Lusitanian/Celtic/Italic [was Basque <ibili>]

[Rick Mc Callister]

	Yes, the /p/ problem does distinguish it from Celtic
	I've also seen the theory that it was cognate with Celtic and
Italic as a member of a W IE branch
	Ed Selleslagh has floated the idea that it might be Q-Italic
	For me, this rasises the question of the validity of Italic as a
group. If Lusitanian were Q-Celtic, that would imply either
	1: the split between P- & Q-Italic occured before Italic entered Europe
	2: P- & Q-Italic are actually different branches of Western IE and
that the resemblances in phonology and lexicon are actually due to adstrate
and common substrate
	Q-Celtic does seem to be in a peculiar little spot on the lower
Tiber that would seem to be prime real estate for interlopers
	But, given that my knowledge of the linguistics issues are minimal,
I'd like to hear from those who do know what they're talking about :>

>The big problem with accepting Lusitanian as Celtic is that Lusitanian
>preserves the PIE -P- (lost by Celtic) in the word Porcom (Celtic *Orco-
>"pig" note British Orcades "Pig-land").

>It is possible that Lusitanian may be a late survival of a type of
>Proto-Celtic, however.