Proto-Celtic language


Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, is the reconstructed ancestral proto-language of all known Celtic languages, and a descendant of Proto-Indo-European. It is not attested in writing but has been partly reconstructed through the comparative method. Proto-Celtic is generally thought to have been spoken between 1300 and 800 BC, after which it began to split into different languages. Proto-Celtic is often associated with the Urnfield culture and particularly with the Hallstatt culture. Celtic languages share common features with Italic languages that are not found in other branches of Indo-European, suggesting the possibility of an earlier Italo-Celtic linguistic unity.
Proto-Celtic is currently being reconstructed through the comparative method by relying on later Celtic languages. Though Continental Celtic presents much substantiation for Proto-Celtic phonology, and some for its morphology, recorded material is too scanty to allow a secure reconstruction of syntax, though some complete sentences are recorded in the Continental Gaulish and Celtiberian. So, the main sources for reconstruction come from Insular Celtic languages with the oldest literature found in Old Irish and Middle Welsh, dating back to authors flourishing in the 6th century AD.

Dating

Proto-Celtic is usually dated to the Late Bronze Age, ca. 1200–900 BC. The fact that it is possible to reconstruct a Proto-Celtic word for 'iron' has long been taken as an indication that the divergence into individual Celtic languages did not start until the Iron Age ; otherwise, descendant languages might have developed their own, unrelated words for the metal. However, Schumacher and Schrijver suggest a date for Proto-Celtic as early as the 13th century BC, the time of the Canegrate culture, in northwest Italy, and the Urnfield culture in Central Europe, implying that the divergence may have already started in the Bronze Age.

Sound changes from Proto-Indo-European

The phonological changes from Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Celtic may be summarized as follows. The changes are roughly in chronological order, with changes that operate on the outcome of earlier ones appearing later in the list.

Late PIE

These changes are shared by several other Indo-European branches.
  • *e is colored by an adjacent laryngeal consonant:
  • * eh₂, h₂e > ah₂, h₂a
  • * eh₃, h₃e > oh₃, h₃o
  • Palatovelars merge into the plain velars:
  • * ḱ > k
  • * ǵ > g
  • * ǵʰ > gʰ
  • Epenthetic *a is inserted after a syllabic sonorant if a laryngeal and another sonorant follow
  • Laryngeals are lost:
  • * before a following vowel
  • * following a vowel in syllables before the accent
  • * following a vowel before a consonant, or word finally, resulting in compensatory lengthening, thus
  • * between plosives in non-initial syllables
  • Two adjacent dentals become two adjacent sibilants

    Italo-Celtic

The following sound changes are shared with the Italic languages in particular, and are cited in support of the Italo-Celtic hypothesis.
  • Dybo's rule: long close vowels are shortened before resonant + stressed vowel. Note that something like Dybo's rule seems to have also operated in Germanic.
  • * īR´ / ? *iHR´ > iR´
  • * ūR´ / ? *uHR´ > uR´
  • Possibly, post-consonantal laryngeals are lost when before pre-tonic close vowels:
  • * CHiC´ > CiC´
  • * CHuC´ > CuC´
  • Development of initial stress, following the previous two changes. But note that this seems to have been an areal feature, shared, for example with the Indo-European Germanic languages and the non-Indo-European Etruscan language.
  • Possibly, vocalization of laryngeals to *ī between a *CR cluster and consonantal *j
  • Syllabic laryngeals become *a
  • Syllabic resonants before a voiced unaspirated stop become *Ra
  • *m is assimilated or lost before a glide:
  • * mj > nj
  • * mw > w
  • *p assimilates to *kʷ when another *kʷ follows later in the word this change may have occurred late in Celtic; B) it seems not to have operated on some words in Irish; and C) a similar assimilation also occurred in Germanic.
One change shows non-exact parallels in Italic: vocalization of syllabic resonants next to laryngeals depending on the environment. Similar developments appear in Italic, but for the syllabic nasals *m̩, *n̩, the result is Proto-Italic *əm, *ən.
  • Word-initially, HR̩C > aRC
  • Before voiceless stops, CR̩HT > CRaT
  • CR̩HV > CaRHV
  • CR̩HC > CRāC

    Early PC

  • Sequences of velar and *w merge into the labiovelars :
  • * kw > kʷ
  • * gw > gʷ
  • * gʰw > gʷʰ
  • *gʷ merges into *b.
  • Aspirated stops lose their aspiration and merge with the voiced stops :
  • * bʰ > b
  • * dʰ > d
  • * gʰ > g
  • * gʷʰ > gʷ
  • *e before a resonant and *a becomes *a as well : *ǵʰelH-ro > *gelaro > *galaro / *gérH-no > *gerano > *garano.
  • Epenthetic *i is inserted after syllabic liquids when followed by a plosive:
  • * l̩T > liT
  • * r̩T > riT
  • Epenthetic *a is inserted before the remaining syllabic resonants:
  • * m̩ > am
  • * n̩ > an
  • * l̩ > al
  • * r̩ > ar
  • All remaining nonsyllabic laryngeals are lost.
  • ē > ī
  • ō > ū in final syllables
  • Long vowels are shortened before a syllable-final resonant ; this also shortens long diphthongs.

    Late PC

  • Plosives become *x before a different plosive or *s
  • p > b before liquids
  • p > w before nasals
  • p > ɸ
  • ō > ā
  • ey > ē
  • ew > ow
  • uwa > owa

    Examples

Phonological reconstruction

Consonants

The following consonants have been reconstructed for Proto-Celtic :

Allophones of plosives

Eska has recently proposed that PC stops allophonically manifest similarly to those in English. Voiceless stop phonemes were aspirated word-initially except when preceded by, hence aspirate allophones ; unaspirated voiced stops were devoiced to word-initially.
This allophony may be reconstructed to PC from the following evidence:
  • Modern Celtic languages like Welsh, Breton, and all modern Goidelic languages have such plosive aspiration and voice allophony already attested.
  • Several old Celtic languages used letters for voiceless stop phonemes to write both voiceless stop phonemes and their voiced counterparts, especially non-word-initially.
  • The Celtiberian Luzaga's Bronze has the curious spelling of an accusative determiner sdam, where the d is clearly meant to spell. This implies that Celtiberian had a voiceless allophone.

    Evolution of plosives

Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirate stops *bʰ, *dʰ, *gʰ/ǵʰ, merge with *b, *d, *g/ǵ in PC. The voiced aspirate labiovelar *gʷʰ did not merge with *gʷ, though: plain *gʷ became PC *b, while aspirated *gʷʰ became *gʷ. Thus, PIE gʷen- 'woman' became Old Irish and Old Welsh ben, but PIE gʷʰn̥- 'to kill, wound' became Old Irish gonaid and Welsh gwanu.
PIE *p is lost in PC, apparently going through the stages *ɸ and *h before being completely lost word-initially and between vowels. Next to consonants, PC *ɸ underwent different changes: the clusters *ɸs and *ɸt became *xs and *xt respectively already in PC. PIE *sp- became Old Irish s and Brythonic f; while argues there was an intermediate stage *sɸ-, finds it more economical to believe that *sp- remained unchanged in PC, that is, the change *p to *ɸ did not happen when *s preceded.
In Gaulish and the Brittonic languages, the Proto-Indo-European kʷ phoneme becomes a new p sound. Thus, Gaulish petuar, Welsh pedwar "four", but Old Irish cethair and Latin quattuor. Insofar as this new fills the gap in the phoneme inventory which was left by the disappearance of the equivalent stop in PIE, we may think of this as a chain shift.
The terms P-Celtic and Q-Celtic are useful for grouping Celtic languages based on the way they handle this one phoneme. But a simple division into P- / Q-Celtic may be untenable, as it does not do justice to the evidence of the ancient Continental Celtic languages. The unusual shared innovations among the Insular Celtic languages are often also presented as evidence against a P- vs Q-Celtic division, but they may instead reflect a common substratum influence from the pre-Celtic languages of Britain and Ireland,, or simply continuing contact between the insular languages; in either case they would be irrelevant to the genetic classification of Celtic languages.
Q-Celtic languages may also have in loan words, though in early borrowings from Welsh into Primitive Irish, was used by sound substitution due to a lack of a phoneme at the time:
  • Latin Patricius "Saint Patrick"' > Welsh > Primitive Irish > Old Irish Cothrige, later Pádraig;
  • Latin presbyter "priest" > early form of word seen in Old Welsh premter primter > Primitive Irish > Old Irish cruimther.
Gaelic póg "kiss" was a later borrowing at a stage where p was borrowed directly as p, without substituting c.

Vowels

The PC vowel system is highly comparable to that reconstructed for PIE by Antoine Meillet. The following monophthongs are reconstructed:
The following diphthongs have also been reconstructed:

Morphology

Nouns

The morphological structure of nouns and adjectives demonstrates no arresting alterations from the parent language. Proto-Celtic is believed to have had nouns in three genders, three numbers and five to eight cases. The genders were masculine, feminine and neuter; the numbers were singular, plural and dual. The number of cases is a subject of contention: while Old Irish may have only five, the evidence from Continental Celtic is considered rather unambiguous despite appeals to archaic retentions or morphological leveling. These cases were nominative, vocative, accusative, dative, genitive, ablative, locative and instrumental.
Nouns fall into nine or so declensions, depending on stem. There are *o-stems, *ā-stems, *i-stems, *u-stems, dental stems, velar stems, nasal stems, *r-stems and *s-stems.