Celtiberian

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/1/2000 10:25:54 PM, Jim Rader wrote:

> Joseph Eska, in his succinct and useful review of some of the recent
> literature on Celtiberian/Hispano-Celtic (posted 28 Feb), modestly
> fails to mention his own contribution, _Towards an Interpretation of the
> Hispano-Celtic Inscription of Botorrita_ (1989), published in the
> Innsbrucker Beitraege zur Sprachwissenschaft series

And I should apologize to Dr. Eska.  This reference was frequent in the
materials an informant sent me.  But because I was editing to save space and
because I don't know any better, I left it out.  Obviously a poor decision.
And thanks to Jim Rader for pointing it out.

Just a few notes regarding Joseph Eska's reply to my post:

I wrote:
>> "The 'first full manual' on the language appeared in 1998.  Jordan Cslera,
>> Carlos. Introduccisn al Celtibirico. Zaragoza: Universidad de Zaragoza.

eska at vtaix.cc.vt.edu replied:

> Not so much a manual as a preliminary description.

The description is not mine but Javier Martínez García's: "This is the
first manual of this language to appear. Using a comparative framework, the
author discusses phonetic-phonological and morphological features of the
Celtiberian language. He also describes the most important documents (coins,
graffiti, tombstones, documents of hospitality, etc.). The book includes a list
of linguistic features, a word index, and bibliography."

I also wrote:
>> Wolfgang Meid's commentaries on Celtiberian Inscriptions Archaeologica
>> (Budapest 1994) have been considered authoritative.

eska at vtaix.cc.vt.edu also replied:

> Again, not so.  In fact, the very large majority of specialists on
> Continental Celtic have found Prof. Meid's hermeneutic analyses anything but
> authoritative, and, indeed, rather fantastic.

Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that Meid is cited often enough
alongside of Dr. Eska to deserve mention, aside from the merits of his
approach.  An example from the a Blackwell Peoples of Europe series: "Botorrit
a I remains the most important Hispano-Celtic inscription for linguistic
anaylsis (Meid 1993: 9-15; Eska 1989: 3-10).
...Interpretations of this inscription have varied widely, with most
commentators considering the text to be either religious or legal. This
disagreement is due to our fragmentary knowledge of the grammar and
vocabulary of the language. Both Meid and Eska supply exhaustive
bibliographical information throughout their treatments of the inscription
(Meid 1993, Eska 1989)."

eska at vtaix.cc.vt.edu also wrote:

<<As for the q-Celtic label, well, this is pretty trivial phonologically, and
not really much of a diagnostic.  Cf. the case of Lepontic, traditionally
considered to be p-Celtic, but in which several examples of the inherited
voiceless labiovelar arguably occurs.>>

I had written:

> However, it now appears that this may also have been the result of
> the Latinization of the language in the late period, since some early texts
> now seem to show signs of being P-Celtic...

eska at vtaix.cc.vt.edu also replied:

>> Absolutely not!  There isn't the slightest bit of evidence for this at all.
>> Now, Lusitanian, which Untermann maintains could be, at least, para-Celtic,
>> does retain IE *p, but few specialists are persuaded that it's related to
>> Celtic in any close way.

I am not sure of the upshot of this.  If "the q-Celtic label, well, this is
pretty trivial phonologically, and not really much of a diagnostic." then I
would not understand the importance of the next observation.  And if
Lusitanian relationship to Celtic is problematic at least - then the asserted
'remarkable similarity' of Celtic starts to depend on narrowing the
definition of Celtic instead of actually acknowledging the ambiguoity and the
possible lack of that 'remarkable similarity'.  Also the very fact that the
first clearly attested Celtic languages - Gaulish, Lepontic and Celtiberian-
are "q-Celtic" might suggest that conjectures about when and how the change
from IE <p> occurred are not part of any real evidence regarding time.  As
you wrote, "several scholars have claimed that [Hispano-Celtic] is
practically identical to proto-Celtic, a sentiment I do not share..." The
absence of evidence of any transition to q-Celtic leaves open when and how
that transition may have occured.  Others on this list have referred to
Lepontic and Hispano-Celtic as evidence that the transition to "q-Celtic was
already occuring by the 7th century," an unjustified dating of that event
from my point-of-view.

I wrote:

>> There is also the difficult problem, mentioned above, as to whether
>> Latinization in the mid 2d century BC altered the language so that it was
>> at least dialectically different from the one used in the Iberian script.
>> Familiar structure that appears in Latin alphabet texts are not often
>> confirmed in the earlier texts.

eska at vtaix.cc.vt.edu also replied:

> If this is a reference to structural differences between Hispano-Celtic texts
> written in Iberian and Roman characters, respectively, I'd really like to
> know what they are, as I'm not aware of them.

I believe the original writer was referring to the suggestion made by some -
I'm not sure but I think it seems to say e.g., Kim McCone in A Relative
Chronology of Celtic Sound Changes (1996) - that evidence of Gaulish's
Latinization might also be found in Celtiberian.  I do see the following
cited:  Cremin's The Celts in Europe: "Although the Botorrita text is
lengthy, it gives little information about grammar, and this is also the case
with most of the Celtiberian inscriptions we have... "  But that Roman
scripts, such as those at Peñalba de Villastar, Teruel, reveal "almost all we
know of the structure of Celtiberian."

Finally, with regard to dating Hispano-Celtic I wrote:

>> Since evidence of Celtiberian dates back as far as early Latin, contraryto
>> what [Mr Stirling] said above, it certainly is a candidate as one of the
>> earliest IE languages on record and needs to be accounted for on an equal
>> basis, I think.

eska at vtaix.cc.vt.edu also replied:

> While Hispano-Celtic is clearly archaic -- several scholars have claimed that
> it is practically identical to proto-Celtic, a sentiment I do not share  --
> it also has its share of innovations, and evidence does not date back as far
> as early Latin.  Hispano-Celtic texts are often notoriously difficult to
> date, but I know of no specialist who would claim that any texts date from
> earlier than the first half of the second century BCE.

Actually, I was actually repeating the post that came before on the list that
mine was in reply to, from Christopher Gwinn <sonno3 at hotmail.com which read:

<<In any case, we know
Celtiberian was already being spoken in Spain in the 6th century BC, and
that it shares many similarities with the Goidelic branch
(PIE -Kw-=Qu/Ku/Cu, for example). Its vocabulary preserves some archaisms
not found in Goidelic or Brythonic (Silbur "silver" next to regular Common
Celtic word Arganto-)...>>

One would prefer not to refer to the existence of a language in a particular
location having particular attributes 400 years before there is real
attestation of it.  But be aware that this 5th century date is often
repeated.  E.g.:

<<The Celtiberian script is in fact a modified form of Iberian, with some
innovations... Celtiberian inscriptions, very few in number, were made from
the 6th to the 1st century BC; since the 3rd century the Roman alphabet came
in use, being much more convenient and suitable for the language.>>
You'll find the above on the web at http://www.ropnet.ru/cyryllo/script/celti.
html

Much thanks once again to Dr Eska for taking the time to inform us on this
subject.

Regards,
Steve Long