Dating the final IE unity

[Rick Mc Callister]

	I don't claim any knowledge of Old Irish
but something has to be responsible for the radically different look of
Gaelic as compared to other IE languages
	So keep in mind that my questions are rooted in ignorance
	What exactly are we looking at when we see Old Irish?
	How do we account for what seems to be a radical change in the
language?
	Are we looking at an elite language of a recently arrived group?
--perhaps later radically changed by the influence of earlier languages as
their speakers/former speakers entered the elite group?
	Are we looking at a stylized orthography that ignored lenition and
mutations?
	Was there a deliberate attempt by clerics to make the language look
more latinate?

	Gaelic has to be the strangest language I've ever sat down and
looked. As you all know, I'm not a linguist although I teach Spanish and
have studied [long ago] other Romance languages, Arabic, Ixil and Swahili
--all of which were very easy to get a handle on compared to Gaelic
	What weirds me out most are
A. declarative [is this the right term?] negative, interrogative, negative
interrogative and dependent forms of verbs;
	e.g.
	is, ni/, an, nach, gur for "to be --characteristics; present
tense"; and bi/ for present habitual
	ta/, ni/l, an bhfuil & bhfuil for "to be --conditions/location;
present tense"; and bi/onn for present habitual
	[question: Is ni/l < ni/ + bhfuil ?]
B. conjugated prepositions and the multitude of verb-like uses for them
C. the multitude of rules for lenition and initial mutation --although
these can be explained
D. the initial mutations/lenitions associated with numbers
E. as per TYI, a seeming dearth of individual verb forms [as in English]
except for conditional and 1st person present
	There are many other things as well but they're hard to get a
handle on from just reading TYI

	Any explanations, expansion, etc. welcome!

[ moderator snip ]

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701