Proto-Celtic - An Exploration: Celtic ICM & Q/P Words = Function IE Roots

[Ante Aikio]

Dear Mr. Keefe and discussants:

On Fri, 22 Jun 2001 DFOKeefe at aol.com wrote:

>           Recently there was some discussion of Proto-Celtic on the list.  As
> you probably know, my wife and I are amateur linguists.  In spite of our
> amateur status, please permit us to offer for your consideration a paper
> entitled PROTO-CELTIC - AN EXPLORATION: Celtic Initial Consonantal Mutation
> and Q/P Equivalent Words as a Function of I.E. Roots.  We believe that our
> analysis of I.E. roots in terms of ICM helps obtain a much clearer picture of
> the prehistoric development of ICM and perhaps the phonological dynamics
> which brought it about.  We are sure that this analysis of ICM in terms of
> I.E. roots can benefit from some constructive suggestions.  Thank you for
> your consideration.

>           You may access this paper at one of our two Web sites:
> http://hometown.aol.com/IrishWord/page1.html  (section 1)
> http://hometown.aol.com/Dfokeefe/page1.html  (section xiii)
> We humbly apologize for the all-too-basic America On Line graphics of our Web
> page.

As a Uralist, my knowledge of Celtic is very superfluous, so I only wish
comment on the following passages in the paper:

>Consonantal gradation is comparable to initial consonant mutation. There
>is initial consonantal gradation in the Fenno-Ugric languages.

This is incorrect. There is no "gradation" of initial consonats in any
Uralic language; this is not at all what is meant by the term 'consonant
gradation', and morphophonological phenomena affecting initial consonats
are non-existent in Uralic.

>There is consonantal gradation in Uralic languages of all consonants in words,
>which makes Urtalic comparable to Celtic in some respects.

Once again, this is incorrect. The most complex systems of consonant
gradation are found in Samic and Nganasan, but they do not affect all
consonants in words, being prosodically and phonotactically restricted to
certain positions.

>No one has suggested that the consonantal gradation in these languages is a
>recent phonological development.

Depends on what is meant by "recent", but strictly speaking, this is not
true. Practically no one believes in Proto-Uralic gradation anymore, and
the Samoyedic and Sami-Finnic gradation systems are almost uniformly seen
as resulting from convergence. There is even evidence for the view that
also the Samic and Fennic gradational patterns have arisen separately. So,
from the point of view of Proto-Uralic, these phenomena can certainly be
considered 'recent'.

>Therefore, the same should not be assumed of Celtic languages.

Even if the gradation was a Proto-Uralic feature, this is non sequitur,
because the Uralic gradation and the Celtic mutations have certainly
nothing to do with each other.

---------------

In this connection, I also only very briefly comment on two other papers
on the same web site, titled "2,650+ Similar Irish and Finnish Words with
an Irish Tie-in to Uralic" and "Similar Uralic, Fenno-Ugric, and
Indo-European Roots" (it is not possible to thoroughly criticize these
papers here, as they contain so many blunders, factual mistakes and
dubious claims that addressing them all would probably take days or weeks
of my working time - and I doubt that the list members would find this of
any special interest). Regrettably, even a cursory examination of the
supplied "etymologies" reveals the authors' nearly total lack of knowledge
in Uralistics, as well as general methods and principles of comparative
linguistics. Consequently, the observed similarities between Irish and
Finnish, or Uralic and Indo-European, are reduced to a mere fata morgana.

Regards,
Ante Aikio
(Assistant / Sami language, University of Oulu)

Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 22:39:37 +0300
From: Ante Aikio <anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi>
X-Sender: anaikio at paju.oulu.fi
To: Indo-European at xkl.com
Message-ID: <Pine.SGI.4.21.0106282145250.35458771-100000 at paju.oulu.fi>

Just a correction to a silly L2 mistake:

>>As a Uralist, my knowledge of Celtic is very superfluous,

'superficial' was of course what I meant...

- Ante