--- In cybalist@..., "indravayu" <sonno3@...> wrote:
> Goidelic (representing Proto-/Old/Middle/Modern Irish, Scots Gaelic
> and Manx) is but one branch of the Celtic family of languages.
Seeing
> that it is a daughter language of Common Celtic, it was never
> particularly close to Italic (of course, Proto-Irish had the look
of
> Latin, with gender suffixes and case system), but there _are_
enough
> similarities between the parent Common Celtic and the Italic
> languages to suppose at some time that there was a larger Italo-
> Celtic family of languages on the Western peripheral of the Indo
> European world.
> For more on the history of Celtic, see Paul Russell, "Introduction >
> to the Celtic Languages" (Longman, 1995).
I understand that this was a common view in the 19th century, when
there were similarities between Celtic and Italic that clearly
demarcated them from other IE languages, particularly Greek and
Sanskrit which were considered then to represent a more archaic type.
For example, Italo-Celtic mediopassive endings in -r are a striking
example. However, with the discovery of the Tocharian languages in
Asia and particular the ancient Anatolian languages such as Hittite
and Luwian, this picture seems to be now turned on its head. Both
Tocharian and Hittite have mediopassive endings in -r(i). Tocharian
has also a-vowel subjunctives and a set of perfect verb endings with
striking similarities to the Italic conjugations. What were thought
in the 19th century to be common INNOVATIONS of Italic and Celtic
now appear to be shared ARCHAISMS. Thus, the two languages need
never have had a common proto-language "Italo-Celtic" (distinct
from PIE itself). Instead they are often thought both to represent
outlier groups in the west, along with similiar outliers Anatolian
and Tocharian in the east, of an earlier stage in IE language. It
is now the central groups (Hellenic, Indo-Aryan, Germanic,
Balto-Slavic) which are thought to have innovated.
At least this is what I understand the modern picture to be (more or
less). It is possible, maybe even probable, that Italic and Celtic
(along with Venetic and Illyrian as well) formed some western
Sprachbund with some shared features, even if they did not have
a common ancestor distinct from PIE. As an amateur also, I would like
to ask the experts: does this group of languages have ANY common
innovations that would allow it to be distinguished as a separate
"branch" of IE? Or can any common features be shown to exist also
in other IE languages outside the group and therefore likely to
represent shared archaic features (either accidentally shared or
reinforced by a Sprachbund association)?
Thanks!
Gregory