Dating the final IE unity

[Eduard Selleslagh]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2000 10:28 AM

>> rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu writes:

> << 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

> -- a "brusque restructuring" during the early medieval period.

> Ancient Irish (and other Celtic languages of comparable date) are quite
> conventional Indo-European languages, no 'stranger' than say, Latin.

> What comes out the other end is, to be sure, very odd.

[Ed Selleslagh]
What is the currently accepted explanation of this 'oddity'?

Could it be the substrate influence of a typically insular non-IE language or
languages (e.g. 'Pictish' - whatever that may actually mean) ? All the Celtic
languages with the 'modern' characteristics are in fact insular (Breton is a
Brythonic import). There are indeed some weird characteristics (see e.g. Rick
McCallister's mail, and the tendency toward ergativity in certain
circumstances) for IE languages, and right across the Goidelic-Brythonic
divide. Archaeology (e.g. megaliths, some decorative motifs,...) might indicate
some cultural relationship with the Basques, a very old and eminently seafaring
people (there was even a Basque-Icelandic pidgin a few centuries ago), so why
not a linguistic one (with the insular non-IE-ans I mean)? Note that the same
archaeological traces are found along the continental European Atlantic coast,
from N. Spain to S. Scandinavia, but one may safely assume that older non-IE
languages died out there long before they did in the isolation of (parts of)
the British Isles. But they probably survived, be it in more or less isolated
pockets, the Celtic and Roman invasions of Britain.

Still very intrigued,
Ed.