Celtic p's & q's [was Re: Horthmen as 'mGall']

[Richard M. Alderson III]

On 6 Sep 1999, Steve Long wrote:

>One of the odd things about the P-Q distinction is the interesting conclusions
>it has generated.  This is an example I picked up from an official Irish
>website:

> <<The Goidelic and Brythonic groups of Celtic languages differ in that
>   Goidelic preserves the velar element of the Indo-European labiovelar qu
>   sound (later written c), whereas Brythonic renders this sound as p. Thus
>   Irish cuig or coo-ig (or cuig), "five" corresponds to Welsh pump.>>

>Some might think the /p/ in five is closer to the original(!)

The dangers of examining linguistic evidence without a thorough grounding:

PIE *p > 0 in Celtic (cf. OIr. _athair_ vs. Latin _pater_, for example).
The Proto-Celtic etymon for "5" must be *k{^w}enk{^w}e, like that of Latin
_quinque_, where PIE *p => *k{^w} by an anticipatory replacement in expected
*penk{^w}e.  (Whether we wish to call it an assimilation or not is another
question).  This form would develop quite unremarkably to OIr. _coic_ and
Welsh _pump_.

Note that the Germanic evidence (Gothic _fimf_ etc.) has been argued as showing
a *k{^w}e > *p development similar to that in p-Celtic and p-Italic, whether
from *penk{^w}e or from *k{^w}enk{^w}e; it has also been argued that the second
*p is due to the influence of the first, that is, the reverse of the Latin and
Celtic development.

								Rich Alderson