Celtic Germanic relationship

[Stanley Friesen]

>[ Moderator's comment:
>  The traditional Indo-European family tree (to use the model most familiar to
>  non-specialists) has Germanic, Celtic, and Italic as three separate
>  branches.

>  Some, but by no means all, Indo-Europeanists believe that the Italic and
>  Celtic branches should be considered to form a sub-unit of the tree, based
>  on certain morphological developments; this branch is called Italo-Celtic.

>  The Germanic branch shares some developments and vocabulary with Italic and
>  Celtic, and others with Balto-Slavic.  This has recently led a few people to
>  posit an early separation of Germanic from the rest of the family (but from
>  a branch that later led to Balto-Slavic), then massive influence from Celtic
>  and Italic.

I find this model to have some problems, not the least of which is that
such massive borrowings should show up as words with different
histories.  English is a good case in point where we often have several
different words derived from the same PIE word or root: e.g. 'head',
'chief', 'chef', 'capitol'.

I would actually suggest a "reversal" of this model: an "early" branching
from an Germano-Italo-Celtic base, followed by a significant Baltic
influence, mostly in morphology (e.g. the case ending in '-m-' instead of
'-bh-').

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May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com