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Theo Vennemann:
The thesis that English has been structurally influenced in its historical development by Celtic substrata has a long tradition; cf. Preusler 1956 and Tristram 1999 for overviews of research in this domain. Even older is the thesis that Insular Celtic in its turn has been structurally influenced in its historical development by Hamito-Semitic substrata; cf. Morris Jones 1900, Pokorny 1927-30, Gensler 1993, Vennemann 1995: §1.
The research strategy for discovering Celtic influences in English is this: Wherever English deviates structurally from general Germanic (including Anglo-Saxon Old English) and also from other contact languages, chiefly Scandinavian Germanic and French, while at the same time agreeing with Insular Celtic, especially Welsh, that feature is interpreted as owed (directly or indirectly) to Celtic influence.
However, an interesting question arises immediately: Considering that Germanic and Celtic are both Indo-European languages, how did Insular Celtic come to differ in its structural type from general Indo-European in the first place, and indeed sufficiently so to drag English too away from its Germanic and indeed Indo-European typology?
The non-Indo-European structural features of Insular Celtic have all been shown by Morris Jones and Pokorny to occur in Hamito-Semitic, and by Gensler to form a characteristic bundle of isoglosses just of Hamito-Semitic and Insular Celtic. Thus, we have a second research strategy, this time for discovering Hamito-Semitic influences in Insular Celtic: Wherever Insular Celtic deviates structurally from Indo-European (in particular, where it is sufficiently known, from Continental Celtic), while at the same time agreeing with Hamito-Semitic, that feature is interpreted as owed (directly or indirectly) to Hamito-Semitic influence.
What follows from this for the study of English? An answer was suggested by Pokorny (1959: 161, my translation): “It is interesting to note that very many of the above-mentioned non-Indo-European elements of Insular Celtic have also, via Celtic, passed into English which has thereby received an un-Germanic, even a downright non-Indo-European character.”
I have taken up Pokorny's suggestion of transitive loaning and studied a number of shared Semitic-Celtic-English features in this context (Vennemann forthc. 2001, 2002, forthc.), viz. the rise of the verbal noun and the progressive verbal aspect, the subject disagreement rule (for English: the Northern subject rule), the lack of the external possessor construction, and the development of word-order. In the present paper I would like to dicuss this model of structural language development in the British Isles (cf. the title of Wagner 1959 for this formulation) and present additional material.
English and Celtic in Contact: Semitic —> Celtic —> English: the transitivity of language contact
Semitic --> Celtic --> English: The transitivity of language contact
The thesis that English has been structurally influenced in its historical development by Celtic substrata has a long tradition; cf. Preusler 1956 and Tristram 1999 for overviews of research in this domain. Even older is the thesis that Insular Celtic in its turn has been structurally influenced in its historical development by Hamito-Semitic substrata; cf. Morris Jones 1900, Pokorny 1927-30, Gensler 1993, Vennemann 1995: §1.
The research strategy for discovering Celtic influences in English is this: Wherever English deviates structurally from general Germanic (including Anglo-Saxon Old English) and also from other contact languages, chiefly Scandinavian Germanic and French, while at the same time agreeing with Insular Celtic, especially Welsh, that feature is interpreted as owed (directly or indirectly) to Celtic influence.
However, an interesting question arises immediately: Considering that Germanic and Celtic are both Indo-European languages, how did Insular Celtic come to differ in its structural type from general Indo-European in the first place, and indeed sufficiently so to drag English too away from its Germanic and indeed Indo-European typology?
The non-Indo-European structural features of Insular Celtic have all been shown by Morris Jones and Pokorny to occur in Hamito-Semitic, and by Gensler to form a characteristic bundle of isoglosses just of Hamito-Semitic and Insular Celtic. Thus, we have a second research strategy, this time for discovering Hamito-Semitic influences in Insular Celtic: Wherever Insular Celtic deviates structurally from Indo-European (in particular, where it is sufficiently known, from Continental Celtic), while at the same time agreeing with Hamito-Semitic, that feature is interpreted as owed (directly or indirectly) to Hamito-Semitic influence.
What follows from this for the study of English? An answer was suggested by Pokorny (1959: 161, my translation): “It is interesting to note that very many of the above-mentioned non-Indo-European elements of Insular Celtic have also, via Celtic, passed into English which has thereby received an un-Germanic, even a downright non-Indo-European character.”
I have taken up Pokorny's suggestion of transitive loaning and studied a number of shared Semitic-Celtic-English features in this context (Vennemann forthc. 2001, 2002, forthc.), viz. the rise of the verbal noun and the progressive verbal aspect, the subject disagreement rule (for English: the Northern subject rule), the lack of the external possessor construction, and the development of word-order. In the present paper I would like to dicuss this model of structural language development in the British Isles (cf. the title of Wagner 1959 for this formulation) and present additional material.
English and Celtic in Contact: Semitic —> Celtic —> English: the transitivity of language contact
Semitic --> Celtic --> English: The transitivity of language contact
