Italo-Celtic
Encyclopedia
In historical linguistics, Italo-Celtic is a grouping of the Italic
and Celtic
branches of the Indo-European language family on the basis of features shared by these two branches and no others. These are usually considered to be innovations, which are likely to have developed after the breakup of Proto-Indo-European
. It is also possible that some of these are not innovations; it is possible they are shared conservative features. There is controversy about the actual causes of these similarities. What is commonly accepted is that the shared features may usefully be thought of as "Italo-Celtic forms".
in 1966. However some scholars, such as Frederik Kortlandt
, continued to be interested in the theory. In 2002 a paper by Ringe, Warnow, & Taylor, employing computational methods as a supplement to the traditional linguistic subgrouping methodology, argued in favour of an Italo-Celtic subgroup, and in 2007 Kortlandt attempted a reconstruction of a Proto-Italo-Celtic.
The most common alternative interpretation is that a close areal proximity of Proto-Celtic and Proto-Italic over a longer period could have encouraged the parallel development of what were already quite separate languages. As Watkins (1966) puts it, "the community of -ī in Italic and Celtic is attributable to early contact, rather than to an original unity." The assumed period of language contact could then be later, perhaps continuing well into the first millennium BC.
If however, some of the forms really are archaisms, elements of Proto-Indo-European which have been lost in all other branches, neither model of post-PIE relationship need be postulated. Italic and especially Celtic also share some archaic features with the Hittite language
(Anatolian languages
) and the Tocharian languages
.
Other similarities include the fact that certain common words, such as the words for common metals (gold, silver, tin, etc.) are similar in Italic and Celtic but divergent from other Indo-European languages.
Another form, the r-passive (mediopassive), was initially thought to be an innovation restricted to Italo-Celtic until found to be an archaism shared also with Hittite and Tocharian.
Italic languages
The Italic subfamily is a member of the Indo-European language family. It includes the Romance languages derived from Latin , and a number of extinct languages of the Italian Peninsula, including Umbrian, Oscan, Faliscan, and Latin.In the past various definitions of "Italic" have prevailed...
and Celtic
Celtic languages
The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic"; a branch of the greater Indo-European language family...
branches of the Indo-European language family on the basis of features shared by these two branches and no others. These are usually considered to be innovations, which are likely to have developed after the breakup of Proto-Indo-European
Pie
A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that covers or completely contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients....
. It is also possible that some of these are not innovations; it is possible they are shared conservative features. There is controversy about the actual causes of these similarities. What is commonly accepted is that the shared features may usefully be thought of as "Italo-Celtic forms".
Interpretations
The traditional interpretation of the data is that these two subgroups of the Indo European language family are generally more closely related to each other than to the other Indo European languages. This can be taken to imply that they are descended from a common ancestor, a phylogenetic Proto-Italo-Celtic which can be partly reconstructed by the comparative method. This hypothesis fell out of favour after being reexamined by Calvert WatkinsCalvert Watkins
Calvert Watkins is a professor Emeritus of linguistics and the classics at Harvard University and professor-in-residence at UCLA.His doctoral dissertation, Indo-European Origins of the Celtic Verb I...
in 1966. However some scholars, such as Frederik Kortlandt
Frederik Kortlandt
Frederik Herman Henri Kortlandt is a professor of descriptive and comparative linguistics at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He is an expert on Baltic and Slavic languages, the Indo-European languages in general, and Proto-Indo-European, though he has also published studies of languages in...
, continued to be interested in the theory. In 2002 a paper by Ringe, Warnow, & Taylor, employing computational methods as a supplement to the traditional linguistic subgrouping methodology, argued in favour of an Italo-Celtic subgroup, and in 2007 Kortlandt attempted a reconstruction of a Proto-Italo-Celtic.
The most common alternative interpretation is that a close areal proximity of Proto-Celtic and Proto-Italic over a longer period could have encouraged the parallel development of what were already quite separate languages. As Watkins (1966) puts it, "the community of -ī in Italic and Celtic is attributable to early contact, rather than to an original unity." The assumed period of language contact could then be later, perhaps continuing well into the first millennium BC.
If however, some of the forms really are archaisms, elements of Proto-Indo-European which have been lost in all other branches, neither model of post-PIE relationship need be postulated. Italic and especially Celtic also share some archaic features with the Hittite language
Hittite language
Hittite is the extinct language once spoken by the Hittites, a people who created an empire centred on Hattusa in north-central Anatolia...
(Anatolian languages
Anatolian languages
The Anatolian languages comprise a group of extinct Indo-European languages that were spoken in Asia Minor, the best attested of them being the Hittite language.-Origins:...
) and the Tocharian languages
Tocharian languages
Tocharian or Tokharian is an extinct branch of the Indo-European language family. The name is taken from the people known to the Greeks as the Tocharians . These are sometimes identified with the Yuezhi and the Kushans. The term Tokharistan usually refers to 1st millennium Bactria, which the...
.
Forms
The principal Italo-Celtic forms are:- the thematic Genitive in i (dominus, domini). Both in Italic (Popliosio Valesiosio, Lapis SatricanusLapis SatricanusThe Lapis Satricanus, or, "stone of Satricum", was a yellow stone found in the ruins of the ancient Satricum, near Borgo Montello , a village of southern Lazio, dated late 6th to early 5th centuries BC. It was found in 1977 during excavations by C.M...
) and in Celtic (LeponticLepontic languageLepontic 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...
, CeltiberianCeltiberian languageCeltiberian 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...
-o), traces of the -osyo Genitive of Proto-Indo-European have also been discovered, which might indicate that the spread of the i-Genitive occurred in the two groups independently (or by areal diffusion). The i-Genitive has been compared to the so-called Cvi formation in SanskritSanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
, but that too is probably a comparatively late development. The phenomenon is probably related to the feminine long i stems (see Devi inflection) and the Luwian i-mutation. - the ā-subjunctive. Both Italic and Celtic have a subjunctive descended from an earlier optative in -ā-. Such an optative is not known from other languages, but the suffix occurs in Balto-Slavic and Tocharian past tense formations, and possibly in Hittite -ahh-.
- the collapsing of the PIE aoristAoristAorist is a philological term originally from Indo-European studies, referring to verb forms of various languages that are not necessarily related or similar in meaning...
and perfect into a single past tensePast tenseThe past tense is a grammatical tense that places an action or situation in the past of the current moment , or prior to some specified time that may be in the speaker's past, present, or future...
. In both groups, this is a relatively late development of the proto-languages, possibly dating to the time of "Italo-Celtic" language contact. - the assimilation of *p to a following *kʷ. This development obviously predates the Celtic loss of *p:
-
- PIE *penkʷe 'five' → Latin quinque; Old Irish cóic
- PIE *perkʷu- 'oak' → Latin quercus; Goidelic ethnonym Querni
- PIE *pekʷ- 'cook' → Latin coquere; Welsh poeth 'hot' (Welsh p presupposes Proto-Celtic *kʷ)
- PIE *ponkʷu- 'all' → Latin cunctus; Irish (and Old Irish) gach, Welsh pob 'every'.
Other similarities include the fact that certain common words, such as the words for common metals (gold, silver, tin, etc.) are similar in Italic and Celtic but divergent from other Indo-European languages.
Another form, the r-passive (mediopassive), was initially thought to be an innovation restricted to Italo-Celtic until found to be an archaism shared also with Hittite and Tocharian.
See also
- Beaker cultureBeaker cultureThe Bell-Beaker culture , ca. 2400 – 1800 BC, is the term for a widely scattered cultural phenomenon of prehistoric western Europe starting in the late Neolithic or Chalcolithic running into the early Bronze Age...
- Indo-European languagesIndo-European languagesThe Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
- Language familyLanguage familyA language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term 'family' comes from the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a...
- Venetic
- Continental Celtic languagesContinental Celtic languagesThe 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,...
- Insular Celtic languagesInsular Celtic languagesInsular 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...
Further reading
- Jay JasanoffJay JasanoffJay Harold Jasanoff is an American linguist and Indo-Europeanist, best known for his h₂e-conjugation theory of the Proto-Indo-European verb. He teaches Indo-European linguistics and historical linguistics at Harvard University....
, "An Italo-Celtic isogloss: the 3 pl. mediopassive in *-ntro," in D. Q. AdamsDouglas Q. AdamsDouglas Q. Adams is a professor of English at the University of Idaho and an Indo-European comparativist. Adams studied at the University of Chicago, taking his PhD in 1972. He is an expert on Tocharian and a contributor on this subject to the Encyclopædia Britannica.He has also co-authored two...
(ed.), Festschrift for Eric P. HampEric P. HampEric Pratt Hamp is an American linguist. Born in London, England on November 16, 1920, he grew up in The United States from age 5 onward due to his father's posting by a British shipping firm...
. Volume I (= Journal of Indo-European StudiesJournal of Indo-European StudiesThe Journal of Indo-European Studies is a peer-reviewed academic journal of Indo-European studies, founded in 1973 by Roger Pearson. It publishes papers in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, mythology and philology relating to the cultural history of the Indo-European speaking peoples. The...
Monograph 23) (Washington, D.C., 1997): 146-161. - Winfred P. LehmannWinfred P. LehmannWinfred P. Lehmann was an American linguist noted for his work in historical linguistics, particularly Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic, as well as for pioneering work in machine translation.-Biography:After receiving B.A. in Humanities at the Northwestern College in Watertown in 1936, he...
, "Frozen Residues and Relative Dating", in Varia on the Indo-European Past: Papers in Memory of Marija Gimbutas, eds. Miriam Robbins Dexter and Edgar C. Polomé. Washington D.C.: Institute for the Study of Man, 1997. pp. 223–46 - Winfred P. Lehmann, "Early Celtic among the Indo-European dialects", in Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 49-50, Issue 1 (1997): 440-54.
- Schmidt, Karl Horst, “Contributions from New Data to the Reconstruction of the Proto-Language”. In: