RE : [tied] Re: North of the Somme

> > My point of view from the start was that there is
> > no known
> > criterion to distinguish these two parts.
>
> ****GK: There is Caesar's opinion, an excellent one,
> based on information passed on by many local Gauls,
> esp. Iccius and Antebrogius of the Remi (DBG 2:3).
> This is much more reliable than speculative
> reinterpretations two thousand years removed.****
> ==========================================
>
> A.F :
>
> I don't know who is reinterpretating speculatively. So far, I made
>it clear that I deem DBG as not trustworthy.

Why?

> What you are describing in an "act of faith" : one has no reason
>to express doubts about words (unrecorded) transmitted by a man,
>Caesar, (notoriously untrustworthy enough to get murdered by his own
>familly),

This is why? Caesar was murdered by Brutus because he lied in BG?
Please explain.

>transmitted by a chain of people (we know about none at >99% rate).

Two, actually. I think we can say we know about Caesar.

>That kind of "act of faith" could also apply to Jesus, for example.

True. Jesus > Mark, Luke, John, Matthew > us.

>It is probably easier to list of the chain of popes and apostles
>from Jesus to present-day, than to list the chain of people from
>Iccius down to us.

Iccius > Caaesar > us. That was not so hard.

> How can we be sure that Iccius even existed?

How do I know you are not a computer in a government basement in Paris?

> We might also believe everything Herodotes wrote with such an "act
> of faith".

One might also believe him without it.

> And Heraklês resisting Sirens' singing, tied to his mast.

Is that Herodotus?

> So far, my approach is based on historical phonology : I consider
>that we have enough data kept in sufficiently precise state to be
>able to make documented statements about what is what, what is clear,
>what is unclear. And From this lexical and phonological basis, duly
>ascribed to known (or supposed) languages, we can try to figure out a
>scenario, without forgetting Occam's razor : undocumented languages
>do not exist.

What's an undocumented language? Do you mean PIE?

> I will not move from this way of dealing with this Gallia /
>Belgica dichotomy, the nature of which is to be determined and is not
>to be postulated ex nihilo (or because dixit Caesar).

Get off the horse, Napoleon. BTW ex nihilo and dixit Caesar are two
different things.

>Caesar's DBG is just (a bit of) data : not an untouchable principle
>upon which everything has to rotate like the Earth around the Sun.

I don't think anybody has required anything to rotate around BG. It's
just data.

> As a starting point, I consider this dichotomy as totally
>unproved. Otherwise, I suppose it would be easy to provide the
>necessary data.

Kuhn has demonstrated the northern boundary of Celtic placenames with
several typical Celtic placename elements.

>I have sensed that the blunt and blithe conviction that this

dichotomy is valid is starting to melt.

What gave you that idea?

>And I believe the debate has reached a new stage when we can
>seriously exchange data to be examined and weighed in order to arrive
>at a sensical shared point of view, which remains to be defined.

You don't think I was being serious before?

> ===========================================
>
> > These two parts hence being basically
> > one and only Gaulish country and undividable,
> > the alleged dichotomy having no whatsoever
> > ethnolinguistic relevance.
>
> ****GK: Willful rejection of reliable data is not very
> laudable even if wrapped in French Jacobin slogans
> (:=))****

Not Jacobin, Colbert, I believe. I saw a 17th century French map on
which was included all the future provinces of France: Nice, Franche
Comté, Alsace, Lorraine, Saarland, Flandres, and also all of the
Netherlands. Is this project of natural borders at the Rhine still
official French policy? That would make Vlaams Belang insurgents
against their natural fate.

> A.F :
>
> I accept the justified criticism for having deliberately and
>knowingly used (provocative) wording.

That's not what you were criticised for, you were criticised for
making claims ex nihilo.

>My real intimate conviction is that "Gaulish" is a catch-all concept
>that has to be refined.

Into two cultures, Gallic and Belgic.

> Which "reliable data" are you talking about ?
>
>
> ================================
>
> > I believed some (or maybe most) of you were
> > contending
> > that "Belgica" was a non-Gaulish and a not even
> > Celtic area.
>
> ****GK: That is my preferred view for the northern
> half of what was "Belgica" in Caesar's DBG****
>
> A.F :
>
> You are free to like or prefer any opinion. (And so am I). But I
>will be more easily convinced by facts and data that this hypothesis
>makes sense.

We tried and failed.

>My naive point of view is that science deals with facts, concepts
>and data. Feelings are something else, even though they interfere.

de Gaulle had an idea of 'la douce France', wherever he got that idea
from. I heard he sometimes signed himself 'mijnheer van Rijsel', since
he was from Lille.

> > ====================================
> > > A.F
> >
> > the linguistic precise nature of these "Belgians"
> > is definitely what is at stake.
> > "Germanic" is too fuzzy.
> > We know how to recognize Norse, Flemish, Saxon, Frankish, etc.
>
> ====================================
>
> ****GK: A methodological issue. How many of the
> "Celtic" place names of ancient Gaul (including
> Belgica) have survived in their pristine Gallic form
> rather than as reconstructed from later Latin and
> French revoicings ?
>
> Next: how many of the identifiable
> Norse, Flemish, Saxon, Frankish terms could be viewed
> as N. Fl. S. or Fr. reinterpretations of ancient
> (pristine) Germanic labels?****

Actually, it's true that one can distinguish Frankish, Flemish and (in
Normandy) Norse names in French onomastic material.

> A.F :
>
> You say you disagree with speculations. So, insofar as a word is
>clearly ascribable to a known language and there is no hint that this
>requires a better idea, the most documented ascription is to be held
>as the only legitimate interpretation.

I think that means that you will stick to the etymologies of existing
placename dictionaries no matter what. Am I right?

> The rest belongs to God, to the extend he (or she ! or they)
> exists.

I don't think it is documented that God is interested in placename
research.

> ========================
>
>
>
> POSTSCRIPT:
>
> I happen to be in agreement with those scholars who
> view DBG as having been "serially" produced. Thus Book
> I would have been likely penned at Modena in the late
> fall of 58 BC. This, of course, is where Caesar makes
> his famous comment about the trilingual status of
> Gaul. You don't object about Aquitania only about
> Belgica. But here is what I think (only me not "my
> side" (:=)))--- When Caesar wrote this he identified
> the Belgae with their leading, sovereign, tribe (which
> at that time happened to be the Nervians (we know this
> when we compare the "Belgan" characteristics of DBG
> 1:1 with the Nervian ones of DBG 2:4 and 2:15.) Here I
> quite agree with you: Caesar was wrong to identify
> Belgica with the Nervii. He corrected himself in DBG
> 2.****
>
>
> ==========================================
>
> A.F
>
> So far we have not discussed about Aquitania. I probably would not
> be able to get involved in such a discussion.

You'd lose.

> Nevertheless, I will not accept this trilingual status in whatever
> way.

Stop being so emotional.

> My working hypotheses about the ethnolinguistic status of

"""""Gaul"""" are :

>
> 1. Greek people settled early (-700 ?) and they have left
>traceable lexical items within a distance of about 200 km from
>Mediterranean sea-cost (Cf. Wartenburg)
>
> This fact is not in Caesar's work.

It was already a Roman province, so not relevant in BG.

> 2. Proto-Bask people were necessarily "somewhere". Let us accept
>Aquitania in order to make it simple and short.

According to Trask, the present Spanish home of the Basques is full of
IE placenames and so must be recent.

> 3. P-celt Gauls (you may have failed to notice that I use this
>lengthy wording) are obviously in many places.
>
> Quite strangely, these P-celt Gauls seem to be more obviously
>present in the Western part of France, even though they are supposed
>to come from Central Europe. This fact inevitably will require some
>explanation in one way or another.

Interesting.

> 4. I have never read anything on possible kw-celt Gauls in France.
>But this cannot be discarded altogether. There may be some.
>
> 5. Some of these alleged "Gauls" are obviously not "Celtic". I
>consider that "Gaulish" is a fuzzy catch-all word. It only makes
>description obscure and mixed-up.


> The "Gallice diciuntur" Alp mountain is obviously not a Celtic
>word : Arduenna is the right Celtic word. Alp is from some other
>language (whether indo-european or not). Roman allegations about what
>is "gaulish" is obviously about as (not) trustworthy as the French
>when they speak about "English" people being the only people in the
>British Isles. A catch-all word that usually provokes angry reactions
>from Scot, Welsh and Irish people. (I hope I forgot nobody)
>
> The ascription of "Alp" to P-celt Gaulish is wrong. Non P-Celt
>Gallice diciuntur.
>
> 5. My point of view about Aedui and some people allied with Aedui
>against Arvenes confederation is that these people most probably are
>non Indo-European people resisting Celtic invasion. This eastern part
>of France, in Saone river and Alps mountains, is quite strangely
>occupied by tribes and hydronyms that are often not even >Indo-European.
>
> the explanation of Aedui as "fire" is unconvincing.
>
> the river Saone < saucona has kept its un-indo-european name Arar
>for 1000 years !
>
> 6. There are a certain number of odd words derivable from PIE thru
>non Celtic non Latin phonetic laws that are in favour of a possible
>Indo-European people being pushed forward by the Celts in front of
>them and preceding P-Celt Gauls invasion.
>
> I have a certain number of cases to be debated.
>
> 7. The Alps area is a place where non Celtic and maybe
>non-Indo-European presence is most obviously documented.
>
> 8. I agree that some people like Atuataki """Belgians !?"""
>don't look like P-Celt Gauls. But is their name better understood as
>a "Germanic" name ? and then, which German language ? Do we have to
>hold these people as pre-Indo-European, P-Celt GAuls, Germans,
>something else ? I don't know. This is a point to be determined.

How about the preposition ad plus the stem watw- of the epithet of the
inscriptions MATRONIS ATVIMS and MATRONIS ATVABUS?
http://www.karmantan.de/bilder/hinz/goetter.html

>
> ==============
>
> So in a word :
>
> Caesar's description is not only unreliable : it is not even a
>starting point.

Because he doesn't mention the non-Celticness of these leftover
tribes? But they might have become Celtic-speaking by Caesar's time.
It is perfectly possible to write a description of France and leave
out the vanishing languages of Flandres, Alsace, Brittany etc.


Torsten