Etruscan and Germanic

[Kentel]

I agree that it would be with a *d if the borrowing occured after Grimm's Law was effective, but this is exactly what I'm arguing: Celtic loanwords were largely borrowed before the sound shift of Grimm's Law occured and as a result shifted accordingly.

If two words show the regular sound changes of their respective language family, then the words are inherited from the same source (IE or not) and are in no case considered as loanwords. Considering that words having undergone Grimm's Law can be originally Celtic appears to me as very speculative, and in any case imposible to demonstrate.

It actually does. You have examples like Gaulish "Biturīges" or "Rigomagus", or Old Irish "ríge" (rule, kingship) versus Dutch "rijk", Swedish "rike", German "Reich". You have an evolution from Celtic *rīgjo- > Proto-Germanic *rīkja-

Yes, *rigjo-, but here we have -rix, and the attested gaulish ending is indeed -rix or -riks (see Delamarre's Dictionary of Gaulish).

My point is that you can establish a relative chronology:

1) Sound changes from Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic (other than Grimm's Law and Verner's Law, for example the dissolution of the syllabic resonants)
2) Celtic and Iranic borrowings into Proto-Germanic
3) Grimm's Law and Verner's Law (I'm personally a fence-sitter on the chronology of these two :) )

Indeed you are :)

I might say, I do agree with Euler's concept of the "Germanic parent language" (or "Pre-Proto-Germanic" or "Proto-Germanic before Grimm's Law"), but I disagree with Euler on the timing of the language: in my humble opinion his "Pre-Proto-Germanic" is an accurate description of the language that would have been spoken earlier, during the Bronze Age (and perhaps start of the iron age).

Ringe challenges this pre-protoGmc hypothesis and assumes that the sound change may as well have occurred directly, without any internal steps - and this is actually what I think because this is what you can observe in vivo with actual languages.

Is it really a common etymon if it is subject to regular sound laws from Proto-Indo-European to Celtic (e.g. *ē > *ī) or from Proto-Indo-European to Indo-Iranic (e.g. merger *l > *r). I think not.

Either the two cognates have undergone the sound changes specific to their own language family and they have inherited from a common source, either they have undergone the sound changes specific to only one of their language family, and there is a borrowing. I cannot see any other way.

The problem is, again, the timing. I'm saying that Grimm's Law (and Verner's Law) did not occur from Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic (where I would perfectly expect the substrate scenario you describe above, let me be very clear about that), but considerably later.

The timing, however, has a two main flaws :

1- we are not sure that the Celts are connected exclusively to the Hallstatt Culture and as a consequence we don't really know when the two people came into contact.

2- it is methodologically impossible to demonstrate your postulate, ie. that the Germans have borrowed words from the Celts before Grimm's Law.

and, I should add that we have a significant stock of germano-celtic words, ie. not borrowed from each other, which have no IE etymology, and which seem to testify the existence of a common substratum (I said "a" not "the" substratum, there was certainly more than one).

I'm suggesting that this - most sound changes perhaps - must be internally driven (inside the language itself, or more accurately, from its speakers - lets not forget that languages are always about people who speak them. :) ) and not primarily substrate- or adstrate-driven.

This is the structuralist mechanistic answer :) and precisely the one which neglects the human factor. I am not claiming that I have made a new discovery with this substratum hypothesis, it is in fact very old - probably as old as the IE theory itself. Lately, a series of PIE dictionaries (Leiden/Brill) were published, which emphasized the influence of the substratum. This is especially true for the Germanic and the Celtic ones (not so much for the Latin which is very conservative and unimaginative IMO).

[Kentel]

A quote from Meillet's Caractéristiques des Langues Germaniques, written about a century ago in the context of an overwhelmingly structuralist and ideologically aryan academic world :

Quand une population change de langue, elle est sujette à garder, dans la nouvelle langue adoptée par elle, plus ou moins de ses habitudes linguistiques antérieures ou à modifier le type qu'elle adopte. Le germanique, qui a rompu si nettement avec les usages indo-européens, est de l'indo-européen parlé par une population nouvelle qui a accepté l'indo-européen, tout en le prononçant d'une manière en partie nouvelle; les conquérants qui ont apporté l'indo-européen n'ont pas été assez nombreux ni asssez puissants pour imposer leur manière d'articuler; les gens qu'ils ont conquis [...] ont fait prévaloir un type articulatoire différent

"When a people changes its language, it has a tendancy to behold, in the newly adopted language, more or less its linguistic habitudes, or to modify the ones of the new language. Germanic, which has broken up so distinctly with the Indo-European uses, is a form of indo-european spoken by a new population who has accepted it, but who pronounce it partly in a new way. The conquerors who had brought Indo-European were neither numerous nor powerful enough to impose their way of articulating; the people whom they conquered imposed a different articulatory scheme. "

And I think that every word of this quote is right :)

[Sile]

A quote from Meillet's Caractéristiques des Langues Germaniques, written about a century ago in the context of an overwhelmingly structuralist and ideologically aryan academic world :

Quand une population change de langue, elle est sujette à garder, dans la nouvelle langue adoptée par elle, plus ou moins de ses habitudes linguistiques antérieures ou à modifier le type qu'elle adopte. Le germanique, qui a rompu si nettement avec les usages indo-européens, est de l'indo-européen parlé par une population nouvelle qui a accepté l'indo-européen, tout en le prononçant d'une manière en partie nouvelle; les conquérants qui ont apporté l'indo-européen n'ont pas été assez nombreux ni asssez puissants pour imposer leur manière d'articuler; les gens qu'ils ont conquis [...] ont fait prévaloir un type articulatoire différent

"When a people changes its language, it has a tendancy to behold, in the newly adopted language, more or less its linguistic habitudes, or to modify the ones of the new language. Germanic, which has broken up so distinctly with the Indo-European uses, is a form of indo-european spoken by a new population who has accepted it, but who pronounce it partly in a new way. The conquerors who had brought Indo-European were neither numerous nor powerful enough to impose their way of articulating; the people whom they conquered imposed a different articulatory scheme. "

And I think that every word of this quote is right :)

I would agree, even in Italy today each region speaks Italian in their own "ancient" regional linguistic tones/mode ( articulation )

[Taranis]

If two words show the regular sound changes of their respective language family, then the words are inherited from the same source (IE or not) and are in no case considered as loanwords. Considering that words having undergone Grimm's Law can be originally Celtic appears to me as very speculative, and in any case imposible to demonstrate.

It isn't speculative if the word in question was derived from earlier Proto-Indo-European via a distinctly Celtic sound change (I gave *ē > *ī as an example).

Yes, *rigjo-, but here we have -rix, and the attested gaulish ending is indeed -rix or -riks (see Delamarre's Dictionary of Gaulish).

The "x" likely represented an allophonic /χs/ in Gaulish, not /ks/. In other constructions, the reflex was *rīg- or *rīgo-. Ringe, likewise, gives *rīgjo-.

Indeed you are :)

I might need to explain that a little further. I'm not sure if that belongs into this thread, however. :)

Ringe challenges this pre-protoGmc hypothesis and assumes that the sound change may as well have occurred directly, without any internal steps - and this is actually what I think because this is what you can observe in vivo with actual languages.

http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kroch/cou...celt-loans.pdf

And yet Ringe lists all the examples I had given as Celtic loanwords, including the example of the "Volcae", which is clearly shifted according to Grimm's Law. I really do not see how this would add up.

Either the two cognates have undergone the sound changes specific to their own language family and they have inherited from a common source, either they have undergone the sound changes specific to only one of their language family, and there is a borrowing. I cannot see any other way.

Why is it so impossible for you to think that there were loanwords in the Germanic languages before Grimm's Law? Let me give you another example. There are Latin loanwords into Germanic which all occured before the upper German consonant shift took place, e.g. the word "cat" (German "Katze" or /katsə/) and the word "copper" (German "Kupfer" or /kʊpfɐ/). Would you argue that because they are shifted according to the Upper German consonant shift that they must be native to Germanic? That's basically what you are proposing here.

The timing, however, has a two main flaws :

1- we are not sure that the Celts are connected exclusively to the Hallstatt Culture and as a consequence we don't really know when the two people came into contact.

I don't think this is a problem, unless you're a fanboy of O'Donell's and Koch's "Celtic from the West" scenario and insist that the Celtic languages are a (solely?) tied to the Atlantic Bronze Age. In my opinion its highly probable that the bearers of the Hallstatt culture was indeed Celtic (how else would you explain that the Germanic word for "iron" is a Celtic loanword?). Also, what else should they have spoken, Etruscan?! I haven't really seen a sensible, well-grounded answer from anybody yet for a working alternative. Feel free to suggest an alternative. :)

2- it is methodologically impossible to demonstrate your postulate, ie. that the Germans have borrowed words from the Celts before Grimm's Law.

It very much is, I've given enough examples of that.

and, I should add that we have a significant stock of germano-celtic words, ie. not borrowed from each other, which have no IE etymology, and which seem to testify the existence of a common substratum (I said "a" not "the" substratum, there was certainly more than one).

Yes, this stock of "common" lexical items exists, and its unsurprising that they predate both Grimm's Law and Verner's Law and Ringe too acknowledges this, but on top of this there are Celtic loanwords into Proto-Germanic which, clearly so - predate Grimm's Law. Ringe puts it as "Words which might be Celtic loans or shared inheritances".

This is the structuralist mechanistic answer :) and precisely the one which neglects the human factor. I am not claiming that I have made a new discovery with this substratum hypothesis, it is in fact very old - probably as old as the IE theory itself. Lately, a series of PIE dictionaries (Leiden/Brill) were published, which emphasized the influence of the substratum. This is especially true for the Germanic and the Celtic ones (not so much for the Latin which is very conservative and unimaginative IMO).

Let me pick up the example of the lateral fricative in Welsh again. I might say that its much more logical and plausible that this was internally driven: the most plausible - "mechanistic" if you want to call it that - explanation is that /ɬ/ arose from earlier *l by the word initial-devoicing to *l̥. This sound was subsequently turned into a fricative. The beautiful with that explanation is that Welsh at the same time also possesses a voiceless fricative /r̥/, which - matching up perfectly with its counterpart. Like /ɬ/ it occurs word-initial (spelled "rh" in Welsh orthography). So, I'm perfectly contempt with the idea that this was a sound change that just occured in the Welsh in the Middle Ages, rather than looking for an external cause (ie. Native Americans crossing the Atlantic and settling in Wales ), because that external source just isn't there.

Thus, I'm proposing the same for Grimm's Law and Verner's Law (they were internally driven sound changes) that occured in the early iron age (between circa - and I repeat that that's only a rough estimate - 500 and 200 BC).

I would also ask you a very general question: if new sounds could only arise through externally-driven substrate or adstrates, how do you explain the diversity of sound inventories in the world's languages?

[Kentel]

about rix:

It isn't speculative if the word in question was derived from earlier Proto-Indo-European via a distinctly Celtic sound change (I gave *ē > *ī as an example).
The "x" likely represented an allophonic /χs/ in Gaulish, not /ks/. In other constructions, the reflex was *rīg- or *rīgo-. Ringe, likewise, gives *rīgjo-.

Yes, but it doesn't make any difference whatsoever : k → χ before s is a purely Celtic lenition process, Grimm's Law has nothing to do with that. Moreover, this is "allophonic" as you mentioned, thus only a variant of the same sound. *ē > *ī is Celtic too, hence I don't see why this word should be a pre-Grimm's Law borrowing from Celtic.

I might need to explain that a little further. I'm not sure if that belongs into this thread, however. :)

It doesn't, but I'd be interested to hear it anyway :) Maybe we can open a thread devoted to Grimm's Law.

http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kroch/cou...celt-loans.pdf

And yet Ringe lists all the examples I had given as Celtic loanwords, including the example of the "Volcae", which is clearly shifted according to Grimm's Law. I really do not see how this would add up.

I checked thoroughly this (very short) list, and I cannot see any word there proving your point (ie that there have been borrowings from Celtic to Germanic before Grimm's Law).

Rix, as stated above, has all the regular Celtic features in Germanic. Same for Volcae →
*walhaz , which shows another Celtic lenition (after r and l, k → x, see Pedersen's Comparative Grammar of Celtic §50), and same for ambactos → *ambahtaz (lenition of k before t).

The only word which would prove your point is *leagis → *lēkijaz, but even Ringe is not sure about this one, with good reason since the only cognate is Irish, and the alleged proto-Celtic etymon is not even listed in Matasovic's dictionary. I would add that *leagis does not sound very proto-celtic to me, it's more Old Irish I would say.

And even if the correspondance was correct, I would say that these cognates have inherited from a common source, not that there was a borrowing.

Why is it so impossible for you to think that there were loanwords in the Germanic languages before Grimm's Law?

I don't say it is impossible, I say it is impossible to spot. If Grimm's Law apply it is Germanic, if not it is not Germanic. Ringe challenges indeed the concept of pre-proto-Germanic saying that this is an hypothesis which is not proven and which doesn't exclude other scenarios.

Let me give you another example. There are Latin loanwords into Germanic which all occured before the upper German consonant shift took place, e.g. the word "cat" (German "Katze" or /katsə/) and the word "copper" (German "Kupfer" or /kʊpfɐ/). Would you argue that because they are shifted according to the Upper German consonant shift that they must be native to Germanic? That's basically what you are proposing here.

There is a big deal of a difference : we know there has been a stage between Proto-Germanic and OHG. In the case of Grimm's Law, we are not sure about anything. For me, there was no pre-proto or pre-ante-proto, there was, as Meillet suggests, a direct adaptation of the sounds by the indigeneous populations. This is, IMO, the only realistic scenario. The other one is, to me, no more than a phonetic game for linguists (as is the laryngeal theory by the way).

I don't think this is a problem, unless you're a fanboy of O'Donell's and Koch's "Celtic from the West" scenario and insist that the Celtic languages are a (solely?) tied to the Atlantic Bronze Age. In my opinion its highly probable that the bearers of the Hallstatt culture was indeed Celtic (how else would you explain that the Germanic word for "iron" is a Celtic loanword?). Also, what else should they have spoken, Etruscan?! I haven't really seen a sensible, well-grounded answer from anybody yet for a working alternative. Feel free to suggest an alternative. :)

Well, you know, I am not the kind of linguistic rebel who support all the possible weird theories. I am just looking for the best and most realistic explanations, and they are always the simplest. Hence I agree with you, Hallstatt is Celtic. My claim is, that previous archaeological culture could also be connected with the Celts, as well as older cultures than Harpstedt and Jastorf could be connected with the Germans.

Yes, this stock of "common" lexical items exists, and its unsurprising that they predate both Grimm's Law and Verner's Law and Ringe too acknowledges this, but on top of this there are Celtic loanwords into Proto-Germanic which, clearly so - predate Grimm's Law. Ringe puts it as "Words which might be Celtic loans or shared inheritances".

Ringe is prudent enough to title this section "Words which might be Celtic loans or shared inheritances", which shows that, if they are loans, it is impossible to prove - and none of his example proves it.

Let me pick up the example of the lateral fricative in Welsh again. I might say that its much more logical and plausible that this was internally driven: the most plausible - "mechanistic" if you want to call it that - explanation is that /ɬ/ arose from earlier *l by the word initial-devoicing to *l̥. This sound was subsequently turned into a fricative. The beautiful with that explanation is that Welsh at the same time also possesses a voiceless fricative /r̥/, which - matching up perfectly with its counterpart. Like /ɬ/ it occurs word-initial (spelled "rh" in Welsh orthography). So, I'm perfectly contempt with the idea that this was a sound change that just occured in the Welsh in the Middle Ages, rather than looking for an external cause (ie. Native Americans crossing the Atlantic and settling in Wales ), because that external source just isn't there.

I agree, changes may occur within a language. I just claim that when they occur they are triggered by articulatory habitudes, which come from the substratum. Note that the substratum is an internal source, not an external one, let's leave the Indians where they are :)

Thus, I'm proposing the same for Grimm's Law and Verner's Law (they were internally driven sound changes) that occured in the early iron age (between circa - and I repeat that that's only a rough estimate - 500 and 200 BC).

These changes are too huge to be internally driven in such a short time span. Once again, this is unrealistic. And even if it was, it still doesn't answer my question : why ?

I would also ask you a very general question: if new sounds could only arise through externally-driven substrate or adstrates, how do you explain the diversity of sound inventories in the world's languages?

Languages are very old, and language variation is extremely slow, contrary to what is predicted by the mainstream indo-europeanists (although less and less); it goes for the words as for the sounds. I accept the idea of slow and progressive changes, and yet they are driven by ancient habitudes. Brutal sound changes (and it is the case of Grimm's Law) can occur only when there is a change of substratum, ie an IE tribe settling in Denmark among indigeneous tribes.

Take French, which is interesting because the substratum is documented : French is much "softer" than Spanish or Italian, and obviously than latin, which are more distinct languages from the articulatory point of view. The cause of this is the laxness of Gaulish. This laxness has triggered almost all the important features of modern French. Later, the Germanic aristocracy modified slightly this tendancy by hardening a few phonetic features, but it was marginal.

[sherlockholmes]

I disagree because Etruscan is probably Greco-Roman.

[Taranis]

about rix:

Yes, but it doesn't make any difference whatsoever : k → χ before s is a purely Celtic lenition process, Grimm's Law has nothing to do with that. Moreover, this is "allophonic" as you mentioned, thus only a variant of the same sound. *ē > *ī is Celtic too, hence I don't see why this word should be a pre-Grimm's Law borrowing from Celtic.


[/FONT]
It doesn't, but I'd be interested to hear it anyway :) Maybe we can open a thread devoted to Grimm's Law.

I checked thoroughly this (very short) list, and I cannot see any word there proving your point (ie that there have been borrowings from Celtic to Germanic before Grimm's Law).

Rix, as stated above, has all the regular Celtic features in Germanic. Same for Volcae →
*walhaz , which shows another Celtic lenition (after r and l, k → x, see Pedersen's Comparative Grammar of Celtic §50), and same for ambactos → *ambahtaz (lenition of k before t).

The only word which would prove your point is *leagis → *lēkijaz, but even Ringe is not sure about this one, with good reason since the only cognate is Irish, and the alleged proto-Celtic etymon is not even listed in Matasovic's dictionary. I would add that *leagis does not sound very proto-celtic to me, it's more Old Irish I would say.

And even if the correspondance was correct, I would say that these cognates have inherited from a common source, not that there was a borrowing.

Lenition in Proto-Celtic only occured if a plosive was located before another plosive or /s/. Hence clusters like *kt, *ks, *pt, *ps became *χt, *χs, *χt, *χs. In so far, I agree for *ambaχtos (but we can agree with Ringe that this is a Celtic loanword in Germanic?). But *rīgjo- and *wolkos are a different matter, as elsewhere, /g/ remained (or /k/), this includes when *rīχs was declensed (hence "Vercingetorix" but "Bituriges" and "Rigomagus"... and the example of *rīgjo-. This is why I said "allophonic". And frankly, I'd be curious to hear how Pedersen justifies his statement, because I don't see the evidence. From my perspective, these are both instances where the outcome of *k and *h in Germanic can be only attributed to Grimm's Law.

In my opinion, *rīkjaz, *walxaz and *tūnaz cannot be common inheritances but are old Celtic loanwords.

I don't say it is impossible, I say it is impossible to spot. If Grimm's Law apply it is Germanic, if not it is not Germanic. Ringe challenges indeed the concept of pre-proto-Germanic saying that this is an hypothesis which is not proven and which doesn't exclude other scenarios.

Can't we just agree to disagree?

There is a big deal of a difference : we know there has been a stage between Proto-Germanic and OHG. In the case of Grimm's Law, we are not sure about anything. For me, there was no pre-proto or pre-ante-proto, there was, as Meillet suggests, a direct adaptation of the sounds by the indigeneous populations. This is, IMO, the only realistic scenario. The other one is, to me, no more than a phonetic game for linguists (as is the laryngeal theory by the way).

Yeah, but why would there be such a wholesale sound shift? In my opinion your instant adaptation does not really explain it, either. The peculiarity of Grimm's Law is that most of the sounds existed in the language before and after, in so far the idea that the substrate language did not have these sounds doesn't explain anything. If your hypothetical language already had *p, *b, *t, *d, *g, *k, why did you have such an elaborate chain shift? In my opinion its much more logical to assume that the shift occured in time.

Well, you know, I am not the kind of linguistic rebel who support all the possible weird theories. I am just looking for the best and most realistic explanations, and they are always the simplest. Hence I agree with you, Hallstatt is Celtic. My claim is, that previous archaeological culture could also be connected with the Celts, as well as older cultures than Harpstedt and Jastorf could be connected with the Germans.

I'm not ruling out that there is an older, common "pool" of Celtic and Germanic vocabulary, and the way I see it, this is not a contradiction of my hypothesis, rather it fits rather well with the idea of language contact between Celtic and Germanic before Grimm's Law was executed. In fact, I would go so far and say that this common vocabulary contradicts your hypothesis, as the Celtic and Germanic languages had a very different phonetic evolution. One of the examples that Ringe gives, *bhrgh-, shows the different dissolution of the old syllabic resonants of PIE in Celtic and Germanic.

Ringe is prudent enough to title this section "Words which might be Celtic loans or shared inheritances", which shows that, if they are loans, it is impossible to prove - and none of his example proves it.

In my opinion, the Celtic *dūno- is etymologically related with Latin "fūnus" (the English word "funeral" derives from this). Now, *dʰ- regularly becomes *d- in Celtic, and *f- in Italic, while the *t in Germanic is entirely unexpected. The only way this could have happened, in my opinion, is that it was borrowed from Celtic before the execution of Grimm's Law.

I agree, changes may occur within a language. I just claim that when they occur they are triggered by articulatory habitudes, which come from the substratum. Note that the substratum is an internal source, not an external one, let's leave the Indians where they are :)

See, I would argue that in fact this is the norm, and that most sound changes are internally-conditioned.

These changes are too huge to be internally driven in such a short time span. Once again, this is unrealistic. And even if it was, it still doesn't answer my question : why ?

I disagree for that. There are three historically attested examples where such huge sound changes happened that can only be internally driven:

- changes in Goidelic (from Primitive Irish to Old Irish)
- changes in Brythonic from Antiquity to Middle Ages (about the same time frame)
- the Upper German consonant shift


For all three cases (which in my opinion are just as drastic as Grimm's Law - the Upper German consonant shift is, in fact, a very comparable sound shift where the set of plosives is shifted wholesale compared to the parent language). Each time, we do know that there was a language stage before the radical changes in the phonology occured. I don't see a reason why this should not have occured prehistorically in Proto-Germanic, either. I might also say, that way, I really don't see the "exclusivity" of Grimm's Law. I might also mention that Proto-Armenian made a similar sound shift.

Languages are very old, and language variation is extremely slow, contrary to what is predicted by the mainstream indo-europeanists (although less and less); it goes for the words as for the sounds. I accept the idea of slow and progressive changes, and yet they are driven by ancient habitudes. Brutal sound changes (and it is the case of Grimm's Law) can occur only when there is a change of substratum, ie an IE tribe settling in Denmark among indigeneous tribes.

Take French, which is interesting because the substratum is documented : French is much "softer" than Spanish or Italian, and obviously than latin, which are more distinct languages from the articulatory point of view. The cause of this is the laxness of Gaulish. This laxness has triggered almost all the important features of modern French. Later, the Germanic aristocracy modified slightly this tendancy by hardening a few phonetic features, but it was marginal.

I disagree about that, and vehemently so. Most language families are comparably fairly young: Proto-Indo-European itself is from the Copper Age, and the major daughter branches of Indo-European that we have today (Germanic, Romance, Slavic and Indic) are all themselves ~1500-2000 years old. Proto-Semitic and Proto-Austronesian, for example, date both from the Neolithic, the only language family that is substantially older would be Proto-Afroasiatic (early Neolithic, in my opinion, or Mesolithic if you ask Ehret), but I would argue that the conservativism in these Afroasiatic languages is mainly driven by their unique structure (consonantal roots).

[Sile]

I think you need to consolt this link , esp. page 52.

somwhere there is a Gaulish influence in the middle of this etruscan, raetic, latin, germanic and celtic languages

http://digilib.phil.muni.cz/bitstrea...3-2008-1_4.pdf

IMO, Celtic was purely a modern middle german area which eventually influenced its neighbouring tongues

[Aberdeen]

I think you need to consolt this link , esp. page 52.

somwhere there is a Gaulish influence in the middle of this etruscan, raetic, latin, germanic and celtic languages

http://digilib.phil.muni.cz/bitstrea...3-2008-1_4.pdf

IMO, Celtic was purely a modern middle german area which eventually influenced its neighbouring tongues

No, Sile. I should probably leave it to the linguists to correct your mistaken notions, but you're so wrong that even I can see it. If you had actually read the paper you linked to, you'd realize that Gaulish is a Celtic language. And since the Celtic language group is older than German, how could "Celtic" possibly be "middle german"?

[Sile]

No, Sile. I should probably leave it to the linguists to correct your mistaken notions, but you're so wrong that even I can see it. If you had actually read the paper you linked to, you'd realize that Gaulish is a Celtic language. And since the Celtic language group is older than German, how could "Celtic" possibly be "middle german"?

Are you not suppose tio ignore me!, do not reply then

I said celtic origins are from modern middle germany ...........the gauls where already present in france or do you think France was void of People?

Do you think Celtic is th eoldest race in Europe, to you?

[Aberdeen]

Are you not suppose tio ignore me!, do not reply then

I said celtic origins are from modern middle germany ...........the gauls where already present in france or do you think France was void of People?

Do you think Celtic is th eoldest race in Europe, to you?

You just reminded me why I had you on my "ignore" list at one point. I'm not sure you understand what you're saying, much less what anyone else is saying.

[Ike]

No, Sile. I should probably leave it to the linguists to correct your mistaken notions, but you're so wrong that even I can see it. If you had actually read the paper you linked to, you'd realize that Gaulish is a Celtic language. And since the Celtic language group is older than German, how could "Celtic" possibly be "middle german"?

He did not say "middle German", but "modern middle German area", which is a great difference.

[Aberdeen]

He did not say "middle German", but "modern middle German area", which is a great difference.

"Middle German" is a specifically linguistic term, which Sile used in a discussion about linguistics. If that was an attempt to talk about a geographic area such as central Germany, the Hallstatt culture was actually centred in Austria and southern Germany (although Celtic language and culture did later expand over a large area that, for a time, included parts of central Germany).

[Kentel]

I disagree about that, and vehemently so. Most language families are comparably fairly young: Proto-Indo-European itself is from the Copper Age, and the major daughter branches of Indo-European that we have today (Germanic, Romance, Slavic and Indic) are all themselves ~1500-2000 years old. Proto-Semitic and Proto-Austronesian, for example, date both from the Neolithic, the only language family that is substantially older would be Proto-Afroasiatic (early Neolithic, in my opinion, or Mesolithic if you ask Ehret), but I would argue that the conservativism in these Afroasiatic languages is mainly driven by their unique structure (consonantal roots).

Well, there will be a HUGE divergence of opinion there : the idea of a Copper Age proto IE is, to me, just a joke. Not only is it unproven, as well genetically as archaeologically, but it is, from a strictly linguistic point of view, a pure impossibility.

In a time span of 1000 years, you could have gone from PIE to proto-Germanic/Celtic/Armenian/Greek/Indo-Aryan etc ? The IEs were just living a few centuries before the Hittites ? Let's be serious.

Linguistic variation is slow, unless it is triggered by a substratum. People do not change sounds just because they think it's cool, or because they are too lazy. Such a scenario exists only in the fantasies of the linguists.

However, I have to make it short today - even if it doesn't obvious, I really enjoyed these exchanges. Thanks for the good work Taranis, opposition is still more constructive than agreement.

Hence for the time being, we can just agree to disagree :)

[MOESAN]

the PIE language seems having no F sound in the words roots reconstruted - lost sometime? maybe a bilabial /f/ tends to disappear faster than a labiodental one - I cannot answer -
but the IE speakers of today, the most of them, are they the first IEans???

for I know, some strata could have had this /f/ and very easily - the only languages in Europe I know which ignored this sound are the Finnic (of Finland) and the Basque (this one as gascon, transformed maybe the loaned F into /h/ or /-/, again a vague link between thiese two remote regions, by the way ? (some very old substratum?) but in the middle of them, we see ethnies which seem pronuncing /f/ without too much work: Celtic, Italic, Germanic, Greek - concerning Slavs I don't know, they don't seem to "found" for the /f/ upon IE roots...Even the Magyar speakers of Hungary have F in their apparently genuine vocabulary, spite their Finnic-Ugric origin (maybe an ancient P too?)-
one can argue these F are often a recent result upon mutations (Italic /f/ << *bh, *dh - greek /f/ << °ph << *bh - Germanic /f/ << *p - a lot of gaelic /f/ at initial << *w ...
but they CAN pronounce it -- and at first sight (I 'll take time to see that) the brittonic words in F- are very often latin loanwords, spite they mute very easily /p/ in /f/ (and /b/ at the beginning of words in phrase-constructions - a "bagful of knots" would I say!
P>> F seems occurring in more than a language too (even in Iran: Ispahan;Isfahan + Parsi:Farsi) - So, no to early conclusion for now, I' ll see if I can make an opinion but I doubt there is a tight passed link between Germanic and Etruscan
nos vad deoc'h oll!

[arvistro]

Latvian has F sound only in borrowings. Even then for older borrowings F was pronounced as P not so long time ago, like Fräulein - Preilene; Fritz - Pricis.

It could be same with Lithuanian, need to check.
p.s.
But then - same is also true for H, which comes from proto-IE. So could be we lost both sounds, only to recover them in XXth century.

[Kentel]

for I know, some strata could have had this /f/ and very easily - the only languages in Europe I know which ignored this sound are the Finnic (of Finland) and the Basque (this one as gascon, transformed maybe the loaned F into /h/ or /-/, again a vague link between thiese two remote regions, by the way ? (some very old substratum?) but in the middle of them, we see ethnies which seem pronuncing /f/ without too much work: Celtic, Italic, Germanic, Greek - concerning Slavs I don't know, they don't seem to "found" for the /f/ upon IE roots...Even the Magyar speakers of Hungary have F in their apparently genuine vocabulary, spite their Finnic-Ugric origin (maybe an ancient P too?)-

I think there is a rule where proto-Uralic *p → Hungarian f.

I was reading a paper about Mansi lately, an Uralic language from the Ob river - and actually ugrian, not fennic. You have f.ex. Hungarian fü "grass" = Mansi pum. I don't know the Finnish equivalent. I don't draw any conclusion out of that, Finno-Ugric is completely out of my street.

So, no to early conclusion for now, I' ll see if I can make an opinion but I doubt there is a tight passed link between Germanic and Etruscan

Out of my long exchange with Taranis, two competing hypothesis can be drawn as far as the [f] is concerned :

1- F is a mechanistic outcome of language evolution
2- F is substrate driven.

Well, I guess this discussion inheritance vs. evolution will have sequels in other threads :) It is rather critical, as a matter of fact.

[Ike]

"Middle German" is a specifically linguistic term, which Sile used in a discussion about linguistics. If that was an attempt to talk about a geographic area such as central Germany, the Hallstatt culture was actually centred in Austria and southern Germany (although Celtic language and culture did later expand over a large area that, for a time, included parts of central Germany).

One couldn't conclude different than it was about geography. If it was thinking about Hallstatt or something different, well you'd have to see that with him...

[Alpakut]

- they have the very rare [f] phoneme.
- they have plural in -er/-ar/-ur
- they have a genitive singular in -s.

Well, it might be - and probably is - pure coincidence. I havn't read all the book, maybe I'll find something else in the vocabulary section, maybe not.

I don't think it is pure coincidence, we have the same plural in Kazakh as well: -er/-ar. When I say at 'horse', the plural is attar 'horses'. The -er/-ar depends on the first vowel of the word.

[Pax Augusta]

The only proven link between the Etruscan and the Germanic is the script. The Runic alphabet derived from the north-Etruscan alphabet.

[MOESAN]

Latvian has F sound only in borrowings. Even then for older borrowings F was pronounced as P not so long time ago, like Fräulein - Preilene; Fritz - Pricis.

It could be same with Lithuanian, need to check.
p.s.
But then - same is also true for H, which comes from proto-IE. So could be we lost both sounds, only to recover them in XXth century.

I wonder if it could not be a Finnic (not hungarian ugric) tendancy?
out of time answer, I avow but interesting in other threads concerning the compsition of neo-Baltic people

[Taranis]

The only proven link between the Etruscan and the Germanic is the script. The Runic alphabet derived from the north-Etruscan alphabet.

It should be pointed out that the Germanic peoples probably had no direct contact with the Etruscans proper. Even though the Runic alphabet derives from the Etruscan alphabet, as you said, it most likely derives from any one of the northern variants of the alphabets, which were not used by the Etrsucans but by the multitude of ethnic groups that inhabited the Alps, including in particular by Celtic (the Leponti and Cisalpine Gauls) and Venetic groups (their variants are most similar to the Runic alphabets). There's also the Raetians "proper" (as opposed to the multitude of Indo-European peoples that were labeled by the Romans as "Raetians"), in the area of South Tyrol, which actually seem to have spoken an Etruscan-like language based on their inscriptions.

[Pax Augusta]

It should be pointed out that the Germanic peoples probably had no direct contact with the Etruscans proper. Even though the Runic alphabet derives from the Etruscan alphabet, as you said, it most likely derives from any one of the northern variants of the alphabets, which were not used by the Etrsucans but by the multitude of ethnic groups that inhabited the Alps, including in particular by Celtic (the Leponti and Cisalpine Gauls) and Venetic groups (their variants are most similar to the Runic alphabets). There's also the Raetians "proper" (as opposed to the multitude of Indo-European peoples that were labeled by the Romans as "Raetians"), in the area of South Tyrol, which actually seem to have spoken an Etruscan-like language based on their inscriptions.

You're right, Germanic peoples probably had no direct contact with the Etruscans. Furthermore Germanic people are attested later than Etruscans.

While Etruscans had surely direct contacts with the Celts. Etruscans settled also in north Italy (the most northern-western Italian settlement was probably Melphum in Lombardy, never really discovered) and Etruscans had commercial contacts with Hallstatt culture via the Golasecca culture in north Lombardy that borders Swiztlerland. Hallstatt culture itself was probably an intermediary with Golasecca and the Etruscans in the Amber trade from the Baltic sea.

On the other hand, as you said, northern variants of Etruscan alphabet was used by a multitude of ethnic groups that inhabited the Alps, including the Raetians that seem to have spoken an Etruscan-like language. There are still today some examples of toponyms of supposed Etruscan origin in modern-day south Tyrol and Veneto:

* Velturno (Feldthurns) in south Tyrol from Etruscan Velthur

* Varna (Vahrn) in south Tyrol from Etruscan Varna or Varenna

* Feltre in Veneto from Etruscan Felth(u)ri (or Velthuri)

[Sile]

It should be pointed out that the Germanic peoples probably had no direct contact with the Etruscans proper. Even though the Runic alphabet derives from the Etruscan alphabet, as you said, it most likely derives from any one of the northern variants of the alphabets, which were not used by the Etrsucans but by the multitude of ethnic groups that inhabited the Alps, including in particular by Celtic (the Leponti and Cisalpine Gauls) and Venetic groups (their variants are most similar to the Runic alphabets). There's also the Raetians "proper" (as opposed to the multitude of Indo-European peoples that were labeled by the Romans as "Raetians"), in the area of South Tyrol, which actually seem to have spoken an Etruscan-like language based on their inscriptions.

maybe these recent finds

http://altoadige.gelocal.it/tempo-li...ame-1.11218786

http://www.meteoweb.eu/2015/04/arche...c-foto/428638/

http://www.stonepages.com/news/archives/005499.html


The name Vinschgau (Ital: Val Venosta) is derived from the Rhaetian Venostes tribe,

may state a differing opinion

We just need to wait.

[MOESAN]

just some thought which could have taken place in other threads, as ever, because the human sicences are all linked one together

Etruscans
The mystery is still there concerning the Etruscans –
The phonetic question of South Germanic, second unvoicing of consonants, recall me the same phenomenon upon Hungary Magyar language and the no-voicing of Italian (+ spiration of unvoiced and even voiced consonants in Toscan dialects), opposite to the most of other romances evolution where no-gemination, voicing and lenition are common enough. All that could lead us to think an old population, present in Central Europe from Hungary to the Western Alps, could have had an influence on this evolution or lack of evolution. But let's be cautious. Every situation is a bit different and could be born upon different cirocnstances.
That said, what do we know for sure concerning Etruscan phonetic? Not too much: the orthography can abuse us very easily. And the substratum responsible (hypothesis) for the unvoicing could very well be foreign to Estruscan origins, and having acted on it as it can have acted on other learned languages. So this phonetic tendancy was maybe not provocated by genuine Etruscan phonetic habits.
Leaving here this complicated question of voicing, unvoicing, hard spirations and soft spirations which merit more attention in an other thread, let’s look at the culture:
For I red in Wiki and other abstracts (no scholar work at hand for Etruscans) it seems the Villanovia stage of culture preceded the well identified original Etruscan stage of Culture in N-E Italy. And the Etruscan paradygmus seems coinciding with a change in society, more hyerarchized and more luxious with East-Mediterranean clear influences. Even in the core of Etruscan territories it seems all sepultures were not completely homogenous: Hypogees, Tumuli for the site, more cremation but a bit of inhumation at same time for the mode? The cremation was already present among Villanovians (I think they were rather Osco-Umbrians people waiting more information). The big Etruscan towns were the first big ones in this part of Europe, and equiped with hydraulic engineering, fact which evocates me Near-East rather than “barbarian” Central Europe. The genetic surveys – helas only about mt-DNA – show links with Neolithic Central Europe but too with Anatolians - – but estimated at 3000 BC for Anatolians - and today Turcs. The cattle itself shows links with Near-East (not with the human people, but with their cattle!). The language on its side shows links with one of the Rhaetian lands languages and with old Lemnian.
All that makes difficult to discard a certain heterogeneity in the Etruscan world and an Eastern influence, but how and at what level ? .Trade exchanges can abuse us in part, but the strange big Hut Urns and some specific deportment of Etruscans we had not traces of them before put me to think they were not autochtonous for a long time in Italy, and they were of at least partly different stock compared to first Villanovians, even if we can figure out some common Anatolian or North-Near-Eastern imput in Hungary upon I-Eans at initial Urnfields times, what is not proved. But were they the same? Dubious. Concerning absence of traces of invasion, we know archeology cannot always give us too precise clues about tribes moves. Without the accounts made by ancient writers in Antuquity, could we weight and trace the moves of entire sets of celtic and germanic tribes from Northern Germany into Gaul and Iberia and Portugal? Not sure. Trade? Raids? Migrations?...
And Etruscans seem having been good sailors so… I avow I’m tempted to think in the famous Sea People story, when I see these Shekelesh, Shardana (with the horned helmet and the ‘kilt’ évocating Ugarit by instance) and Teresh rising in History, some time before (1300/1200 BC), and menacing the Egyptian Empire, far East for Italy. It seems the center of these great perturbations was the Egea Sea and its islands. The people concerned could have been evolved tribes of pre-I-Ean-Anatolian languages, around Eastern Greece, Egea and Western Anatolia, pushed away by I-Eans descending along western shores of the Black Sea and coming also from East or Central Anatolia. I'm not up to date concerning this “dark” period and we have more tan 400 years span between the big problems of the Egyptians empire (middle of 13° century BC) created by the Sea Peoples and the supposed 800 BC period of first Etruscans in Italy. ?… But I find simpler to imagine this people were settled more Eastwards during the egyptian events, before going to settle in far West. That said, during Tholos Nuraghi period in Sardinia, the Egee weapons seem appearing about the 1200 BC, accrediting possibly an early colonization of the island coinciding with the Sea People, what comes to contradict my hypothesis where I tried to link the Etruscans daybreak in Italy to the fresh colonization by a Teresh set. Who knows? Not me for now.