gaelic, and as the Manks language, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, historically spoken by the Manx people. Only a small minority of the Island's population is fluent in the language, but a larger minority has some knowledge of it...
, and Scottish GaelicScottish Gaelic languageScottish Gaelic is a Celtic language native to Scotland. A member of the Goidelic branch of the Celtic languages, Scottish Gaelic, like Modern Irish and Manx, developed out of Middle Irish, and thus descends ultimately from Primitive Irish.... - the Brythonic languagesBrythonic languagesThe Brythonic or Brittonic languages form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family, the other being Goidelic. The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython, meaning an indigenous Briton as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael...
: BretonBreton languageBreton is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany , France. Breton is a Brythonic language, descended from the Celtic British language brought from Great Britain to Armorica by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages. Like the other Brythonic languages, Welsh and Cornish, it is classified as...
, CornishCornish languageCornish is a Brythonic Celtic language and a recognised minority language of the United Kingdom. Along with Welsh and Breton, it is directly descended from the ancient British language spoken throughout much of Britain before the English language came to dominate...
, and WelshWelsh languageWelsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
(another language or dialect, CumbricCumbric languageCumbric was a variety of the Celtic British language spoken during the Early Middle Ages in the Hen Ogledd or "Old North", or what is now northern England and southern Lowland Scotland, the area anciently known as Cumbria. It was closely related to Old Welsh and the other Brythonic languages...
, is extinct.)
Insular Celtic hypothesis
The "Insular Celtic hypothesis" is a theory that the Brythonic and Goidelic languages evolvedHistorical linguistics
Historical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages...
together in those islands, having a common ancestor more recent than any shared with the Continental Celtic languages
Continental Celtic languages
The Continental Celtic languages are the Celtic languages, now extinct, that were spoken on the continent of Europe, as distinguished from the Insular Celtic languages of Britain and Ireland. The Continental Celtic languages were spoken by the people known to Roman and Greek writers as Keltoi,...
such as Celtiberian
Celtiberian language
Celtiberian is an extinct Indo-European language of the Celtic branch spoken by the Celtiberians in an area of the Iberian Peninsula lyingbetween the headwaters of the Duero, Tajo, Júcar and Turia rivers and the Ebro river...
, Gaulish
Gaulish language
The Gaulish language is an extinct Celtic language that was spoken by the Gauls, a people who inhabited the region known as Gaul from the Iron Age through the Roman period...
, Galatian and Lepontic
Lepontic language
Lepontic is an extinct Alpine language that was spoken in parts of Rhaetia and Cisalpine Gaul between 550 and 100 BC. It was a Celtic language, although its exact classification within Celtic has been the object of debate...
, among others, all of which are long extinct.
The proponents of the Insular Celtic hypothesis (such as Cowgill 1975; McCone 1991, 1992; and Schrijver 1995) point to shared innovations among Insular Celtic languages, including inflected preposition
Inflected preposition
In some languages, an inflected preposition, or conjugated preposition, is a word formed from the contraction of a preposition with a personal pronoun. For instance, in Scottish Gaelic, to say "before him," one can not say *, but , which historically developed from a fusion of pronoun and...
s, shared use of certain verbal particles, VSO word order, and the differentiation of absolute and conjunct verb endings
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 verb forms are used after a particle, while...
as found extensively in Old Irish and to a small extent in Middle Welsh (see Morphology of the Proto-Celtic language). They assert that a partition that lumps the Brythonic languages and Gaulish (P-Celtic) on one side and the Goidelic languages with Celtiberian (Q-Celtic) on the other may be a superficial one (i.e. owing to a language contact
Language contact
Language contact occurs when two or more languages or varieties interact. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics.Multilingualism has likely been common throughout much of human history, and today most people in the world are multilingual...
phenomenon), as the identical sound shift (/kʷ/ to /p/) could have occurred independently in the predecessors of Gaulish and Brythonic, or have spread through language contact between those two groups.
The family tree of the Insular Celtic languages is thus as follows:
- Insular Celtic
- GoidelicGoidelic languagesThe Goidelic languages or Gaelic languages are one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic languages, the other consisting of the Brythonic languages. Goidelic languages historically formed a dialect continuum stretching from the south of Ireland through the Isle of Man to the north of Scotland...
- Primitive IrishPrimitive Irish languagePrimitive Irish or Archaic Irish is the oldest known form of the Goidelic languages. It is known only from fragments, mostly personal names, inscribed on stone in the ogham alphabet in Ireland and western Great Britain from around the 4th century to 7th or 8th century.-Characteristics:Transcribed...
, ancestral to:- Old IrishOld Irish languageOld Irish is the name given to the oldest form of the Goidelic languages for which extensive written texts are extant. It was used from the 6th to the 10th centuries, by which time it had developed into Middle Irish....
, ancestral to:- Middle IrishMiddle Irish languageMiddle Irish is the name given by historical philologists to the Goidelic language spoken in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man from the 10th to 12th centuries; it is therefore a contemporary of late Old English and early Middle English...
, ancestral to:- IrishIrish languageIrish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
- Scottish GaelicScottish Gaelic languageScottish Gaelic is a Celtic language native to Scotland. A member of the Goidelic branch of the Celtic languages, Scottish Gaelic, like Modern Irish and Manx, developed out of Middle Irish, and thus descends ultimately from Primitive Irish....
- ManxManx languageManx , also known as Manx Gaelic, and as the Manks language, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, historically spoken by the Manx people. Only a small minority of the Island's population is fluent in the language, but a larger minority has some knowledge of it...
- Irish
- Middle Irish
- Old Irish
- Primitive Irish
- BrythonicBrythonic languagesThe Brythonic or Brittonic languages form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family, the other being Goidelic. The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython, meaning an indigenous Briton as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael...
- PictishPictish languagePictish is a term used for the extinct language or languages thought to have been spoken by the Picts, the people of northern and central Scotland in the Early Middle Ages...
(probably) - British
- CumbricCumbric languageCumbric was a variety of the Celtic British language spoken during the Early Middle Ages in the Hen Ogledd or "Old North", or what is now northern England and southern Lowland Scotland, the area anciently known as Cumbria. It was closely related to Old Welsh and the other Brythonic languages...
(extinct) - Old WelshOld Welsh languageOld Welsh is the label attached to the Welsh language from about 800 AD until the early 12th century when it developed into Middle Welsh. The preceding period, from the time Welsh became distinct from the British language around 550, has been called "Primitive Welsh".Many poems and some prose...
, ancestral to- Middle WelshMiddle Welsh languageMiddle Welsh is the label attached to the Welsh language of the 12th to 14th centuries, of which much more remains than for any earlier period. This form of Welsh developed from Old Welsh....
, ancestral to:- WelshWelsh languageWelsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
- Welsh
- Middle Welsh
- Southwestern BrythonicSouthwestern Brythonic languageThe Southwestern Brythonic languages are the Brythonic Celtic tongues spoken in Southwestern Britain and Brittany since the Early Middle Ages. During the period of their earliest attestation, the languages appear to be indistinguishable, but eventually they evolved into the Cornish and Breton...
, ancestral to:- BretonBreton languageBreton is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany , France. Breton is a Brythonic language, descended from the Celtic British language brought from Great Britain to Armorica by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages. Like the other Brythonic languages, Welsh and Cornish, it is classified as...
- CornishCornish languageCornish is a Brythonic Celtic language and a recognised minority language of the United Kingdom. Along with Welsh and Breton, it is directly descended from the ancient British language spoken throughout much of Britain before the English language came to dominate...
- Breton
- Cumbric
- Pictish
- Goidelic
The following table lists cognates showing the development of Proto-Celtic */kʷ/ to /p/ in Gaulish and the Brythonic languages but to /k/ in the Goidelic languages.
| Proto-Celtic | Gaulish | Welsh | Cornish | Breton | Primitive Irish | Modern Irish | Scots Gaelic | Manx | English |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| *kʷennos | pennos | pen | penn | penn | qennos | ceann | ceann | kione | "head" |
| *kʷetwar- | petor | pedwar | peswar | pevar | *qetwar- | ceathair | ceithir | kiare | "four" |
| *kʷenkʷe | pempe | pump | pymp | pemp | *qenqe | cúig | còig | queig | "five" |
| *kʷeis | pis | pwy | piw | piv | *qeis | cé (older cia) | cò/cia | quoi | "who" |
A significant difference between Goidelic and Brythonic languages is the transformation of *an, am to a denasalised vowel with lengthening, é, before an originally voiceless stop or fricative, cf. Old Irish éc "death", écath "fish hook", dét "tooth", cét "hundred" vs. Welsh angau, angad, dant, and cant. Otherwise:
- the nasal is retained before a vowel, , w, m, and a liquid:
- Old Irish ben "woman" (< *benā)
- Old Irish gainethar "he/she is born" (< *gan-i̯e-tor)
- Old Irish ainb "ignorant" (< *anwiss)
- the nasal passes to en before another n:
- Old Irish benn "peak" (< *banno) (vs. Welsh bann)
- Middle Irish ro-geinn "finds a place" (< *ganne) (vs. Welsh gannaf)
- the nasal passes to in, im before a voiced stop
- Old Irish imb "butter" (vs. Breton aman(en)n, Cornish amanyn)
- Old Irish ingen "nail" (vs. Old Welsh eguin)
- Old Irish tengae "tongue" (vs. Welsh tafod)
- Old Irish ing "strait" (vs. Middle Welsh eh-ang "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 exogamyExogamy
Exogamy is a social arrangement where marriage is allowed only outside of a social group. The social groups define the scope and extent of exogamy, and the rules and enforcement mechanisms that ensure its continuity. In social studies, exogamy is viewed as a combination of two related aspects:...
, and absence of sharp sociolinguistic division. In Post-Roman Britain Goidelic and Brythonic seem to have been of roughly equal status, with several Goidelic loan words in Brythonic and several Brythonic loan words in Old Irish. There is historical evidence of Irish in what are now Wales and England, as well as of Brythonic in Ireland, during this period. There is also archaeological evidence of substantial contact between Britain and Ireland in the Pre-Roman period and of Roman period contact.
Ranko Matasović
Ranko Matasovic
Ranko Matasović is a Croatian linguist, Indo-Europeanist and Celticist.He was born and raised in Zagreb where he attended primary and secondary school. At the Faculty of philosophy at the University of Zagreb he graduated linguistics and philosophy, receiving M.A. in linguistics in 1992 and Ph.D...
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
- 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 periphrasic construction
- Creation of object markers
- Use of ordinal numbers in the sense of "one of".
Absolute and dependent verb
The Insular Celtic verbVerb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
shows a peculiar feature unknown in any other attested Indo-European language: verbs have different conjugation
Grammatical conjugation
In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories...
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
Grammatical particle
In grammar, a particle is a function word that does not belong to any of the inflected grammatical word classes . It is a catch-all term for a heterogeneous set of words and terms that lack a precise lexical definition...
. The situation is most robustly attested in Old Irish
Old Irish language
Old Irish is the name given to the oldest form of the Goidelic languages for which extensive written texts are extant. It was used from the 6th to the 10th centuries, by which time it had developed into Middle Irish....
, but it has remained to some extent in Scottish Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic language
Scottish Gaelic is a Celtic language native to Scotland. A member of the Goidelic branch of the Celtic languages, Scottish Gaelic, like Modern Irish and Manx, developed out of Middle Irish, and thus descends ultimately from Primitive Irish....
and traces of it are present in Middle Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
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
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 verb forms are used after a particle, while...
for details). The paradigm
Paradigm
The word paradigm has been used in science to describe distinct concepts. It comes from Greek "παράδειγμα" , "pattern, example, sample" from the verb "παραδείκνυμι" , "exhibit, represent, expose" and that from "παρά" , "beside, beyond" + "δείκνυμι" , "to show, to point out".The original Greek...
of the present
Present tense
The present tense is a grammatical tense that locates a situation or event in present time. This linguistic definition refers to a concept that indicates a feature of the meaning of a verb...
active
Active voice
Active voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. It is the unmarked voice for clauses featuring a transitive verb in nominative–accusative languages, including English and most other Indo-European languages....
indicative of the Old Irish verb beirid "carry" is as follows; the conjunct forms are illustrated with the particle ní "not".
| Absolute | Conjunct | |
|---|---|---|
| 1st person singular | biru "I carry" | ní biur "I do not carry" |
| 2nd person singular | biri "you carry" | ní bir "you do not carry" |
| 3rd person singular | beirid "s/he carries" | ní beir "she/he does not carry" |
| 1st person plural | bermai "we carry" | ní beram "we do not carry" |
| 2nd person plural | beirthe "you carry" | ní beirid "you do not carry" |
| 3rd person plural | berait "they carry" | ní berat "they do not carry" |
In Scottish Gaelic this distinction is still found in certain verb-forms:
| Absolute | Conjunct |
|---|---|
| cuiridh "puts/will put" | cha chuir "doesn't put/will not put" |
| òlaidh "drinks/will drink" | chan òl "doesn't drink/will not drink" |
| ceannaichidh "buys/will buy" | cha cheannaich "doesn't buy/will not buy" |
In Middle Welsh, the distinction is seen most clearly in proverbs following the formula "X happens, Y does not happen" (Evans 1964: 119):
- Pereid y rycheu, ny phara a'e goreu "The furrows last, he who made them lasts not"
- Trenghit golut, ny threingk molut "Wealth perishes, fame perishes not"
- Tyuit maban, ny thyf y gadachan "An infant grows, his swaddling-clothes grow not"
- Chwaryit mab noeth, ny chware mab newynawc "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 language
The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
"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 beirid "s/he carries" was thought to be from } (compare Sanskrit bharati "s/he carries"), while conjunct beir was thought to be from } (compare Sanskrit a-bharat "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 beirid comes from Proto-Celtic }, while conjunct ní beir 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.
Continental Celtic languages
Continental Celtic languages
The Continental Celtic languages are the Celtic languages, now extinct, that were spoken on the continent of Europe, as distinguished from the Insular Celtic languages of Britain and Ireland. The Continental Celtic languages were spoken by the people known to Roman and Greek writers as Keltoi,...
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 Afro-Asiatic substratum
The concept of the Insular Celtic languages being descended from Hebrew was part of Medieval superstition, but the hypothesis that they had features from an Afro-Asiatic substratum (Iberian and Berber languages) was first proposed by John Morris-JonesJohn Morris-Jones
Sir John Morris-Jones was a Welsh grammarian, academic and poet.He was born at Llandrygarn, Anglesey and educated at Friars School, Bangor. Whilst at Jesus College, Oxford, Morris-Jones co-founded the Cymdeithas Dafydd ap Gwilym...
in 1900. Some well-known linguists have been adherents such as Julius Pokorny
Julius Pokorny
Julius Pokorny was an Austrian linguist and scholar of the Celtic languages, particularly Irish, and a supporter of Irish nationalism. He held academic posts in Austrian and German universities.-Life:...
, Heinrich Wagner, and Orin Gensler. There has been further work on the theory by Shisha-Halevy and Theo Vennemann
Theo Vennemann
Theo Vennemann is a German linguist known best for his work on historical linguistics, especially for his disputed theories of a Vasconic substratum and an Atlantic superstratum of European languages. He also suggests that the High German consonant shift was already completed in the early 1st...
.
However, the theory has been strongly criticised by Graham Isaac and by Kim McCone. Isaac considers the twenty points identified by Gensler as trivial, dependencies or vacuous. Thus he considers the theory to be not just unproven but wrong.