Italo-Celtic

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In comparative linguistics, Italo-Celtic refers to the hypothesis of a common preliminary stage of the Italic and Celtic languages. Italo-Celtic belongs to the western branch of the Indo-European languages and was probably spoken in the first half of the second millennium BC in what is now southern Germany, Bohemia and Austria . The reconstruction of Italo-Celtic is based on several specific morphological similarities between the Celtic and Italic languages, which can hardly be explained by borrowing , but organically by a phase of joint development.

These considerations go back to Carl Friedrich Lottner (1861) and Alois Walde from 1917 "On the oldest linguistic relationships between Celts and Italians".

According to Haarmann (2016), this theory can not be proven; he sees Celtic as a spin-off of an independent Indo-European language group that began in 2000 BC. Chr. From the (hypothetical) Proto-Indo-European (PIE) was used. Schmidt (1992) takes a similar view .

Nevertheless, there are also a number of contemporary linguists who continue to regard the hypothesis as proven, such as Watkins (1966) or Peter Schrijver .

Italo-Celtic similarities

  1. The thematic genitive on -ī (cf. Latin dominus , Gen. domin ī ).
  2. The ā - subjunctive . Both Italian and Celtic have a subjunctive that goes back to an older optative with -ā- that has no parallel in other Indo-European languages.
  3. The collapse of the Indo-European Aorist and the Indo-European perfect to form a new, simple past tense.
  4. The superlative formations on * -is ° mo-.
  5. The assimilation of * p to the following * kʷ , which obviously happened before the Celtic loss of * p:
Idg. * penkʷe 'five' → Latin quinque ; Old Irish cóic .
Idg. * perkʷu- 'oak' → Latin quercus ; the Goidelic tribal name Querni .
Idg. * pekʷ- 'to cook' → lat. coquere ; Welsh poeth 'hot' (the initial p- in Welsh presupposes protoceltic * kʷ-).

Other specific Celtic-Italic similarities concern vocabulary , including some metal terms (gold, silver, tin, etc.). These lexical similarities could be explained by neighborhood and loanwords, but hardly the above. grammatical matches.

literature

  • Wolfram Euler , Konrad Badenheuer: Language and origin of the Germanic peoples - demolition of the Proto-Germanic before the first sound shift. Verlag Inspiration Unlimited, London / Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-9812110-1-6 , cf. v. a. Chapter 1.2.4 .: Teutons, Celts and Italians.
  • Norbert Oettinger: On the discussion of the Latin ā-subjunctive. Glotta (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht), Göttingen (1984) 62: 187-201. ISSN  0017-1298 .
  • Schmidt, Karl Horst: Contributions from New Data to the Reconstruction of the Proto-Language. In: Edgar Polomé, Werner Winter (Ed.): Reconstructing Languages ​​and Cultures. (1st ed.), Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin / New York, ISBN 3110126710 , pp. 35-62. OCLC 25009339 .
  • Calvert Watkins: Italo-Celtic Revisited. In: Henrik Birnbaum, Jaan Puhvel (eds.): Ancient Indo-European dialects. University of California Press, Berkeley 1966, pp. 29-50. OCLC 716409 .
  • Frederik HH Kortlandt: Italo-Celtic Origins and Prehistoric Development of the Irish Language. Leiden Studies in Indo-European Vol. 14, Rodopi 2007, ISBN 9789042021778 .
  • Karl Horst Schmidt : On the reconstruction of the Celtic: Mainland Celtic and island Celtic verb. Journal of Celtic Philology 41 (1986), 159-179.
  • Warren Cowgill : Italic and Celtic superlatives and the dialects of Indo-European. In: Indo-European and Indo-Europeans. Papers presented at the Third Indo-European conference, at the University of Pennsylvania [1966]. G. Cardona (Ed.), Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970 (no. 8), pp. 113-53.
  • Hans Hablitzel, David Stifter (eds.): Johann Kaspar Zeuss in the cultural and linguistic context (19th to 21st century) Kronach July 21-23, 2006. Present publishing house, Vienna
  • Peter Schrijver: Latin f ār, Welsh brys. Munich Studies in Linguistics (1990) 51 (243-247).
  • Peter Schrijver: Studies in British Celtic historical phonology. Rodopi, Amsterdam 1995
  • Peter Schrijver: Studies in the history of Celtic pronouns and particles.  : National University of Ireland, Maynooth 1997
  • Peter Schrijver: Athematic i-presents: the Italic and Celtic evidence. Incontri Linguistici (2003), 26 (59-86)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Carl Friedrich Lottner: Celtisch-Italic. Contributions to comparative linguistic research in the field of the Aryan, Celtic and Slavic languages ​​2 (1861), pp. 309–321.
  2. ↑ Harald Haarmann: In the footsteps of the Indo-Europeans: From the Neolithic steppe nomads to the early advanced civilizations. CH Beck, Munich 2016, ISBN 3-4066-8825-X
  3. ↑ Harald Haarmann: Lexicon of the fallen languages. CH Beck, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-4064-7596-5 , p. 71
  4. ↑ Tim de Goede: Derivational Morphology: New Perspectives on the Italo-Celtic Hypothesis. Dissertation, Leiden University, 2014
  5. ^ Wolfram Euler: Language groups with close relations. Method reflection and criticism. Res Balticae 11, 2007, pp. 7-28.
  6. ^ Leszek Bednarczuk : The Italo-Celtic Hypothesis from the Indo-European Point of View. In: Proceedings of the First North American Congress of Celtic Studies. Ottawa 1988, pp. 179-189.
  7. ↑ Karl-Horst Schnmidt: Latin and Celtic: Genetic relationship and areal relationships. In: O. Panagl, T. Krisch (Ed.): Latin and Indo-European. Innsbruck 1992, pp. 29-51.
  8. ↑ Calvert Watkins: Italo-Celtic Revisited. In: Henrik Birnbaum , Jaan Puhvel (eds.): Ancient Indo-European dialects. University of California Press, Berkeley 1966, pp. 29-50. OCLC 716409.
  9. ↑ Wolfram Euler , Konrad Badenheuer: Language and Origin of the Germanic Peoples - Outline of Proto-Germanic before the first sound shift. Inspiration Unlimited publishing house, London / Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-9812110-1-6 , pp. 24-26.