Ray,

Would you know whence Lluyd got the inspiration for the name "Celtic" then?
As the recent SpecGram article on classifying languages by their word for
"umbrella" suggests, Italo-Celtic is more than just a passing oddity. ;)

Eugene

2010/6/27 R A Brown <[log in to unmask]>

> Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
>
>> Hallo!
>>
>> On Sat, 26 Jun 2010 21:42:10 +0100, R A Brown wrote:
>>
> [snip]
>
>  The connexion between the languages was not recognized
>>> till the 18th century when the term 'Celtic' was also
>>> coined to denote the sub-family of IE that these two
>>> were thought to form.
>>>
>>
>> As far as I remember it, J. J. Scaliger's 1599
>> classification of the languages of Europe (the one with
>> the "Deus" [Romance], "Theos" [Greek], "Gott" [Germanic]
>> and "Boge" [Slavic] families besides seven smaller ones)
>> treats British Celtic and Irish Celtic as two distinct
>> families (and designates neither of them "Celtic").
>>
>
> Yep - nobody ever called anyone in Ireland or Britain 'Celtic' until the
> 18th century    :)
>
> It was the work of Edward Lluyd, the Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in
> Oxford in the early 18th century who did years of fieldwork & research into
> the grammatical structures of these two groups of languages that first made
> clear their relationship. At the same time a Breton, Paul-Yves Perzon
> suggested a connexion between the Welsh & Bretons and the ancient peoples of
> Gaul. Spurred on by this, Lluyd developed the notion, now universally
> accepted, that the Gaelic languages of Ireland & Scotland, and Welsh,
> Cornish, Breton and the language(s) of ancient Gaul formed one IE sub-family
> and it was he who first designated as as 'Celtic'.
>
> This coincided with the developing Romantic movement and thus, as J.R.R.
> Tolkien noted, "'Celtic' of any sort is, nonetheless, a magic bag, into
> which anything may be put, and out of which almost anything may come. ...
> Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight, which is not so much a
> twilight of the gods as of the reason."
>
>
>  I think that the Celtic branch of Indo-European is
>> securely established by now, even if the two branches of
>> Insular Celtic parted ways quite a bit earlier than North
>> and West Germanic (let alone West, East and South
>> Slavic), though later than Indic and Iranian, and are
>> often assumed to represent two separate waves of
>> immigration into the British Isles.
>>
>
> Yep - tho several interesting similarities with the Italic branch have led
> some to posit an earlier 'Italo-Celtic' subdivision.
>
>
>  The typological "weirdness" (VSO order, initial
>> mutations, etc.) that unites the two branches of Insular
>> Celtic against the rest of IE (including, most
>> importantly, the Continental Celtic languages which apparently were pretty
>> "well-behaved" western IE
>> languages), appears to be some sort of areal or
>> substratal phenomenon.  The notion that the substratum
>> responsible for this was Semitic is popular,
>>
>
> I have also come across the theory that the 'weirdness' of 'Insular Celtic'
> was due to creolization which developed from trade pidgin that had grown up
> between peoples of these islands and Phoenician traders (who certainly did
> trade with Britain)
> ---------------------------------------------
>
>
> Larry Sulky wrote:
> > Jörg, are there any living examples of these
> > "well-behaved" Continental Celtic languages?
>
> Nope - they (practically) all gave way to Vulgar Latin/Proto-Romance.
>
>
> > Breton is a
> > reintroduction from the islands, isn't it? It does
> > feature mutation, IIRC. --larry
>
> It does - it is closely related to Cornish. It used to be thought it was
> taken to Brittany by refugees from Cornwall escaping from Saxon raids.  It
> is now thought they were more likely fleeing from the Irish who they
> certainly did not recognize as "fellow Celts."
>
>
> --
> Ray
> ==================================
> http://www.carolandray.plus.com
> ==================================
> Nid rhy hen neb i ddysgu.
> There's none too old to learn.
> [WELSH PROVERB]
>