Reply to Tatyana Mikhailova

Tatyana A. MIKHAILOVA. Once again on the pre-Celtic substratum in the British Islands and using these reconstructions to build up branches of a linguistic genealogical tree is even less promising. Matasović’s conclusion that “finally, the fact that there appear to be only a few words of non-IE origin shared by Goidelic and Brythonic, but not by other Celtic or Indo-European languages, points to the conclusion that Proto-Insular Celtic was not the language spoken by the Celts who first came into contact with the preIndo-European inhabitants of the British Isles. As far as the evidence of these loanwords is concerned, Proto-Insular Celtic never existed” (p. 160) may be agreed with, but for a different reason — from the viewpoint of the conventional Gaulish-Brittonic theory. Analysis of obscure words held to be of substratal origin does not significantly change things. Insular Celtic is nothing more than a modelled molecule of imaginary substance, completely out of place within the linguistic model based on glottochronology. Of course, Matasović is not the only scholar to be blamed for that. In this case, is there any positive agenda in the substratum theory at all? For a long period of time, before Celtic languages were introduced to Britain and Ireland, earlier peoples must have used local toponyms for at least the most prominent features of the landscape, and some of these could have possibly survived the shift from languages now lost to those now present on the British Islands. One such group of identifiable toponyms consists of river-names that date from a very old stage of Western Indo-European. Such names have been identified on the Continent by Hans Krahe (Krahe 1962, 1964) and are also present in Britain (Nicolaisen 1976, 1982) and Ireland (de BernardoStempel 2000, 2005, 2007 and Vennemann 1998). These names are described as ‘Pre-Celtic’ or ‘Old European (Alteuropäisch)’. The development of this trend seems to be the only prospective way, but, although it was first contemplated quite a while ago, it has not yet yielded any linguistically reliable basis. Residues of so called «Old European» hydronymy have indeed been identified within Celtic-speaking regions — for example, the stem *ausa- or “the well-known hydronymic base *dura-/*duria” (De Bernardo Stempel 2000: 99). To those, we could add the etymologically obscure Irish hydronyms *ness- and *úr, but in any case, the whole matter lies in the domain of “the unresolved question about the real nature of the river-names ascribed to ‘Old European” hydronymy” (ibid.). This issue goes beyond the subject of Indo-European or Celtic studies and has little to do with either the construction of a genealogical tree for Celtic or arguments in favour of the Insular theory. Ranko Matasović University of Zagreb Reply to Tatyana Mikhailova In her comments on my article on the substratum in Insular Celtic, Tatyana Mikhailova raises some important questions. The first is the genetic classification of Celtic languages, on which I personally prefer to remain non-committed, but which is a matter of serious disputes in Celtic linguistics. I would say that the majority of scholars now seems to accept the “Insular Celtic” hypothesis of McCone, Schrijver, and others, but I agree with Mikhailova that the alternative, Gallo-Brythonic hypothesis, remains a viable option. I cannot agree, however, with her thesis that the distribution of non-Celtic loanwords in Insular Celtic languages is irrelevant to the issue of genetic classification. It is true that Irish and English share many loanwords from Old Norse, but the crucial thing is that we can show that they were borrowed independently in those languages. Of course, it would be absurd to assume that Irish and Welsh arrived to the British Isles before their separation because they share a huge number of loanwords from the same source (English), but this is because historical phonology of these languages shows that these loanwords entered both Irish and Welsh after certain exclusive Goidelic and Brythonic innovations. For example, although both W papur and Ir. páipéar come from English paper (ultimately, of course, from Gr. pápyros), it is clear that these words were borrowed after lenition and apocope that affected both 165 Discussion Articles / Дискуссионные статьи Goidelic and Brythonic, with different results. I believe the same argument holds for non-IE loanwords in Insular Celtic: since the number of such loanwords that are attested in both branches of Insular Celtic is rather small, it is more plausible to assume that the ancestors of the Irish and Welsh did not speak a single language at the time of borrowing of the substratum vocabulary. The opposite case (that the Insular Celts arrived to the British Isles as a single linguistic community, but borrowed very few common substratum words) remains a possibility, but to my mind it is clearly less probable. It is also possible that Celts simply did not borrow many words from substratum language(s) in the British Isles, but this is improbable considering the large number of words in Irish and Welsh that do not have any etymology at all and that cannot be projected to Proto-Insular Celtic. Of course, future etymological research could disprove this claim. Mikhailova is correct in arguing that the exact number of substratum words in Insular Celtic is uncertain, and I am quite convinced that it is indeed larger than the number indicated in my Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic (Matasović 2009). However, I do not find justified Mikhailova’s criticism of my ety- mology of OIr. fannall, MW gwennol “swallow”. The avocalism in Goidelic may be due to a trivial assimilation (*wesnālā > *wennālā > *wannālā), similar to wellestablished Joseph’s rule (*eRa > *aRa), which operated in Proto-Celtic. The existence of Gallo-Roman vanellus “Northern lapwing, vanellus vanellus” only shows that the reflex of Proto-Celtic *wesnālā “swallow” may have existed in Gaulish, where the Celtic suffix *­ālā was apparently replaced by the similar Latin ­ellus. I believe that, when a plausible Celtic and IndoEuropean etymology of a word exists, we need very strong reasons to assume that it was borrowed from some unknown source. Note, finally, that Proto-Celtic *brokko- “badger” may have an Indo-European etymology after all. Irene Balles (2010: 15–16) suggests that this word is derived from PIE *brogȹ-ko- (with the same suffix as in *sukko“pig” and *bukko- “goat”). The root would have been *bȹregȹ- “to smell, to stink” (Lat. fragrāre, OIr. braigid “to fart”). This etymology will be discussed in detail in the second, enlarged and corrected edition of my Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic (preliminary Addenda et corrigenda are available for free download from my website (http://www.ffzg.hr/~rmatasov). References ADAMS, G. B. 1980. ‘Place-Names from pre-Celtic Languages in Ireland and Britain’. Nomina 4: 46–63. BALLES, I. 2010. Some new Celtic and other etymologies. In: G. BELLUSCIO, A. MENDICINO, Scritti in onore di Eric Pratt Hamp per il suo 90. compleanno, Bari: Università della Calabria, 15–20. BALLES, I. 2011. Bespr.: Matasović R., Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic. Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 58, 265–289. BLAŽEK, V. 2007. From August Schleicher to Sergej Starostin: On the development of the tree-diagram models of the Indo-European languages. JIES, 35, N 1 & 2, 82–110. COWGILL, W. 1975. The Origin of the Insular Celtic Conjunct and Absolute Verbal Endings. In: H. RIX and al. (eds.). Flexion und Wortbildung. Wiesbaden, 40–70. DE BERNARDO STEMPEL, P. 2000. Ptolemy’s Italy and Ireland: a Linguistic Analysis. In: D. P ARSONS & P. SIMSWILLIAMS (eds.). Ptolemy. Towards a linguistic atlas of the earliest Celtic place-names of Europe. Aberystwyth. CMCS, 83–112. DE BERNARDO STEMPEL, P. 2005. More on Ptolemy’s evidence for Celtic Ireland. In: L. DE HOZ and P. SIMS-WILLIAMS (eds.). New approaches to Celtic place-names in Ptolemy’s Geography. Madrid: Ediciones Clásicas, 95–104. DE BERNARDO STEMPEL, P. 2006. Language and the Historiography of Celtic-Speaking Peoples. In: S. REICKHOFF (ed.). Celtes et Gaoulois, l’archéologie face à l’histoire. Bibracte. DE BERNARDO STEMPEL, P. 2007. Pre-Celtic, Old Celtic layers, Brittonic and Goidelic in ancient Ireland. In: P. C AVILL and G. BRODERICK (eds.). Language contact in the place-names of Britain and Ireland. Nottingham. English PlaceName Society, 137–163. DELAMARRE, X. 2003. Dictionnare de la langue gauloise. Une approche linguistique du vieux-celtique continental. Paris: Édition errance. FORSYTH, K. 1997. Language in Pictland. The case against ‘Non-Indo-European Pictish’, Münster: Nodus. GENSLER, O. 1993. A typological evaluation of Celtic/Hamito-Semitic syntactic parallels, unpublished PhD thesis, University of California Berkeley. 166 Ranko MATASOVIĆ. Reply to Tatyana Mikhailova GREENE, D. 1966. The making of Insular Celtic. In: Proceedings of the International Congress of Celtic Studies 1963, Cardiff: University of Wales Press: 123–136. HAWKES, C. F. C. 1973. Cumulative Celticity in Pre-Roman Britain. Études celtiques, 13, 606–628. ISAAC, G. 2001. The Function and Typology of Absolute and Conjunct Flexion in Early Celtic: Some Hints from Ancient Egyptian. Transactions of the Philological Society 99:1: 148–170. ISAAC, G. 2005. Insular Celtic vs. Gallo-Brittonic: an empirical or a methodological question? In: W. GILLES and D. W. HARDING (eds.). Celtic Connections. Edinburgh, 190–202. ISAAC, G. 2007a. Celtic and Afro-Asiatic. In: T RISTRAM (ed.), 25–80. ISAAC, G. 2007b. Studies in Celtic Sound Changes and Their Chronology. Innsbruck: Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft. JASKUŁA, K. 2006. Ancient Sound Changes and Old Irish Phonology. Lublin: Lublin Studies in Celtic Languages, 4. JONGELING, K. 2000. Comparing Welsh and Hebrew, Leiden: Research School of Asian, African and Amerindian Studies. KOCH, J. 1991. Ériu, Alba and Letha: When was a Language Ancestral to Gaelic First Spoken in Ireland? Emania. Bulletin of the Navan Research Group, 9, 17–27. KOCH, J. 1992. ‘Gallo-Brittonic’ vs. ‘Insular Celtic’: the Inter-relationships of the Celtic Languages Reconsidered. In: G. LE MENN (ed.) Bretagne et pays celtiques: langues, histoire, civilization. Saint-Brienc, Rennes, 471–495. KOVAL’, A. I. & ZUBKO, G. V. 1986. Jazyk fula, Moscow: Nauka. KRAHE, H. 1962. Die Struktur der alteuropäischen Hydronomie. In: Mainzer Akademie der Wissenschaften, Abhandlung der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse, Nr. 5.. KRAHE, H. 1964. Unsere ältesten Flussnamen. Heidelberg. LAMBERT, P.-Y. 1997. Gaulois tardif et latin vilgaire. ZCP, 49/50, 396–413. LEIA-B — Lexique étymologique de l’irlandais ancien de J. VENDRYES: B. Paris, 1980. LEIA-R,S — Lexique étymologique de l’irlandais ancien de J. VENDRYES: R, S. Paris, 1974. MACBAIN, A. 1982. An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language. Gairm Publications. Available at: http://www.ceantar.org/Dicts/MB2 MACEOIN, G. 1986. The Celticity of Celtic Ireland // K. H. SCHMIDT (ed.). Geschichte und Kultur der Kelten. Heidelberg, 161–174. MACLENNAN, M. 1979. A pronouncing and etymological dictionary of the Gaelic Language. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press. MALLORY, J. P. 1984. The Origin of the Irish. The Journal of Irish Archeology, 2. MATASOVIĆ, R. 2007. Insular Celtic as a Language Area. In: T RISTRAM 2007 (ed.): 93–113. MATASOVIĆ, R. 2009. Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic, Leiden: Brill. MCCONE, K. 1996. Towards a Relative Chronology of Ancient and Medieval Celtic Sound Change. Maynooth: Maynooth Studies in Celtic Linguistics I. MCCONE, K. 2005. Mögliche nicht-indogermanische Elemente in den keltischen Sprachen und einige frühe Entlehnungen aus indogermanischen Nachbarsprachen. In: G. MEISER und O. HACKSTEN (eds.) Sprachkontakt und Sprachwandel. Akten der XI. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, 2000. Wiesbaden, 395–435. MIKHAILOVA, T. 2007. Macc, Cailín and Céile — an Altaic Element in Celtic? In: TRISTRAM (ed.) 2007: 4–24. MITHUN, M. 1999. The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge. MORRIS-JONES, J. 1899. Pre-Aryan syntax in Insular Celtic. In: J. RHYS and D. BRYNMOR-JONES, The Welsh People, Oxford: Oxford University Press. NICOLAISEN, W. F. H. 1976. Scottish Place-Names. Their study and significance. London. NICOLAISEN, W. F. H. 1982. Old European Names in Britain, Nomina 6, 37–41. OREL, V. 2003. A Handbook of Germanic Etymology. Leiden: Brill. POKORNY, J. 1949. Zum nicht-indogermanischen Substrat im Inselkeltischen, Die Sprache 1, 235–245. RUSSELL, P. 1995. An Introduction to the Celtic Languages. London — New York: Longman. SADIQI, F. 1997. Grammaire du berbère, Paris: L’Harmattan. SCHMIDT, K.H. 1980. Continental Celtic as an Aid to the Reconstruction of Proto-Celtic. KZ, XCIV, 1980. SCHRIJVER, P. 1995. Studies in British Celtic Historical Phonology. Amsterdam — Atlanta: Leiden Studies in IndoEuropean 5. 167 Discussion Articles / Дискуссионные статьи SCHRIJVER, P. 2007. Lost Languages in Northern Europe. In: Ch. CARPELAN, A.PARPOLA, P.KOSKIKALLIO (eds.) Early Contacts between Uralic and Indo-European: Linguistic and Archaeological Considerations. Helsinki: SuomalaisUgrilainen Seura, 418–425. SCHRIJVER, P. 1997. Animal, vegetable and mineral: some Western European substratum words. In: A. LUBOTSKY (ed.). Sound Law and Analogy (Festschrift Beekes), Amsterdam: Rodopi, 293–316. SCHRIJVER, P. 2000. Varia V: Non-Indo-European surviving in Ireland in the first millennium AD. Ériu LI, 195–199. SCHRIJVER, P. 2005. Varia I: More on non-Indo-European surviving in Ireland in the first millennium AD. Ériu LV, 137–144. SCHUMACHER, S. 2004. Schumacher S. Die keltischen Primäverben. Inssbruk. SHERRATT, A. 1994. The Transformation of Early Agrarian Europe: The Later Neolithic and Copper Ages, 4500– 2500 BC. In: The Oxford Illustrated History of Prehistoric Europe, ed. by B. CUNLIFFE, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 167–201. SIMS-WILLIAMS, P. 2007. Studies on Celtic Languages before the Year 1000. Aberystwyth: CMCS. STIFTER, D. 2010. The Invisible Third. The Basque and Celtic Words for ‘Swallow’. Ériu LX, 145–157. THOMASON, S. G. 2001. Language Contact, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. TRISTRAM, H. (ed.) 2007. The Celtic Languages in Contact, Papers from the Workshop within the Framework of the XIII International Congress of Celtic Studies, Bonn, 26–27 July 2007. Potsdam: Potsdam University Press. VENNEMANN, Th. 1998a. Zur Etymologie von Éire, dem Namen Irlands. Sprachwissenschaft 23: 461–469. VENNEMANN, Th. 1998b. Remarks on some British place-names. In: G. F. CARR, W. HARBERT & L. ZHANG (eds.). Interdigitations. Essays for Irmengard Rauch, Berlin: Peter Lang, 25–62. WAGNER, H. 1959. Das Verbum in den Sprachen der britischen Inseln, Tübingen: Niemeyer. Дискуссия посвящена проблеме докельтского субстрата Британских островов. Статья Р. Матасовича, в первую очередь, касается анализа синтаксических черт, общих для островных кельтских языков (бриттский, гойдельский) и языков, входящих в афроазиатскую макросемью. Вторая часть его статьи представляет собой анализ кельтской лексики, не имеющей индоевропейской этимологии и предположительно субстратной. Значительная часть таких лексем засвидетельствована только в бриттском и гойдельском, и автор предлагает реконструировать их протоформы на уровне островного кельтского. Эта идея отвергается Т. Михайловой, которая предпочитает трактовать данные слова как более поздние параллельные заимствования в гойдельский и бриттский из одного и того же субстратного языка. Генетическая отнесенность данного субстратного языка остается не проясненной у обоих авторов. Ключевые слова: докельтский субстрат, гойдельский язык, бриттский язык, островные кельтские языки, классификация кельтских языков, этимология, реконструкция, лекические заимствования, бродячие слова. 168