Horthmen as 'mGall'

[Eduard Selleslagh]

-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu>
To: Indo-European at xkl.com <Indo-European at xkl.com>
Date: Friday, September 03, 1999 8:14 AM
Subject: Re: Horthmen as 'mGall'

> I've read many times that the Goidelic Celts were the descendants
>of the members of the Halstatt culture while Brythonic Celts were
>descendants of members of the La Tene culture.
> But given that Celtiberian is also Q-Celtic, I've wondered if
>P-Celtic wasn't an innovation that started at the center and only made it
>as far as the island of Great Britain.
> The 2 concepts are not necessarily mutually excludable, of course,
>in that the Q-Celts could have moved away from the center during the
>Halstatt phase while the /q/ > /p/ phonomenon began at the center during
>the La Tene phase.
> Inquiring minds want to know more

>[snip]

>>Geography seems to suggest that the Goidelic Celts belonged to an earlier
>>wave than the Brythonic Celts, if they all came from the continent that is..

>[snip]

>Rick Mc Callister


[Ed Selleslagh]

Qu > p is certainly an innovation, the problem is of course where and when it
started. As a non-specialist, I often wondered about the fact that the same
phenomenon occurred in Italic (Oscan-Umbrian.). Would that have occured before
the Italic-Celtic split, or after it? Apparently after it, because of the more
significant common traits of Celtic, not shared by Italic. On the other hand,
there is Greek, which shares the same innovation (hippos <>equus), but belongs
to a very different IE branch (Have any traces of Q-varieties of Greek been
discovered?).  So, the qu > p transition seems to be something that can occur
in any (IE?)language, like palatalization.

Am I completely ignorant of some common knowledge? (I am not in the IE field).

Ed.

[ Moderator's comment:
  Mycenaean Greek, written in the Linear B script, preserves the IE labiovelars
  but writes the word for "horse" e-qo, showing that the merger of *kw with
  *k^w had taken place earlier.
  --rma ]