No Proto-Celtic?

Eduard Selleslagh edsel at glo.be
Mon May 14 10:12:51 UTC 2001


----- Original Message -----
From: "Lars Martin Fosse" <lmfosse at online.no>
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2001 11:14 AM

> David L. White [SMTP:dlwhite at texas.net] skrev 6. mai 2001 16:21:

>> There is good evidence of something like Semitic influence, sub-stratal or
>> not, in Insular Celtic, and I suspected when I first read Dr. Trask's
>> initial posting that something like this woud lie behind the views of the
>> "No-Proto-Celtic" crowd.  The typological lurch of Insular Celtic toward
>> Semitic, illusory (in terms of actual Semites) or not, does indeed make it
>> difficult to construct a unified proto-language.  Difficult, but not
>> impossible.  Such questions as how and when Insular Celtic wound up
>> verb-initial and so on just have to be answered at some point.  They do no
>> make proto-Celtic unviable, or suggest any such scenario as just given
>> above.

> As far as I know, Old Norse is also verb-initial. Should we assume Semitic
> influence there too?

> Would it be possible to get a list of features that point in the direction of
> Semitic?

> Best regards,
> Lars Martin Fosse

[Ed  Selleslagh]

As a non-linguist I wonder if the personal endings of verbs (the person
marker), which are basically remnants of suffixed pronouns, cannot be viewed as
an indication that PIE was actually verb-initial (verb-[suffixed]S-O), at least
with pronouns as subject?

Ed.



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