Re: celtic

--- In cybalist@..., "indravayu" <sonno3@...> wrote:

>
> > I did not wish to imply that "Swiss Gaulish" survived _long_

after

> >other varieties of continental Celtic. I just remember having read
> >some papers on Swiss toponymy which suggested that a Celtic

dialect

> >survived there into _fairly_ late times (presumably in mixed Gallo-
> >Roman communities), developing phonologically in a way that partly
> >parallelled the evolution of Brittonic. I can't give you the exact
> >references now but perhaps I'll be able to locate them later. I am
> >sure the Alemannic and Frankish conquests in Switzerland put an

end

> >to whatever traces of Celticity may have survived there, and that

by

> >the sixth century or so there were no Celtic-speakers in Helvetia.
>
> There's a small discussion of this, with bibliography, in Joshua
> Whatough's "Dialects of Ancient Gaul" (though it is quite out of

date

> now - I am sure that there has been more written in the subject in
> the journals since the DAG was written).
>
>
> > Chris Gwinn certainly knows a lot more about these things than I
> do, so I hope he finds the time to comment.
>
> You seem to have summarized it quite nicely - I suspect that I know
> no more than you on this subject! :)
>
> I think that you made an important point in saying that the system

of

> mutations wasn't funtional yet in the ancient period (though there

is

> certainly some evidence for lenition in late Gaulish at least),

thus

> it wasn't recorded in ancient inscriptions. The mutation system as

it

> exists in the Brittonic and Goidelic branches from the medieval
> period onward is a relic of the lost gender/case system (which both
> branches lost at roughly the same time - the middle of the first
> milennium AD - prior to then the Giodelic and Brittonic branches

were

> not significantly different from one another).
>
> The British and Irish were also not isolated from one another,

despie

> speaking different Celtic dialects - there was a lot of interaction
> and settlement going on in both directions - so it is not very
> surprising that the Brittonic and Goidelic branches would share

some

> innovations not found in Continental Celtic.
>
> - Chris Gwinn

As far as I can see, the mutations in the Celtic languages are not
remarkable in themselves from a phonological point of view; what
makes them remarkarble is that they take place across a word
boundary. Which makes me wonder if the common cause of these
mutations might be found in the way word boundaries were treated in
Proto-Celtic, as opposed to, say, Germanic?

Torsten