  68 REMARKS ON THE INSULAR CELTIC/HAMITO-SEMITIC QUESTION Steve Hewitt The hypothesis of a Hamito-Semitic substratum in the Insular Celtic languages elaborated successively by Morris-Jones, Pokorny and Wagner to explain a number of striking structural resemblances between Insular Celtic and Hamito-Semitic is enjoying a revival. While linguists have generally assumed that the parallels between Insular Celtic and Hamito-Semitic are to be explained in terms of Greenbergian typology (all languages of the VSO type), the recent work of Gensler, and also Jongeling and Vennemann, compels us to revisit the substratum hypothesis. The purpose of this article is to act as a guide to the main contributions on the question (several of which are reproduced in this volume), provide a table, arranged by author and language, showing the principal points of similarity, comment on a number of those points, and sound a note of caution against what might be called ‘substratum frenzy’. An extensive bibliography is provided, with the following sections: ‘The Insular Celtic/Hamito-Semitic question’, ‘Celtic – general’, ‘Hamito-Semitic – general’ and ‘Celtic influence on English’. Main authors Both Gensler, in his thesis ‘A typological evaluation of Celtic/HamitoSemitic syntactic parallels’ (1993: 57–191), and Jongeling, in Comparing Welsh and Hebrew (2000: 6–64), provide extensive surveys of earlier authors on the Insular Celtic/Hamito-Semitic question. The first mention of structural similarities between Insular Celtic and Hamito-Semitic was in Davies, Antiquae Linguae Britannicae (1621), where a number of resemblances between Welsh and Hebrew were noted. Numerous other seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth-century Welsh authors draw parallels with Hebrew, but many of these focus on, to say the least, fanciful etymologies rather than structural 230      / -  similarities. John Rhos, in Lectures on Welsh Philology (1877: 189 f.) and subsequent works raises the possibility that pre-Aryan languages may have exerted structural influence on the Insular Celtic languages. Morris Jones, ‘Pre-Aryan syntax in Insular Celtic’ (1900, pp. 103–22 in this volume), reviews startling similarities between Welsh and Egyptian, including (pp. 625–6) the periphrastic conjugation be + preposition + verbal noun: ‘In Welsh and Irish, although these languages retain many of the Aryan tenses, this construction is extremely common . . . The three prepositions commonly used for this purpose in Egyptian are em “in”, er “to, for”, Her “above” [= Loprieno, Ancient Egyptian (1995: 80), m “in”, r “towards”, Hr “on”] indicating the present, future, and perfect respectively. These correspond in use with the Welsh prepositions yn “in”, am “for”, wedi “after”.’ He also notes the surprising parallels between Welsh yn and Egyptian em [= Loprieno m]: (1) preposition ‘in’, (2) ‘in’ + verbal noun = progressive, and (3) predicative and adverbializing ‘in’. Other similarities are noted with Berber, but no Semitic language is examined. He concludes (p. 639) that the resemblance seems to involve an intimate connection of some kind between the two families of speech in the prehistoric period, though they are probably not actually cognate. It is with Hamitic, however, rather than Semitic, that Celtic syntax is in agreement; for, as we have seen . . . it . . . agrees with Berber where the latter differs markedly from Arabic, as, for instance, in the shifting of the pronominal suffix from the verb to a preceding particle . . . Is the influence of a Hamitic substratum to be discovered in the simultaneous development on the same analytic lines of French, Spanish, and Italian in their use of infixed and postfixed pronouns? Morris Jones’s article was not well received by the Celtic academic establishment of the day, and he never returned to the subject. Pokorny’s magnum opus on the subject, ‘Das nicht-indogermanische Substrat im Irischen’ (1927–1930), has been conveniently reduced to 64 features by Vennemann in ‘Semitic → Celtic → English: The transivity of language contact’ (2002: 324–6). Pokorny’s discursive text is often impressionistic, with numerous examples (never glossed, at best paraphrased) from Hamito-Semitic languages, as well as as Cushitic, Bantu (including unseemly references (1927: 137) to ‘Negersprachen’ deemed ‘ungemein primitiv’), Basque, Finno-Ugric, Caucasian, etc., all grist to his substratal mill. He proposes (1927: 100 ff.) that in a language with a strong, aristocratic literary tradition such as Irish, substratal influence may take some time (even several generations) to become apparent in the written language. As may be seen from the bibliography, Pokorny continued to write on the subject throughout his life; his most concise statement of the linguistic features shared by Insular Celtic 231   and Hamito-Semitic is in ‘Keltische Urgeschichte und Sprachwissenschaft’ (1959), where he identifies a more managageable list of 20 shared features, most of which are included in the table of shared features below. See also ‘The pre- Celtic inhabitants of Ireland’ (1960, p. 122 in this volume). Wagner’s main work on the Insular Celtic/Hamito-Semitic question (usefully summarised by Gagnepain in ‘A propos du “verbe celtique” ’ (1961) ) is Das Verbum in den Sprachen der britischen Inseln (The Verb in the Languages of the British Isles) (1959), especially the third part, entitled ‘Die sprachgeographische Stellung des britischen Verbums’ (the linguistic geography position of the Brittonic verb), with sections on ‘Das Keltische, Berberische, Baskische, Englische und Französische als Vertreter einer nordafrikanisch-westeuropäischen Sprachschicht, dargestellt am Bau des Verbums’ (Celtic, Berber, Basque, English and French as representatives of a North African–Western European linguistic stratum, exemplified by the structure of the verb), ‘Das berberische Verbalsystem’ ( The Berber verb system) and ‘Bemerkungen zum semitischen Verbalsystem’ (Remarks on the Semitic verb system). He describes his basic position in ‘The Celtic invasions of Ireland and Great Britain: Facts and theories’ (1987: 19–20) as follows: Between the fourth and sixth centuries A.D. Insular Celtic suffered revolutionary changes . . . As a result of it Insular Celtic developed features and grammatical categories hardly found in other IndoEuropean languages. They have, however, close parallels in Berber and Egyptian, the Hamitic languages of Northern Africa, as well as in Basque . . . The linguistic structure of Insular Celtic compels me to assume that, long before the arrival of Celtic or Belgic tribes, these islands were populated by people, who spoke languages or dialects which, from the point of view of E. Lewy’s typology could be described as Hamito-Semitic, languages not necessarily connected with but of a similar type as Berber and Egyptian and, somewhat more distantly Hebrew and Arabic. For my latest position on this subject, cf. my articles of 1976 and 1982. When Celtic was adopted by pre-Celtic populations, the structure of their original language(s) began to impose itself on the language of the Celtic invaders. The result was a linguistic revolution which led to the making of the mediaeval and modern Celtic languages. See also ‘Near Eastern and African Connections with the Celtic world’ (1981, p. 133 in this volume). Hewitt, ‘Quelques ressemblances entre le breton et l’arabe: Conséquence d’une typologie ordinale commune?’ (1985), was written before I became aware of the Pokorny-Wagner tradition; I assumed that the resemblances could only be typological. The similar features reviewed include head- 232      / -  dependent typology, VSO∼SVO word order (main and subordinate clauses), verb-subject agreement/non-agreement, collective/singulative, conjugated prepositions, expression of ‘have’, the construct state genitive, compound ‘construct-state’ adjectives, double ‘topic ≠ subject’ sentences, relatives (restrictive, non-restrictive, on prepositional objects, on possessives), the dummy sentential pronoun, and circumstantial subordinating and. The chief shared feature omitted is the verbal noun, most certainly historically speaking a verbal noun in Breton, but in modern Breton, it behaves like an infinitive (accusative rather than possessive object pronouns). Gensler, in his doctoral thesis ‘A typological evaluation of Celtic/ Hamito-Semitic syntactic parallels’ (1993; extensive extracts in this volume, p. 151), examines 12 Insular Celtic or Hamito-Semitic languages plus a random sample of 58 other languages from all over the world. He identifies a set of 17 ‘exotic’ structural features shared by Insular Celtic and HamitoSemitic, but not common among languages worldwide. Assigning scores for each feature in each of the 70 languages, he concludes the following (p. 426): On the basis of the sample used in this study, nothing remotely close to the full-blown Celtic/Hamito-Semitic linguistic type recurs anywhere else in the world. The relatively few languages which are ‘best matches’ – actually rather poor matches – are scattered all over the globe, from the West Coast of North America to the Caucasus and New Guinea. However, the continental average score for Africa is higher than for any other continent, and drops only slightly when the CHS languages Egyptian and Berber are omitted; West Africa scores especially well, and appears especially hospitable to several of the CHS features (adpositional periphrastic, wordinitial change, kin terms, inter alia). Conversely, Europe has one of the lowest average scores, and when Welsh and Irish are excluded its score drops far below that of any other continent. Celtic is thus radically out of place in a European landscape, whereas the HamitoSemitic languages simply intensify a structural trend seen over much of Africa. A weak form of the CHS type, then, would appear to have a natural home in Africa, in particular Northwest Africa. Within Afroasiatic, the highest-scoring languages are on the Mediterranean; scores fall away in every direction, but the Chadic language Hausa (in West Africa) scores much higher than Cushitic Afar (in East Africa). The diachronic evidence, too, argues that the (weak) CHS type is something quite old in Africa: the African and Arabian case studies all show stronger CHS-ness further back in time. All this, in conjunction with the blood-type agreement between the British Isles and Northwest Africa, argues for some sort of prehistoric scenario specifically linking these two regions. 233   While Gensler does not claim to have proved the Hamito-Semitic substratum hypothesis for Insular Celtic, he does appear to be saying: ‘in the face of such statistical results, what else can it be?’ He takes great care with the weighting (0, ±1/2 ±1) of scores for individual features, but no account is taken of the centrality or frequency of each feature within a particular language, such that pervasive features such as the genitive construction (feature 8) have the same weight as more marginal ones like the idiomatic genitive kinship constructions (feature 17). Furthermore, the languages that score highest in Gensler’s table, thus most strongly exemplifying what he calls the ‘Celtic/Hamito-Semitic type’, are the Insular Celtic languages rather than the Hamito-Semitic languages, i.e. the languages that are said to have been influenced by the Hamito-Semitic substratum which purportedly gave rise to the type. Another drawback is that possible typological explanations for some of the features (cf. remarks on the genitive construction below) are not envisaged or examined. Nevertheless, with his thorough analysis and the sheer wealth of linguistic evidence he has marshalled, Gensler has certainly put the Hamito-Semitic substratum hypothesis back on the map; all authors on the subject will henceforth need to take due account of his arguments. Jongeling, Comparing Welsh and Hebrew (2000), provides an excellent, lengthy introduction to the history of the subject. The features he surveys include VSO, head-dependent order, numerals, nominal clauses, circumstantial subordinating and, relatives, the verbal noun, conjugated prepositions, and the lack of a verb ‘have’. He proposes (pp. 149–50) an interesting variant of the substratum hypothesis: Supposing that the explanation of certain peculiarities of Insular Celtic are due to substratum influence, one might suppose that the same or a similar substratum has influenced some subgroupings of Afro-Asiatic [Hamito-Semitic] . . . In short, this scenario would mean that we should consider Western Europe and North Africa as an old coherent area of VSO-character. The influence on the three northern Afro-Asiatic groups, Semitic, Egyptian and Berber is comparable to the influence on the Celtic sub-grouping of IndoEuropean . . . one might suppose that Western Europe and Northern Africa once formed one great contiguous VSO area. This area was split by the incoming Indo-Europeans. The proportion of Indo-Europeans on the continent was so great that any influence of a pre-existing language was blotted out, while the number of pre-Indo-Europeans inhabitants on the British Isles was such that their influence there was felt long after they were gone from memory. This scenario not only explains the congruity in syntax of Welsh and Hebrew but at the same time gives a reason for the lack of lexical correspondences not only between Welsh and Hebrew, but in general between Afro-Asiatic and Insular Celtic. 234      / -  Vennemann sees a Hamito-Semitic substratum as having influenced Insular Celtic, and through Celtic, English. In ‘Atlantis Semitica: Structural contact features in Celtic and English’ (2001) he claims (p. 351): ‘The European Atlantic Littoral was, at the dawn of history, explored and colonized by Mediterranean, probably Palaeo-Phoenician seafarers.’ The main features examined in this article include the verbal noun and the related progressive construction, the English ‘Northern Subject Rule’ reminiscent of Semitic and Celtic verb-subject agreement, and the ‘replacement of the sympathetic dative by the internal possessor construction’ (Jean s’est cassé le bras vs John broke his arm, see feature 22 below). Explaining why what he calls the ‘Atlantic type’ arose only in Middle English, he reiterates (p. 364) an argument of Pokorny’s and Wagner’s: ‘substratal influence originates in the lower strata of a society and usually takes centuries to reach the written language, and regularly only after a period of social upheaval.’ In ‘Semitic → Celtic → English: The transivity of language contact’ (2002), in which he draws attention to circumstantial subordinating and, and the prevalence of tensed verb/auxiliary responsives in Celtic and English, Vennemann states: In my view the case is closed, the thesis of a Hamito-Semitic substratum underlying Insular Celtic being one of the most reliably established pieces of scientific knowledge there is in any empirical discipline. As Gensler has shown, the substratum really was not simply Hamito-Semitic, which is a huge family including hundreds of languages in Africa and Asia (which is why it is also called Afro-Asiatic or Afrasian), but more specifically Hamito-Semitic of the Mediterranean type, which includes Libyco-Berber, Ancient Egyptian, and Semitic. In order to stress the similarity of the substratum to this particular manifestation of Hamito-Semitic, I sometimes refer to it as Semitidic or simply Semitic. Celtic influence on English Given that Vennemann sees a connection between a Hamito-Semitic substratum in Insular Celtic and possible Celtic influence on English, an extensive bibliography on this aspect is provided below. The idea that certain features of English may be attributable to Insular Celtic is particularly in vogue among Finnish and German scholars, cf. articles by Filppula, Klemola, Vennemann, and especially Filppula, Klemola and Pitkänen (eds), The Celtic Roots of English (2002) and Tristram (ed.) Celtic Englishes I, II, III, IV (1997-forthcoming). This theory presupposes that the Anglo-Saxons were (thinly) superimposed on a British-speaking population which eventually shifted to Anglo-Saxon, leaving subsequent substratal structural traces in English. However, a recent study by Capelli et al. ‘A Y chromosome census of the British Isles’ (2003) has found genetic evidence to support the more 235   Similar features in Insular Celtic and Hamito-Semitic according to author Feature 1. Conjugated prepositions 2. Word order: VSO, headdependent, prepositions 3. Invariable relative clause linker, not relative pronoun 4. Relative clause copying, not gapping: the bed that I slept in it 5. Special relative tensed verb form 6. Subject and object marking in verb 7. Object marker: preverb-infixV/V-suffix 8. Genitive construction: def. art. on dependent only: house the-man 9. Non-agreement of verb with plural noun subject 10. Verbal noun, not infinitive (object in genitive, not accusative) 11. Predicative particle: he is in a farmer 12. Prepositional periphrastic: he is at singing 13. Periphrastic : he does singing 14. Circumstantial clause and S PRED (subordinating and ) 15. Nonfinite possible instead of finite main-clause verb 16. Word-initial phonetic changes (mutations), various syn. functions 17. Idiomatic genitive kinship constructions: son of X 18. Nominal clause (absence of copula) 19. Amplification of negative by noun after verb: French pas 20. Numerals followed by singular 21. Prepositional expression of have 22. Possessive he broke his arm rather than dative il s’est cassé le bras 23. Preference for parataxis (Pokorny: anreihend ‘stringing along’) 24. Basic unit word group rather than single word 25. Subjectless sentences (impersonal constructions) Morris Jones, 1900 W, (Ir.); Eg., Bb. Pokorny, 1927–30, Wagner, 1959, 1959 Irish, HS IC, HS Hewitt, Jongeling, 1985 Gensler, 2000 Breton, 1993 Welsh, Arabic IC, HS Hebrew ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ∼ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ (✓) ✓ (✓) ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ (✓) (✓) ✓ ✓ ✓ (✓) ✓ ✓ (✓) ✓ 236 (✓) ✓ ✓      / -  Similar features in Insular Celtic and Hamito-Semitic according to language Feature Irish Welsh Breton Arabic Hebrew Egyptian Berber 1. 2. ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓,    ✓ ✓∼ ✓ ✓+svo ✓ ✓>svo ✓ ✓+svo ✓ ✓ 3. ✓ ✓ ✓ ∼✓gen num ✓ ✓agreem. ✗ 4. ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✗ 5. ✓ ∼ sydd, sy ∼ so (zo) ✗ ✗ ✓ ✓ 6. ✓ OI ∼ ∼ ∼✓ ∼✓ ✗ ✓ 7. ✓ OI ∼ ∼✓trad B ✗ ✗ ✗ ✓ 8. ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✗ ✗ 9. ∼ ✓ ✓vs,  aff ✓ vso ∼ vso ✓ ✗ 10. ✓ ✓∼ ✓ trad ✓ ✓ ?∼✗ ✓ 11. ✓ in his ✓ ∼✗ ✓adv ∼✗ ∼✗ ✓ 12. ✓ ✓ ✓ ✗ ✗ ✓ ✗ 13. 14. ∼✗ ✓ ∼✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✗ ✓ ✗ ✓ ✓ ✓ ∼✗, ? ✓ < Ar. 15. ✗ ✓ ∼✓ ✗ ✓ 16. ✓ ✓ ✓ ✗ ∼✗ ✓phon 17. ∼✓ ∼✓ ∼✓ ✓ ✓ 18. ∼✓ ∼✓ gnomic ∼✓ gnomic ✓ ✓ ✓ 19. ∼✓ ✓ ✓ ∼✓ (dial.) ✗ ✓ (Coptic) ✓ 20. 21. ∼✓ (20, x) ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ (11+) ✓ ✓ (11+) ✓ ✓ ME> ✓ ✓ (11+) ✓ 22. ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 23. ✓ ∼✓ ∼✓ ? ? ?? ✓ 24. ✓ ✓ ✓ ∼✓ ✓ ? ✓ 25. ✓ ∼✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 237 ✗ ✗ ∼ vow. red. ✓ < Ar. ✓   Similar features in Insular Celtic and Hamito-Semitic according to author (cont’d ) Morris Jones, 1900 W, (Ir.); Eg., Bb. Feature 26. No present/active participle 27. Distinction between essential and contingent  (is/tá) 28. States/relations expressed with N (PREP-O) PREP-S Tá scilling agam ort 29. Welsh yn, Egyptian m ‘in’: predicative, locative, progressive 30. Old Irish infixed pronoun -didentical to Berber -d31. Comparatives (and superlatives) predicative only, not attributive 32. Initial focus clefts 33. Yes/no responsives with auxiliary/verb/entire clause 34. Prepositional relative: fronting of bare preposition the bed in I slept 35. Unmarked collective, derived singulative 36. Virtual complement clause ; factual complement clause ∼ 37. Construct state bahuvrChi adjectives (Ar. ‘improper annexation’) 38. Topic ≠ subject (‘double subject’ sentences) 39. Yes/no dummy sentential pronoun: I don’t know and he they came Pokorny, 1927–30, Wagner, 1959, 1959 Irish, HS IC, HS Hewitt, Jongeling, 1985 Gensler, 2000 Breton, 1993 Welsh, Arabic IC, HS Hebrew ✓ ✓ ✓ (✓) (✓) ✓ ✓ (✓) (✓) ✓ ✓ (✓) ✓ (✓) ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ (✓) (✓) ✓ ✓ (✓) ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ traditional picture of massive population shifts (p. 979): ‘By analyzing 1772 Y chromosomes from 25 predominantly small urban locations, we found that different parts of the British Isles have sharply different paternal histories.’ Coates, ‘Invisible Britons: The view from linguistics’ (2004) casts doubt on the influence of British Celtic on Anglo-Saxon. Typological approaches Not all authors dealing with similarities between Insular Celtic and HamitoSemitic languages subscribe to the substratum hypothesis. Recent papers adopting a purely typological stance include Borsley ‘On some similarities and differences between Welsh and Syrian Arabic’ (1995), Isaac ‘The function and typology of absolute and conjunct flexion in Early Celtic: 238      / -  Similar features in Insular Celtic and Hamito-Semitic according to language (cont’d ) Feature Irish Welsh Breton Arabic Hebrew Egyptian Berber 26. 27. ✓ ✓ ✓ ✗ ✓ ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✓ ✓ ✓ 28. ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 29. ∼✓ ✓ ∼✓ ∼✓ ? ✓ ✗ 30. ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✓ 31. ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✓ ✓ 32. 33. ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✗ ✓ ? ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 34. ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✓ 35. ? ✓ ✓ ✓ ? 36. ✗ ✗ ∼✓ ✓ ? 37. ✓ + poss. ✓ + poss. ✓ + poss. ✓ ✓ 38. ✗ ✗ ✓ ✓ ? 39. ✗ ✗ ✓ ✓ Eg. Ar. ✗ ✓ Some hints from Ancient Egyptian’ (2001), and Roberts ‘Parametric comparison: Celtic, Semitic and the anti-Babelic principle’ (2004). Shared features The table on p. 237 shows the main features shared by Insular Celtic and Hamito-Semitic, according to author and language. The first 17 features correspond to Gensler’s shared features (1993). These are followed by additional features identified by Morris Jones (1900), Pokorny (1927–1930, 1959), Wagner (1959), Hewitt (1985) and Jongeling (2000). Features marked with (✓) in the column for Gensler are mentioned by him, but are not central to his thesis; features 35–9 from Hewitt (1985) are given by no other author, and are purely typological in nature. 239   1 Conjugated prepositions In both Insular Celtic and Hamito-Semitic, this looks historically very much like incorporation of a pronominal in the preposition; in Hamito-Semitic there is a single set of endings for prepositions, possessives and objects of verbs. Breton gan-in with-. with me Arabic ma‘-C with-1. with me ma levr my book my book kitAb-C book-1. my book . . . e’ m la+has  .1. killed..3. he killed me (traditional, Vann.) qatala-n-C he.killed-.-1. he killed me la=hed neus ahan-on killed he.has of(=.)-1. he has killed me (modern, since eighteenth century) 2 Word order: VSO, head-dependent, prepositions The verb-and-arguments word order typology of the languages of both families is basically verb-subject-object (VSO), with head-dependent order and prepositions. However, a number of qualifications are in order. As suggested in Hewitt, ‘The impersonal in Breton’ (2002), V in the formulae VSO, SVO, SOV, etc. is ambiguous, standing as it does for both the predicate (P) function and the tense-bearing element (T). Apart from a growing tendency towards SVO, Breton is at once VSO and V2. This is better described as PSO and T2, a more succinct formula being XTPSO, where X = P, S, O, Adv, etc. fronted from their base positions, or , which suffices to occupy the initial position before T in second position, but also allows S, O, Adv, etc. (but not normally P) to its left; T attaches either to an auxiliary or, if there is none, to the main verb. One of the commonest realisations of XTPSO in matrix clauses, in fact probably more frequent than P(Aux)SO, is S(Aux)PO; on the other hand, . . . (Aux)PSO is generally the required order in embedded clauses (details in ‘The impersonal in Breton’). Irish and Welsh are generally considered to be classic examples of VSO, and (apart from a strong V2 period in Middle Welsh, see Willis, Syntactic Change in Welsh (1998) ) show no signs of a tendency towards SVO. However, Jones and Thomas, The Welsh Language (1977), analysed Welsh as TSPO, T again attaching either to an auxiliary or, if there is none, to the main verb; TSPO can thus be rewritten as either AuxSVO: Mae Mair yn 240      / -  dysgu Cymraeg [is Mair in learn. Welsh] ‘Mair is learning Welsh’ or VSO: Fe ddysgodd Mair Gymraeg [ learnt Mair Welsh] ‘Mair learnt Welsh’. So which is Welsh in the case of Mae Mair yn dysgu Cymraeg, SVO or VSO? It all depends on which you see as more important in V, the tense-bearing function (VSO) or the predicative function (SVO). Most Hamito-Semitic languages are reckoned to be VSO, with the exception of Amharic (SOV, said to be due to a Cushitic substratum) and Akkadian (also SOV, said to be due to the strong influence of its predecessor and neighbour, the SOV isolate Sumerian). Hebrew shows a steady progression from clear VSO in the Biblical period to SVO in the Massoretic and modern periods. Similarly, Arabic is normally considered to be VSO, although, as in Breton, SVO is a common alternative order, even from the Koranic period; SVO has gained in prominence in modern times, to such an extent that certain styles of journalistic Arabic are reckoned to be more SVO than VSO, and some dialects, in particular Egyptian, are thought to be basically SVO, with only residual VSO effects. However, in the case of Arabic VSO, another analysis is possible, with potentially far-reaching consequences for word order typology in general (see Hewitt, ‘L’arabe – VSO ou VDN?’ (2002)/‘Arabic – verb-subject-object or verb-given-new? Implications for word order typology’ (forthcoming) ): in verb-initial clauses, there are numerous and regular violations of the canonical VSO order, such as VOS, VoS (o = pronominal object), VPOS (P = preposition), VPoSO, VPoOS, and VoOS. A principle of increasing ‘information prominence’ of post-verbal nominal constituents (given, known information > new information) appears to provide a unitary account of all the observable orders, including VSO. Strict SO order is thus called into question for Arabic, and replaced by a strict GN (given-new) order. Languages traditionally described as VSO (this principle does not appear to apply to any of the Celtic languages) or SOV (e.g. Turkish, Tibetan) might need to be revisited in order to see whether VGN or GNV does not provide a better account of their functioning than VSO or SOV. The whole question of VSO etc. is thus rather more complex than it would appear at first sight. 3 Invariable relative clause linker, not relative pronoun The precise syntactic status of the Celtic relativizer, e.g. Breton direct (subject, object) a, indirect (oblique – other elements) e is debatable; it is usually held to be an affirmative tense particle which also functions as a relativiser of an embedded clause to its matrix clause, but it has also been analysed as a relative pronoun of sorts, particularly in the case of the cognate Welsh a and y. The invariable Hebrew 2>εr has been analysed both as a relativiser and a relative pronoun, and note that the Arabic relative pronoun al-ladhC , al-latC , al-ladhCna ., etc. agrees in gender and number with its antecedent. 241   4 Relative clause copying, not gapping: the bed that I slept in it. Yes, Breton ar gwele a meus kousked ennañ [the bed  I.have slept in.it]; Arabic as-sarCr al-ladhC nimt fC-h [the-bed. . I.slept in-it], but such strategies are not limited to Celtic and Hamito-Semitic. Berber never has resumptive pronouns, only movement of the bare preposition; Old Irish is similar, but the order of relator and preposition is the reverse: Berber  + ; Old Irish  + . 5 Special relative tensed verb form This is present in Irish (-as vs. -aidh, -ann, etc.) and apparently in Egyptian and Berber; in Brythonic, the only modern trace is in the present form of the copula Welsh sy(dd), Breton so (mod. zo); apart from Akkadian, this is unknown in Semitic; the Berber ‘relative form’ is commonly called a ‘participle’. 6 Subject and object marking in verb Yes, for both Insular Celtic and Semitic; this concerns most strongly Old Irish, Berber and Egyptian. Object pronouns are traditionally proclitic in Celtic and postclitic in Semitic; this is not the same, however, as the true subject-and-object-marking verbal morphology of Georgian. The cliticisation of object pronouns on the verb is hardly a rare trait. 7 Object marker: preverb-infix-V/V-suffix This concerns especially Old Irish and Berber. It should be noted more generally that pre-versus post-cliticisation of object pronouns concerns many languages, cf. Romance, Serbo-Croat, etc. 8 Genitive construction: def. art. on dependent only: house the-man Breton ti ar roue [house the king], Arabic bait al-malik [house the-king] ‘the king’s house’. Known as the ‘construct state’  among Semiticists, this is one of the most striking resemblances between the two families; however, it is not necessarily due to substratal influence. In the typology of genitive constructions, there is a limited number of parameters: (1) the order of head and dependent:   or   ( normally implies   order); (2) the presence or absence of an article (on  only; on both  and ; no examples of the article on  only; all Insular Celtic and most, but not all, Hamito-Semitic languages have a definite article); (3) the relation marking may be on either  or ; and finally (4) a limited number of relator mechanisms (one or more are possible): (a) simple adjacency ( , as in all Insular Celtic and HamitoSemitic languages except Amharic, or  ); (b) phonetic modification of 242      / -  either  or : phonetic  marking of  in Hebrew: bayiÖ ‘house’, but bBÖ ham-mεlεÑ [house. the-king]; dAÉAr ‘word’, but dIÉar ham-mεlεÑ ‘the king’s word’; or phonetic modification of  in Berber: agellid ‘king’, but axxam (n) ugellid [house (of ) king.]; (c) case: , , , etc.; (d) possessive : Turkish - + -: kral-ın ev-i [king- house-his]; (e) link particle : in both Hindi-Urdu and Sanskrit the link agrees with : HindiUrdu laKkA ‘boy.’, laKkB kA ghar [boy. x housex] ‘the boy’s house’; Swahili: nyumba ya mfalme [house.9 .9 king.1] ‘the king’s house’; (f ) adposition: preposition, postposition, cf. English the door of the house (the dividing line between (e) link and (f ) adposition is not always clear, as the link could often be glossed ‘of ’). In Insular Celtic and Hamito-Semitic languages which no longer have case, the construct state is defined solely by the adjacency of the head and dependent, and the restriction of the article to the dependent. However, in both families this is probably the result of independent evolution. While Breton, Welsh, Hebrew and colloquial Arabic have no cases: Breton dor an ti, Welsh dr:s y tO, Hebrew dεlεÖ hab-bayiÖ, colloquial Arabic bAb al-bait [door the-house] ‘the door of the house’, Classical and formal Modern Standard Arabic and Irish (for some items at least) conserve case endings: Arabic bAb-u l-bait-i; Irish doras an tí [door. the-house.], and these help to define the genitive relation. It is only with the loss of the case endings that the [ [the-] ] structure becomes crucial to defining the genitive construction. Germanic has both a compact genitive construction the king’s house, with genitive case and only one article possible, on , and a periphrastic construction the house of the king with two articles and the genitive relation expressed by the preposition of. While it is not obvious to ordinary Englishspeakers which element the article the applies to in the king’s house, other Germanic languages provide a clue: German des Königs Haus [the. king. house.] or Swedish: kungens hus [king.the. house]. It therefore seems logical to bracket the phrase as follows: [ [the king’s] house], which is simply the reverse of the order of the two main constituents  and  in Breton [ti [ar roue] ] or Arabic [bait [al-malik] ]. Indeed, in one Germanic language which has lost all genitive case-marking, the [ [the-] ] order actually defines the genitive relation: the highly evolved form of English found in Jamaican Creole: [ [di king] hoos]. Seen in this light, the Insular Celtic genitive structure is rather less exotic than it might appear at first sight; there is little need to appeal to Hamito-Semitic for a source. Another factor to bear in mind in comparing the genitive construction in Insular Celtic and Hamito-Semitic is that of adjective placement. While neither Celtic nor Germanic languages have any problem in attaching adjectives to either or both  and : Breton ti bihan ar roue bras [house little the king big] ‘the big king’s little house’, Semitic cannot do this; any adjectives go obligatorily after the genitive construct, which is more akin to a compound noun ‘king-house’, so bait al-malik al-kabCr [house the-king 243   Verbal noun or infinitive? Nominal features Irish Welsh Breton Berber Egyptian Arabic Hebrew Gender Article possible Pronominal object: possessive Lexical object: genitive ✓ ✓ ✓ ✗ ✓ ✓ ✗ ✓ ✓>✗ ✓ – ? – – ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ? ? ✓ ✓ (✓) (✓)>✗ ? (✓) ✓ (✓) the-big] can in principle mean either ‘the king’s big house’ or ‘the big king’s house’. Only in formal Arabic is it possible to tell which the adjective applies to, from the case-marking. The usual way of applying adjectives to both  and  is to use a longer construction with two articles and a preposition, structurally similar to the periphrastic construction the house of the king: al-bait aL-LaghCr li-l-malik al-kabCr [the-house the-little to-the-king the-big] ‘the big king’s little house’. If the genitive construction in Insular Celtic really had its origins in a Hamito-Semitic substratum, it is difficult to understand why this major structural constraint prohibiting the insertion of adjectives between  and  would not also apply in Celtic. 9 Non-agreement of verb with plural noun subject Yes, this is a striking parallel, strongest in Welsh, Breton, Egyptian, Classical Arabic and to some extent Biblical Hebrew, in the last two with VSO order only; in Breton also with SVO order in the affirmative only; not in Berber. Non-agreement is fairly common with VS order worldwide (Greenberg). 10 Verbal noun, not infinitive (object in genitive, not accusative) Is this a true dichotomy? There appears to be more like a cline between the abstract verbal noun (Arabic, Georgian masdar) and the infinitive (in any case said to be ultimately of nominal origin). The criterion for distinguishing between the two is whether objects are in the genitive (verbal noun) or accusative (infinitive). With the development in Breton since the eighteenth century of true ‘accusative’ object pronouns (etymologically ‘of + pronoun’): ma gweled [my seeing] > gweled ahanon [see.⁄ of.me] ‘to see me’, little now distinguishes the Breton verbal noun from the French infinitive. In Insular Celtic, only Irish seems truly masdar-like. 11 Predicative particle: he is in a farmer Especially in Welsh and Egyptian, if Welsh predicative yn really is ‘in’, and this has recently been challenged by Gensler in ‘Why should a demonstrative turn into a preposition: The evolution of Welsh predicative yn’ (2002). 244      / -  The construction is ‘In his farmer’ in Irish. This feature is very limited in Breton, mainly adverbial: tri bloa@ o ve@añ ki, tri bloa@ en ki, tri bloa@ o vond er-maes a gi ‘three years becoming (“being”) [a] dog, the years as (“in”) [a] dog, three years leaving the state of doghood (“going out of dog”)’, and is marginal in Hebrew and Arabic. 12 Prepositional periphrastic: he is at singing As Comrie points out (Aspect, 1976: 100–2), apart from Insular Celtic languages, which all have prepositional periphrastic constructions, copular locative phrases expressing the progressive are found in numerous other languages: Chinese, Georgian, Yoruba, Shona, Igbo, Kpelle, other NigeroCongolese languages, Hindi/Urdu, Punjabi, North American, etc., not to mention Icelandic, various German dialects and Continental Scandinavian. However, no Semitic languages do this, although there is an increasing use of active participles. In Egyptian Hr ‘on’ and m ‘in’ are both used with verbal nouns to express a progressive. Paradoxically, the Breton progressive is much closer in force to the English progressive than the Welsh or Scottish Gaelic periphrastic constructions, which have become a general cursive (imperfective) which freely allows statives (cf. Hewitt, ‘Le progressif en breton . . .’ / ‘The progressive in Breton . . .’). Indeed, there appears to be a general tendency in various languages for a parallel evolution of simple tense > specialised uses, and progressive > general imperfective; cf. the evolution of Welsh, Hindi and Hebrew below: Classical Welsh siarad-af speak- /.1. I speak / I will speak Old Hindi bDl-$ speak-.1. I speak yr wyf yn siarad  be..1. in speak. I am speaking bDl-tA h$ speak- be..1. I am speaking Modern Colloquial Welsh siarad-a i speak-.1. I I will speak Modern Hindi/Urdu bDl-$ speak-.1. [that] I [may/should] speak rw i ’n siarad be..1. I in speak. I speak / I am speaking bDl-tA h$ speak- be..1. I speak / I am speaking rw i wrth-i ’n siarad be..1. I at-3.. in speak. I am speaking (right now) bDl rah-A h$ speak stay- be..1. I am speaking (right now) 245   Biblical Hebrew yi-ÑtoÉ 3..-write. he writes / will write Massoretic Hebrew > later stages yi-ÑtoÉ 3..-write. he will write koteb write.... he (was/is/will be) writing koteb write.... he writes / is writing 13 Periphrastic DO: he does singing This conflates at least three distinct uses: (1) activity  with dynamic (non-stative) VPs: (Middle) Welsh, Breton; (2)  with NPs: numerous languages; (3)  as an empty auxiliary: North Welsh; Breton to avert V-1 in the affirmative (also English do with negative, interrogative). This is not typical of Semitic. a thrannoeth yn jeuenctit y dyd kyuodi a oruc (1, Middle Welsh) and next.day in youth the day rise.  did.3. Pwyll Pendefig Dyfed and on the morrow when the day was still young, he arose dysgynnu ar y pren a wnant descend. on the tree  do.3..⁄ they will alight on the tree (1, Strachan, Introduction to Early Welsh, §123) a cherdet recdi y r coed a oruc y uorwyn and walk. before.3.. to the wood  did the maiden and the maiden went on to the wood (1, Strachan, §123) rinne sé gáire did he laugh. he laughed (2, Irish, Wagner, Das Verbum . . . , p.101) (3, North Welsh colloquial) na i weld o fory do..1. I see him tomorrow I will see him tomorrow (3, Breton) sevel a ra tîer raise.  do..3. houses He/she builds houses sevel tîer a ra (1, Breton) raise. houses  do..3. He/she builds houses (lit. ‘does house-building’; dynamic verbs only, not statives) 246      / -  14 Circumstantial clause and (subordinating and) S PRED This feature is typical of both Insular Celtic and Hamito-Semitic (in Berber it is possibly borrowed from Arabic): Breton gweled neus ahanon ha me o tond er-maes [seen he.has me. and I  come. out], Arabic laqad ra’A-nC wa-’anA MAli‘ [ he.saw-me and I coming.out] ‘he saw me as I was coming out’. The construction is syntactically coordinate (in both Celtic and Semitic, the order after ‘and ’ is always SVO), but semantically subordinate; an adversive ‘although’ connotation is possible. 15 Nonfinite possible instead of finite main-clause verb This is particularly prevalent in Welsh, followed by Hebrew (infinitive absolute), but not in Arabic. There are sporadic examples in Irish and Breton. 16 Word-initial phonetic changes (mutations), various syn. functions The Insular Celtic initial consonant mutations are hardly comparable to the Berber ‘construct state’ initial changes argaz > urgaz (w&rgaz) ‘man’, tamåart > tmåart ‘town’, which appear to be more akin to vowel contraction, cf. the Hebrew construct state forms described under feature 8. As formulated, this is rather too abstract a feature to be confidently attributed to substratal influence, and there are numerous instances worldwide of results of phonetic changes acquiring a grammatical function, cf. the correlation of transitive/intransitive with unaspirated/aspirated stops in the Modern Lhasa pronunciation of Tibetan, a consequence of the phonetic evolution of initial consonant clusters in that language: spel /¯peé(l) increase (tr.) skol ¯köé(l) boil (tr.) spur ¯pur/ scare away (Classical Tibetan, Beyer, 258–9) (Modern Lhasa pronunciation) ‘phel ‘khol ‘phur (Classical Tibetan, Beyer, 258–9) /¯pheé(l) ¯khöé(l) ¯phur/ (Modern Lhasa pronunciation) increase (intr.) boil (intr.) be scared away 17 Idiomatic genitive kinship constructions: son of X This is very productive in Semitic, cf. Iraqi Arabic abu chegAyir [father. cigarettes] ‘(street) cigarette seller’. It is not typical of Brythonic; the few examples in Insular Celtic are in Irish: mac tíre [son land.] ‘wolf’. 247   18 Nominal clause (absence of copula) There is no copula in the present tense in Semitic, only in non-present (future, past) tenses. This is not the same as ellipsis of the copula in Insular Celtic, especially Welsh, and to a lesser extent Breton, in gnomic expressions. 19 Amplification of negative by noun after verb: French pas Arabic dialects (Palestine and westwards) have developed a French-like circumfix mA V-sh (<shi ‘thing’); Welsh ni V S ddim, Breton ne V S ked. This is surely part of a general linguistic tendency to amplify function words that otherwise risk being lost altogether. 20 Numerals followed by singular Yes, in Brythonic; in Irish, originally nouns after 20 and higher multiples of 10 stood in the gen. pl.; due its identity with the nom. sg. in some declensional classes, this gave rise to its reinterpretation as singular. In Semitic, 11 and higher – 3–10 are followed by nouns in the plural. Numerals are followed by singular nouns in many languages. 21 Prepositional expression of have Yes, Breton is the only Celtic language to have developed a verb ‘have’: m-eus, etymologically [to.me-there.is] ‘I have’. This is used for perfect tenses . . . meus gweled [I.have seen] ‘I have seen’ and possession of indefinites arc’hant meus [money I.have] ‘I have money’, but possession of definites is usually expressed with prepositional periphrasis an arc’hant so ganin [the money is with.me] ‘I have the money’, as it is in the other Celtic languages, Hamito-Semitic and many other languages worldwide. 22 Possessive he broke his arm rather than dative il s’est cassé le bras Yes, this is true of both Insular Celtic and Hamito-Semitic; ‘internal’ possession with a possessive, rather than ‘external’ possession with a dative is rare in European languages, with the exception of Celtic and English. It is unclear which is more common worldwide. Note that Breton requires a combination of both types (possessive + dative) where the possessor of the object is not the same as the subject (possible, but not obligatory in French): 248      / -  Mae Ieuan wedi torri ’i fraich Mae Ieuan wedi torri braich Pedr is Ieuan after break. his arm is Ieuan after break. arm Pedr Ieuan broke his arm Ieuan broke Pedr’s arm (Welsh) Jean s’ est cassé le bras Jean  is broken the arm Jean broke his arm Jean (lui) a cassé le bras à Pierre Jean (to.him) has broken the arm to Pierre Jean broke Pierre’s arm (French) Yann neus torred e vrec’h Yann has broken his arm Yann broke his arm Yann neus torred e vrec’h da Ber Yann has broken his arm to Per Yann broke Per’s arm (Breton) deus ’ta heol benniged da dommañ o revrioù d ’ ar ffiliped come then sun blessed to warm. their backsides to the sparrows come on, dear sun, and warm the sparrows’ backsides (Breton) 23 Preference for parataxis (Pokorny: anreihend ‘stringing along’) It is unclear how such a feature, identified by Pokorny, could be measured, and if it could be demonstrated, whether it is really unique to Insular Celtic and Hamito-Semitic. 24 Basic unit word group rather than single word Again, it is unclear how such a feature might be measured, and whether it is unique to Insular Celtic and Hamito-Semitic. 25 Subjectless sentences (impersonal constructions) Both Pokorny and Wagner list this as a common feature. This probably covers a number of distinct phenomena which need closer definition, and in any case, it is hardly unique to Insular Celtic and Hamito-Semitic. 26 No present/active participle Yes, for Insular Celtic, but not true of Semitic at all. 27 Distinction between essential and contingent BE (is/tá) Yes, in Irish (is/tá) and Breton (eo/emañ), but not in Welsh or in Semitic. Again, such a distinction is quite common worldwide. 249   28 States/relations expressed with N (PREP-O) PREP-S Yes, cf. Irish Tá scilling agam ort [is shilling with.me on.you] ‘you owe me a shilling’, tá tart orm [is thirst on.me] ‘I am thirsty’. Felt to be very typical of IC; not particularly typical of Semitic. 29 Welsh yn, Egyptian m ‘in’: predicative, locative, progressive Attention was first drawn to this amazing coincidence by Morris Jones, and it is tantalising if true. However, there is some question as to the identity of the three yn’s in Welsh, cf. Isaac ‘The progressive aspect marker: W. yn/OIr. oc’ (1994), where he proposes that progressive yn derives from wnc ‘close’, and Gensler, ‘Why should a demonstrative turn into a preposition’ (2002), who claims that Welsh predicative yn is derived from a deictic int. 30 Old Irish infixed pronoun -d- identical to Berber -dPokorny drew attention to this, for instance in ‘Keltische Urgeschichte und Sprachwissenschaft’ (1959: 157). Its significance is unclear. 31 Comparatives (and superlatives) predicative only, not attributive This is especially true of Irish, but not of Brythonic or Semitic. 32 Initial focus clefts Such structures are common across many languages. 33 Yes/no responsives with auxiliary/verb/entire clause This is considered to be very typical of Insular Celtic (which is held by some to have given rise to English ‘yes, it is’, ‘no, I don’t’, etc.), but is not particularly characteristic of Semitic. 34 Prepositional relative: fronting of bare preposition the bed in I slept Only Irish and Berber have this. 250      / -  35 Unmarked collective, derived singulative This is particularly productive in Breton blew/blewenn and Arabic sha‘r/ sha‘ra ‘hair/strand of hair’, cf. Hewitt, ‘Quelques ressemblances structurales entre le breton et l’arabe’ (1985), but less so in Welsh and Hebrew, and it is quite marginal in Irish. It is also found in other languages, such as Swahili nywele/unywele (ditto). 36 Virtual complement clause VSO; factual complement clause SVO ∼ VSO ‘Virtual’ complement clauses of the type ‘I want John to come’ are obligatorily VSO in both Arabic and Breton, whereas ‘factual’ complement clauses such as ‘I think John will come’ are obligatorily SVO in Arabic; traditionally they have been VSO in Breton, but since the eighteenth century, an alternative SVO order has become increasingly frequent. It is unlikely that this should be French influence because Breton never has SVO order in the ‘I want John to come’ type, cf. Hewitt, ‘Quelques ressemblances structurales entre le breton et l’arabe’ (1985). This similarity is far more likely to be typological rather than substratal in origin. Arabic Breton ’urCd ’an yajC” Zaid I.want that come.3.. Zaid I want Zaid to come me meus c’h:ant e teuffe Yann I I.have desire  come.3.. Yann I want Yann to come ’aâunn ’anna Zaid sa-yajC’ me a soñj din e teuo Yann I.think that Zaid will-come.3. I  think.3. to.me  will.come Yann I think that Zaid will come me a soñj din (penaos) Yann a I  think.3. to.me (how) Yann  deuo will.come I think that Yann will come 37 Construct state bahuvr3hi adjectives (Arabic ‘improper annexation’) Many languages have such adjective-noun compounds, including English, cf. ‘pure-hearted’, ‘great-winged’ below. The construct is formed with a possessive in Celtic, but has the form of a normal construct state in Semitic; note, however, the difference in treatment of the article between Hebrew and Arabic: in Arabic, the dependent noun always has the definite article; when the compound is definite, the whole construct state has, quite exceptionally, a definite article prefixed to it; in Hebrew, it is the article on the dependent noun that determines, in rather more orthodox fashion, whether the compound is definite or not. 251   un den ledan e chouk a man broad his nape a well-to-do man (i.e. who can bear a heavy [financial] load) (Breton) rajul MAhir al-qalb man pure the-heart a pure-hearted man (Arabic) ar-rajul aM-MAhir al-qalb the-man the-pure the-heart the pure-hearted man (Arabic) nε>εr gIáDl kInA)ayim eagle great wings a great-winged eagle (Hebrew, Ezek. 17:7) han-nε>εr hag-gAáDl, gIáDl hak-kInA)ayim the-eagle the-great great the-wings the large, great-winged eagle (Hebrew, Ezek. 17:3) 38 Topic ≠ subject (‘double subject’ sentences) This is very common in both Breton Per eo klañv e vab [Per is ill his son] and Arabic Zaid marCG ibn-uh [Zaid ill son-his] ‘Per/Zaid’s son is ill’; Breton Chirac a dalc’h e fri da voanâd: c’hwessa a ra partoud! [Chirac  keeps his nose to narrow.: sniff  he.does everywhere] ‘Chirac’s nose keeps getting narrower/keeps narrowing: he’s sniffing everywhere [for votes]’. Again, this is surely typological; it is found in numerous languages. 39 Yes/no dummy sentential pronoun: I don’t know and he they came This concerns a partial resemblance between Breton and Egyptian Arabic, cf. Hewitt, ‘Quelques ressemblances structurales . . .’; the main difference is that in Breton the dummy pronoun is invariable, whereas in Egyptian Arabic it must agree in number with the subject: Breton n-onn ked hag-eñv e oa aed ar baotred [-I.know not and-he  was gone the boys] ‘I don’t know whether the boys went’; Egyptian Arabic sa’al-ni humma r-riggAla rAHu [he.asked-me they the-men they.went] ‘he asked me whether the men had gone’. This is unlikely to be substratal. Concluding remarks The existence of striking structural similarities between the Insular Celtic and the Hamito-Semitic languages is beyond question. However, the matter 252      / -  of whether this is to be attributed to substratal influence through prehistoric contact or to typological tendencies and correlations remains unresolved. Indeed, we have no reliable diagnostic for deciding which of the two factors may be in operation in a given situation. Gensler’s statistical approach (the low likelihood of such clustering of ‘exotic’ features in two genetically unrelated families) is in itself skewed: by focusing on the shared features, he loses sight of the bigger picture, including all the features that are not shared by the two families. Furthermore, he has no way of accounting for the relative frequency or centrality of his various features in the languages concerned. Authors who are inclined towards a substratal explanation for these shared features appear at times to be prey to a kind of ‘substratum frenzy’, as if prehistoric contact can be the only possible explanation for ‘un-Indo-European’ traits in an Indo-European language. This attitude may be rooted in traditional historical linguistics, which has tended to focus on the phonetic and lexical components to the detriment of more abstract structures. With lexical items, for instance, the number of plausible phonetic sequences is so vast that any significant accumulation of lexical similarities between two genetically unrelated languages can hardly be anything other than a sure sign of some sort of contact and borrowing. With structures, however, the range of possibilities across languages is far more limited – there are, for instance, only so many ways of expressing a genitive relation – so it is far less surprising for unrelated languages to possess analogous structures. It is therefore important always to bear in mind and investigate thoroughly the possibility of a typological explanation. A major problem with the substratal explanation is the precise identity of the substratum. A subsidiary puzzle is the special affinities noted between Welsh and Hebrew (several authors, most recently Jongeling), Welsh and Egyptian (Morris Jones), Irish and Berber (Morris Jones, Pokorny and Wagner), and Breton and Arabic (Hewitt – probably typological: both SVO∼VSO topic-prominent languages); in each case, however, the number of features concerned is low enough for the ‘special affinity’ to be coincidental. As noted above, Gensler’s scores suggest that it is the Insular Celtic languages which are most typical of the ‘Celtic/Hamito-Semitic type’ rather than the Hamito-Semitic languages. This is also borne out by the above table of shared features by author and language, where the various features are more consistently present in Insular Celtic than in Hamito-Semitic. This is the reverse of what one would expect if the shared features had their origin in Hamito-Semitic. We may take a cue from Jongeling, who, rather than assuming a specifically Hamito-Semitic substratum in Insular Celtic, moots a single prehistoric substratum to both Hamito-Semitic and Insular Celtic. We might go one step further and raise the possibility that such a substratum could have been centred on north-western Europe or even the 253   British Isles, where it affected the incoming Celtic languages strongly, but the more distant Hamito-Semitic and North African languages less so. The identity of such a substratum, however, would perforce be so shrouded in the mists of prehistory as to be quite unknowable. Clearly, more work is needed on both the substratal and typological approaches to this fascinating question. Tibetan for ‘dog’, pronounced /¯khi/, cf. Welsh ci, Breton ki, Irish cú. Abbreviations    Ar.   Bb. Br.        Eg.   G  gen.  HS IC    Ir.   N active adverb affirmative tense particle Arabic article auxiliary Berber Breton class conditional consonant construct state dependent dative definite Egyptian feminine future given genitive gender head Hamito-Semitic Insular Celtic infinitive intransitive imperfective Irish link masculine new   num. O o   P           S   T   V  W. X x negative tense particle nominative number object pronominal object object oblique predicate perfective plural possessive preposition present progressive pronoun participle relator reflexive subject singular subjunctive tense tense particle transitive verb verbal noun Welsh some initial element: P, S, O, Adv, etc. agreement, marked on both terms References not listed in the bibliography Beyer, Stephan V, The Classical Tibetan Language, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1992. 254      / -  Comrie, Bernard, Aspect, Cambridge University Press, 1976. Gensler, Orin, ‘Why should a demonstrative turn into a preposition: The evolution of Welsh predicative yn’, Language 78/4: 710–64, 2002. 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