Talk:Italo-Celtic

moved from Talk:Indo-European languages
I see you are warming up now, Angr :) Italo-Celtic, however, has  much much fewer supporters than Balto-Slavic ever had, if anyone was ever even positively postulating it. Here you have a group that linguists will shrug off as spurious. I don't object to mentioning it, though (but it should at least have a stub article), but it has nowhere near majority support. dab (&#5839;) 16:18, 17 May 2005 (UTC)


 * That wasn't Angr; that was me. Anyway, Italo-Celtic may not have majority support (which is why I didn't list it in the same manner as Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian), but there are a non-trivial number of mainstream linguists who believe in it, right? Anyway, I felt it was worth mentioning, since it is a well-known meme anyway; and I'll write up a stub article as soon as I can find exactly what the shared features of Italic and Celtic are that lead linguists to posit this family. (I know one is the assimilation of *p...kw to *kw...kw; and they both retain 3sg mediopassive endings in *-tor rather than *-toi, though the latter isn't positive evidence.) AJD 16:34, 17 May 2005 (UTC)


 * sorry, I just saw the A :)
 * sure it's ok, I was not objecting. The p/q stuff has ceased to be evidence, since both branches have both, I think. Quite important was the i-Genitive, but that's out of the picture too. Not sure about the r endings, they may still be a point. I couldn't name a scholar who was convinced of Italo-Celtic, but I reckon there were a few. Would be nice if you hacked together an article on it. I just wanted to point out that I-C acceptence is nowhere near Balto-Slavic acceptence, among Indo-Europeanists (not to you in particular, but to the world at large, including the balts:) dab (&#5839;) 16:42, 17 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Sorry, AJD, but the Italo-Celtic hypothesis has been dead since the discovery of Hittite and Tocharian, which showed that mediopassive *-tor goes all the way back to the proto-language. Two branches keeping the same archaism doesn't prove anything; you have to prove a shared innovation to prove a common ancestry, and there's just no convincing evidence that Italic and Celtic have any shared innovations. --Angr/comhrá 16:46, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

DAB: I'm not sure what you mean by "both branches have both". Anyway, according to this PDF I also find 1pl mediopassive in *-mor, which is more probative than *-tor; subjunctives in *-ã-; and the development of laryngeals following syllabic sonorants into ã. I'm pretty sure Don Ringe of Tandy Warnow are reasonably convinced of Italo-Celtic, by the way. AJD 16:52, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
 * okay, let's take this to Talk:Italo-Celtic. My memory is not too fresh on this, yes there was the a subjunctive, and the r endings, even though inherited from the Proto-Language may still point to some common innovations by their distribution. By the way, Angr, since you seem to be on top of this, do you remember this r form Jasanoff discovered in both Tocharian and Hittite? What was that exactly, I forget the details, but it was rather impressive. Shall we go and write a section on the verb over at PIE?


 * I don't think Jay discovered it. I learned about it from him, and as I remember it, as soon as Hittite and Tocharian were discovered they were found to have passives in -r. I can't remember what he had to say about the &#257;-subjunctive, though. The 1 pl. in -mor and the development of CrHC to Cr&#257;C aren't convincing to me; they both could have arisen in both branches independently (the first one by analogy, the second by sound change). Tandy Warnow isn't an Indo-Europeanist (or even a linguist), and Don seems to have given up on the comparative method a number of years ago. I remember hearing him give a talk at an Indo-European conference ten years ago or more that left everyone scratching their heads and wondering who this man was and what he had done with Don Ringe. --Angr/comhrá 17:16, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
 * no, I didn't mean to say JJ discovered there are r forms in Hitt. and Toch. :) There was one particular irregular form, some 3rd person in one of those Tocharian paradigms, which has a parallel in Hittite and must be a striking archaism. He wrote about it in TIES in the 80s, and expanded on that (single form....) since then. dab (&#5839;) 18:18, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
 * No, I don't remember, and the TIES paper isn't among the papers of his I have. I can write him and ask if you like. --Angr/comhrá 19:11, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I do have a paper of Jay's from 1983 where he talks about the &#257;-subjunctive of Italic and Celtic; it isn't a common innovation either; it's there in Tocharian and is related to a preterite suffix in Baltic and a sort of grab-bag verbal suffix in Slavic. --Angr/comhrá 19:42, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I'll try to find the TIES paper, it'll be a matter of half an hour, not reason to write him, we can do that once we have a good question :) well, the fact that a suffix is grundsprachlich doesn't preclude common innovation. It'd be a common innovation already if the suffix was used in a peculiar way or meaning different from the use as reconstructed for the proto-language. let's talk about this on Italo-Celtic, I'll get to dig into it more tomorrow, I think. dab (&#5839;) 08:57, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't want to talk about it at Italo-Celtic since that article (and its talk page) do not exist yet, nor should they IMHO. Since the suffix is used for the subjunctive in Tocharian as well, I don't think it can be an Italo-Celtic innovation to use it for the subjunctive. --Angr/comhrá 09:32, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I will create that article, sometime. Not because I believe in the group, obviously, but as an article on a historical theory, precisely to have a place to discuss these things. I do believe in some areal contact between early Italians & Celts, but not quite at a genetic level. See also our discussion on Talk:Vates. dab (&#5839;) 09:18, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

for the record, the Jasanoff article I was looking for above appeared in TIES 2 (1988), and the forms in question are the s third person singular endings in both the Tocharian s-preterite, and the Anatolian preterite. dab (&#5839;) 10:49, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Kortlandt
Does anyone have access to the new Kortlandt book? It would be important to know if there is anything innovative here. --Doric Loon (talk) 08:40, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Right now I'm living just up the street from Columbia University, where according to WorldCat they have a copy. The book is a collection of his newer and older papers on the subject. If I can get a look at it and make copies I'll work on this article more. Then I might contact him. Nora lives (talk) 03:35, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

POI
Just a couple of points of information, but they need checking so I won't edit the page myself.

PIE *pekʷ- 'cook'  looks like it ought to be related to Welsh _pobi_ 'to bake' going back I think to something like _*pa:p-_ << _kʷa:kʷ-_. Isn't there an p-Italic word something like _popina_ borrowed into Latin for an Oscan takeaway?

PIE *ponkʷu- 'all' → Latin cunctus; no Celtic cognate. There is a root like this, but without the -n- that gives Welsh _pawb/pob_, Breton, Cornish _peub_/_peb_(B),_pub_(C) 'every(one), each' (The first form in each case is stressed and a pronoun, the second an unstressed proclitic). In Irish the unstressed form had it's initial voiced from _cach_ to _gach_ 'each, every'. The stressed version is found in the fixed phrase _ca:ch-a-cheile_ 'each other, one another' lit. 'everyone his companion'. These all point back to _*kʷa:kʷ-_ which could be from _pa:kʷ-_. Mongvras (talk) 21:48, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Deponent verbs?
If deponent verbs existed throughout the Italic and Celtic family of languages, at or before the time of Julius Caesar, which verbs would these have been?

I guess I am asking whether someone, somewhere, has tried to reconstruct a pan-celtic or pan-italic language, and what kind of decision would have been made about the presence or absence of deponent verbs.

Most of us expect verbs to be complete and not defective, and conjugate our verbs that way, but every now and then it would do us well to stop and think, and say, "Hey, maybe irregular verbs are quite common (or at least strangely persistent) in language families like those similar to Classical Latin." Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 03:24, 14 February 2010 (UTC) Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 03:25, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
 * There were deponent verbs already in Proto-Indo-European. I think there are only a few individual verbs that are definitely identifiable as having been deponent in PIE, such as the "follow" verb, which is deponent in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and Old Irish, so we can be pretty sure it was deponent in PIE too. But most verbs that are deponent in one language don't necessarily have deponent cognates in other languages, so it's hard to be sure which verbs are "old" deponents. +Angr 11:42, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
 * This is not deponent, but medio passive. Logically, if you are following, you are not really the one doing the action, so you are between active and passive voices. This is not a deponent. --Ioscius ∞ 14:33, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
 * "Logically, if you are following, you are not really the one doing the action"? That's not logical at all. In fact, it makes no sense. Or do you think a hunter following a game animal isn't doing any action? +Angr 18:23, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Right to you it makes no sense. Didn't to me at first either. But think of a martial arts system like judo, where the whole principle of the system is responding to another's attack, using their energy against them. That could totally be seen as middle. The case of the hunter could be seen as that, too, especially thousands of years ago when weapons were less advanced. Hunting was a lot of laying low and tracking your animal, letting it do the action and you responding. The same sense makes sense in a military society. Sure you're physically active in the military, but you are not the one making decisions. Now if duco were deponent, we'd be really confused. This I think holds a lot of water.
 * Other verbs start to make sense in the middle, too: utor, I'm being useful by means of the ablative. Extensions of this way of thinking about it clear up a lot of mysteries, like why utor shouldn't have an accusative. Apricor, is there anything less active than sunbathing? Loquor, take the English phrase "actions speak louder than words". Miror, same idea. Gratulor the whole idea is that somebody else did it, or you wouldn't be congratulating them in the first place. Mentior is logical, too, because if you're lying, you didn't actually do the things you are saying, or it wouldn't be a lie!
 * For an extreme example, let's take mahomai in Greek. How on earth should fighting be anything but active? Well what if it's in a cooperative middle? I am taking part in a fight. Cooperative middles exist in several languages, and survive in abundantia as a "reflexive" middle in modern European languages. Take pogovarjati se in Slovene which means "to discuss/chat with". Even in the singular you need the se because it is a cooperative middle because unlike saying or telling (both intransitives without se in Slovene, but remember the above loquor...) to discuss you absolutely need two people who both act and both are acted upon. Hence the reflective middle.
 * Middle doesn't need to be reflexive, it just needs to be hard to tell who is the actor and who is the acted upon. In mahomai, both parties act and both parties are acted upon. On the other hand, take slaughter, which turns up some 25+ verb entires in Lidell and Scott, not a single one of which is middle. Now I'll readily admit the criterion for what makes a word middle in the eyes of one linguistic culture are often baffling to us native English speakers, who have an extraordinarily poor middle system, mostly reserved for inanimate objects doing things they shouldn't ("The door opens", for instance). I posit that it's not, however, any weirder than the twists and turns lexical roots took from PIE to daughter languages. This explains why we have a hard time thinking that talking and thinking and so on can be something other than active. Our brains are just not encoded for middle.
 * All this said, of course a lot of this is original research, so I'm not suggesting anyone run with it on wiki, but it's about time we started understanding the middle better so we can teach our students without the dazed looks when we mention the word deponent which means even less to the mind of the typical high school Latin student than middle voice. Plus it gets them thinking for reasons that a verb should be deponent (I loathe to type the word), instead of dumbly accepting an unnecessarily puzzling grammatical rule.
 * If you find exceptions, eh, what can I say, there are exceptions to even every exception, but I really suggest you give the exercise a go, and see where it gets you. And remember, I said logically (deduction) not obviously ;] Cheers. --Ioscius ∞ 12:13, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Archaism of West IE verbal systems
On the archaism of West IE verbal systems in general and then with a focus on Celtic, Winfred Lehmann published two interesting papers:


 * Winfred P. Lehmann, "Frozen Residues and Relative Dating", in Varia on the Indo-European Past: Papers in Memory of Marija Gimbutas, eds. Miriam Robbins Dexter and Edgar C. Polomé. Washington D.C.: Institute for the Study of Man, 1997. pp. 223-46
 * Winfred P. Lehmann, "Early Celtic among the Indo-European dialects", in Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 49-50, Issue 1 (1997): 440-54.

Unfortunately I have misplaced my copies and the nearest academic library is 60 miles away. He was into their apparent early active-stativeness. DinDraithou (talk) 14:49, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Lehmann's "Frozen Residues and Relative Dating" I should now have access to again. If I can't get the other for free maybe I'll just pay for it. The trouble is that I have them mixed up in my head. In the West IE context he brings in Germanic, discussing the case system as conservative/archaic instead of the more commonly assumed degeneration from something like in Vedic. His argument is that West IE is overall more conservative, from what I can recall. Unfortunately Lehmann died in 2007 and we have no one to talk to I know of for anything more. Nora lives (talk) 03:35, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

"Italo-Celtic is a term that refers to ..."
I consider this kind of phrasing flabby and evasive, so can we give it some more substance?

How about something like: The Italo-Celtic languages are a controversial grouping of the Italic and Celtic branches of the Indo-European language family, constituting either a Sprachbund or a subfamily sharing descent from a postulated Proto-Italo-Celtic language. —Tamfang (talk) 04:49, 24 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Seems a lot better; I will add that or something similar. --Doric Loon (talk) 09:54, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * OK, I've tried that, with a slightly different wording. The main focus should be on Italo-Celtic forms, since that is what everyone agrees on. The theory that these represent Italo-Celtic languages is controversial, so that should come further down the paragraph. But the grouping of the forms is not controversial. But what I have done is 90% your wording, Tamfang. --Doric Loon (talk) 10:01, 25 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I am appeased. ;) —Tamfang (talk) 19:05, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

With certain reservations, I'd say the whole article could use some simplification. I've said this before and had rotten veggies tossed at me, but this is not strictly an academic paper or a linguist's essay only. This is supposed to be an encyclopedic entry! It hardly looks like one. And, please, Sprachbund?! How many average users might understand what that is? I don't say it is totally unnecessary, but I do say, Simplify!

One other thing: I'd have to insist that Italo-Celtic is still a controversial idea. Though not on Wikipedia, I await the reaction of Celtic-oriented linguists in the debate! Then there are "Italo purists" and they have a thing or two to say about this being a definite branch. Djathink imacowboy  19:15, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Hopefully no one will become disappeased with my grammar corrections. If you will look, you'll see what I meant by "simplification". There's no need to have such a heavy-handed grammatical style here. Djathink  imacowboy  19:21, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I think the article makes it pretty clear that the idea of an Italo-Celtic "branch" is controversial. The idea of some shared forms which can conveniently be called Italo-Celtic is not controversial - they certainly exist. Then the opinions vary about how to explain them.
 * By all means try to simplify the article, but be careful not to lose precision. Removing technical jargon is good - dumbing down is bad.
 * BTW, when you comment here on talk, please do think about whether you are starting a new discussion, and if so, put it at the bottom of the page and give it a new heading.--Doric Loon (talk) 09:40, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, your comments are appreciated and clarification is always good. However, you will note that whilst I remove certain 'purple prose', I would never touch the hard work of other editors in the way of terminology or other details. Djathink imacowboy  19:47, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

CeltItalic
Well I have a small problem with the removal of the a/k/a, "Celtitalic". As a former student of IndoEuropeanology, I'm very familiar with this term since it was the original term. The editor who reverted this term does not know what he's talking about! I'm not starting an edit war over this, but gets your facts straight! Djathink imacowboy  18:48, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, Angr is a competent linguist, but no doubt even he doesn't know everything. Celto-Italic (surely that would have to be the form?) would be new to me too, though. Can you cite a source? Maybe you still have one of your old text books? --Doric Loon (talk) 21:15, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I could believe Celto-Italic (it even gets Google hits). Celtitalic is rather unlikely; perhaps someone's confusing it with Celtiberian. But CeltItalic with CamelCase I absolutely, positively refuse to believe. Angr (talk) 22:20, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

This is one I will have to surrender to, because all I have for a source is my memory. In several papers and a couple of books, the term Celtitalic was used. I can even recall when I first read it proposed as a term. It caused a stir and people were offended by the very idea. As you know, some still hold the entire Italo-Celtic branch hypothesis in contempt. And I doubt you began with IndoEuropeanology when I did (1976). I know my only two texts remaining, The Europeans and In Search of the Indo-Europeans use only the term "Italo-Keltic" and "Italo-Celtic", respectively. My memory is no source worthy of being thrown round anywhere! Djathink imacowboy  23:04, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Numeration section
Brikane, please stop adding the section on numeration. As per WP:BRD, it's fine to make a bold change, but if that change gets reverted it is not acceptable to simply undo the revert. Both Doric Loon and I have removed this section, which should make it plain to you that you do not have consensus to include it. A list of numbers in modern Romance and Celtic languages does not in any way help illustrate this article; the number system isn't even used as an argument in favor of Italo-Celtic hypothesis. Including the list merely distracts from the point. Angr (talk) 21:02, 8 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I see that six years later, an IP user (Brikane?) has reintroduced this. Interesting as it may be to compare numerals in different languages, the Italic and Celtic numerals are not Italo-Celtic forms in the sense intended in this article. Italo-Celtic forms are similarities between Italic and Celtic which are not also found in other Indo-European language groups. The numerals are not in this category. Please understand that this is not an article about "anything Italic and/or Celtic" - it is, rather, about a very precisely defined hypothesis on specific phenomena. --Doric Loon (talk) 20:53, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Citation forms
Rather than cite W. _pob_ and Ir. _gach_ (both meaning 'each, every') which are reduced unstressed proclitic forms, it would I think be clearer to use their stressed equivalents, W. _pawb_ 'everyone', Ir. _càch_ (as in _càch-a-chéile_ 'each other', lit. 'everyone his companion'). 109.176.199.169 (talk) 17:08, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and removed it completely, because cách and pawb are not related to Latin cunctus anyway. They're from Proto-Celtic *kʷākʷo-, from PIE *kʷākʷo- or *kʷōkʷo- and are related to OCS kakъ (source: Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic, pp. 173-74). If *ponkʷu- > *kʷonkʷu- > *kʷonku- had survived into Insular Celtic, I think it would have given something like Irish *cug and Welsh *pwnc. Angr (talk) 18:00, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Updating
Michael Weiss's work on Italo-Celtic is pretty interesting, so I more or less just plopped a reference in. I'll try to incorporate content more later. I also removed un-sourced reference to Latin vir, Ir. fír as being a special way of referring to males, since it is a shared (and not very distinctive) retention found also in Germanic (OE wer 'man') and as far afield as Sanskrit vīra-. If this is part of some broader complex of shared male vocabulary, this did not come across and would have to be more carefully stated. 192.150.186.97 (talk) 21:30, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Recent edit controversy
I'm a little perplexed at what seems to be a minor edit war in the last few days which has resulted in this article being protected. Someone added a paragraph of what looked like good-faith edit content, that was deleted, reinstated, deleted... The odd thing is that not a word appeared about it here on talk, and neither side gave meaningful edit summaries. The content of the paragraph looked pretty questionable to me, but I wouldn't have deleted something like that without saying why. Maybe if someone involved can tell us here why they do or do not think that material belongs here, we'd all be enlightened? --Doric Loon (talk) 09:58, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the confusion. :) The issue is block evasion, Doric Loon. A user was blocked for serial copyright infringement and has responded by creating sock accounts and editing through a series of IPs. His or her edits have been deleted per WP:EVASION. They have been prolific enough across a broad enough expanse of articles that rollback has sometimes been employed rather than undo and hence no edit summaries. Articles he is targeting are now being semi-protected. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:15, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I see. Thanks for explaining. --Doric Loon (talk) 19:03, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Map
I've just removed a map that was put up here in August by Theutatis. It was added without explanation - not even an edit summary - and seems problematic for two reasons. First, because no source is given, it may be copyright, and even if it is not, we need to know where the information comes from. And second, because at best this presents one view, but it looks like it is authoritative. As the section it is attached to says, the idea that there was a proto-language at all is now a minority view. I should imagine any theories about where that proto-language was spoken are even more controversial. If this map can be said to represent the view of one major linguist, it can be reintroduced provided that linguist's name appears in the caption and it is clear that the map relates only to that theory. --Doric Loon (talk) 19:35, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Edit war?
There seems to be an edit war going on here between User:Cdjp1 and User:Tursclan. Since neither of them have provided either edit summaries or discussion here on talk, it looks like neither of them are following best practice. Can we have some consultation here please? --Doric Loon (talk) 13:24, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I will provide sources. That Ancient Ligurian and Lusitan language are part of Italo-Celt family is only a speculation. Ancient Ligurian is not even attested by inscriptions, see my message in the Ancient Ligurian discussion page. --Tursclan (talk) 13:34, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
 * My apologies I have no excuse for my poor behaviour. I will argue for the inclusion of the information, specifically two languages that are often included in the hypothetical Italo-celtic as evidenced by the citations given. -Cdjp1 (talk) 13:37, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Due to the inability to say for definite whether Ligurian would be included in such a grouping is indicated in the edit by "?". -Cdjp1 (talk) 13:39, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Italo-Celtic framework
Hello. I wanted to ask if there are any new information regarding the Italo-Celtic migration path? 19:59, 30 June 2021 (UTC)~

one huge dissimilarity
Note well that Celtic languages show evidence of the merging of voiced aspirates and voiced stops as does not happen in Italic or Hellenic. Hellenic simply devoiced the aspirated stops; Italic looks as if it made sibilants out of the sorts of devoiced aspirates that Hellenic had. Sp PIE *bH, *dH, and *gH became b, d, and g in Common Celtic; ph, th, and kh in Hellenic; and likely morphed  into f, θ, and χ very early in Italic in pre-literary times before χ generally became Italic h and θ went into f or h. Pbrower2a (talk) 21:11, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
 * That's certainly true. The place to discuss it would be on pages focussing on the phonological development of the individual languages. Obviously, there are more differences than similarities, otherwise linguists wouldn't have to hypothesize a controversial relationship. --Doric Loon (talk) 10:34, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Paradoxically the classical Greek unvoiced aspirates ph, th, and kh in Classical Greek (represented by the Greek letters φ, χ, and θ) have themselves become the sibilants (IPA) f, x, and θ, so that transformation was not without precedent. Pbrower2a (talk) 09:17, 10 May 2022 (UTC)