Inhistorical linguistics,Italo-Celtic is a hypothetical grouping of theItalic andCeltic branches of theIndo-European language family on the basis of features shared by these two branches and no others. There is controversy about the causes of these similarities. They are usually considered to be innovations, likely to have developed after the breakup of theProto-Indo-European language. It is also possible that some of these are not innovations, but shared conservative features, i.e. original Indo-European language features which have disappeared in all other language groups. What is commonly accepted is that the shared features may usefully be thought of as Italo-Celtic forms, as they are certainly shared by the two families and are almost certainly not coincidental. The archaeological horizon with which a hypothetical Italo-Celtic language family is often associated, before the split between Italic and Celtic languages, is that of theBell Beaker culture.[5]
The traditional interpretation of the data is that both sub-groups of theIndo-European language family are generally more closely related to each other than to the other Indo-European languages. That could imply that they are descended from a common ancestor,Proto-Italo-Celtic, which can be partly reconstructed by thecomparative method. Scholars who believe that Proto-Italo-Celtic was an identifiable historical language estimate that it was spoken in the 3rd or 2nd millennium BCE somewhere inSouth-Central Europe.[citation needed]
That hypothesis fell out of favour after it was re-examined byCalvert Watkins in 1966.[6][independent source needed] Nevertheless, some scholars, such asFrederik Kortlandt, continued to be interested in the theory.[7] In 2002 a paper by Ringe, Warnow and Taylor, employing computational methods as a supplement to the traditional linguistic subgrouping methodology, argued in favour of an Italo-Celtic subgroup,[8] and in 2007, Kortlandt attempted a reconstruction of a Proto-Italo-Celtic.[9]
Emphatic support for an Italo-Celtic clade came fromCeltologistPeter Schrijver in 1991.[10] More recently, Schrijver (2016) has argued that Celtic arose in or close to northern Italy as the first branch of Italo-Celtic to split off, with areal affinities toVenetic andSabellian, and identified Proto-Celtic archaeologically with theCanegrate culture of theLate Bronze Age of Italy (c. 1300–1100 BC).[11]
The most common alternative interpretation is that the proximity ofProto-Celtic andProto-Italic over a long period could have encouraged the parallel development of what were already quite separate languages, asareal features within aSprachbund. As Watkins (1966) puts it, "the community of-ī in Italic and Celtic is attributable to early contact, rather than to an original unity". The assumed period of language contact could then be later and perhaps continue well into the first millennium BC.
However, if some of the forms are archaic elements of Proto-Indo-European that were lost in other branches, neither model of post-PIE relationship must be postulated. Italic and especially Celtic also share several distinctive features with theHittite language (anAnatolian language) and theTocharian languages,[12] and those features are certainly archaisms.
thethematic genitive singular inī (e.g. Latin second declensiondominus, gen.sg.dominī). Both in Italic (Popliosio Valesiosio,Lapis Satricanus) and in Celtic (Lepontic-oiso,Celtiberian-o), traces of the-osyo genitive ofProto-Indo-European (PIE) have also been discovered, which might indicate that the spread of theī genitive occurred in the two groups independently (or by areal diffusion). Theī genitive has been compared to the so-calledCvi formation inSanskrit, but that too is probably a comparatively late development. The phenomenon is probably related to the feminine longī stems and theLuwiani-mutation.
the formation ofsuperlatives with reflexes of the PIE suffix *-ism̥mo- (Latinfortis,fortissimus "strong, strongest", Old Irishsen,sinem "old, oldest", Oscanmais,maimas "more, most"), where branches outside Italic and Celtic derive superlatives with reflexes of PIE *-isto- instead (Sanskrit:urús, váriṣṭhas "broad, broadest",Ancient Greek:καλός, κάλλιστος "beautiful, fairest",Old Norserauðr,rauðastr "red, reddest", as well as English "-est").
theā-subjunctive. Both Italic and Celtic have a subjunctive descended from an earlier optative in-ā-. Such an optative is not known from other languages, but the suffix occurs inBalto-Slavic andTocharian past tense formations, and possibly inHittite-ahh-.
the collapsing of the PIEaorist andperfect into a singlepast tense. In both groups, this is a relatively late development of the proto-languages, possibly dating to the time of Italo-Celtic language contact.
the assimilation of *p to a following *kʷ.[13] This development obviously predates the Celtic loss of *p:
PIE *pekʷ- 'cook' →Latincoquere;Welshpobi (Welsh p is from Proto-Celtic *kʷ)
PIE *penkʷe 'five' → Latinquīnque; Old Irishcóic, Welshpump
PIE *perkʷu- 'oak' → Latinquercus;Goidelic ethnonymQuerni, in northwest HispaniaQuerquerni
A number of other similarities continue to be pointed out and debated.[14]
Ther-passive (mediopassive voice) was initially thought to be an innovation restricted to Italo-Celtic until it was found to be a retained archaism shared with Hittite, Tocharian, and possibly thePhrygian language.
^Mallory, James Patrick (2023). "From the steppe to Ireland: the impact of aDNA research". In Kristiansen, Kristian; Kroonen, Guus; Willerslev, Eske (eds.).The Indo-European puzzle revisited integrating archaeology, genetics, and linguistics. glish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 140–141.
^Schrijver, Peter (1991). "V.E Italo-Celtic, The Development of the Laryngeals and Notes on Relative Chronology".The Reflexes of the Proto-Indo-European Laryngeals in Latin. Amsterdam:Rodopi. pp. 415ff.ISBN90-5183-308-3.
^Andrew L. Sihler,New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, OUP 1995, p.145, §141.
^Michael Weiss, Italo-Celtica: Linguistic and Cultural Points of Contact between Italic and Celtic inProceedings of the 23rd Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, Hempen Verlag 2012
Campanile, Enrico (1968).Studi sulla posizione dialettale del latino. Arti grafiche Pacini Mariotti. pp. 16–130.
Cowgill, Warren (1970). "Italic and Celtic superlatives and the dialects of Indo-Europeans". In Cardona, George; Hoenigswald, Henry M.; Senn, Alfred (eds.).Indo-European and Indo-Europeans. University of Pennsylvania Press.ISBN978-0-8122-7574-2.
Jasanoff, Jay (1997). "An Italo-Celtic isogloss: The 3pl. mediopassive in *-ntro". In Adams, Douglas Q. (ed.).Festschrift for Eric P. Hamp. Vol. 1. Institute for the Study of Man.ISBN978-0-941694-57-5.
Weiss, Michael (2022). "Italo-Celtic".The Indo-European Language Family. Cambridge University Press. pp. 102–113.ISBN978-1-108-60386-7.
Zair, Nicholas (2018). "The shared features of Italic and Celtic". In Klein, Jared; Joseph, Brian D.; Fritz, Matthias (eds.).Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics. Walter de Gruyter.ISBN978-3-11-054243-1.
Lehmann, Winfred P. "Frozen Residues and Relative Dating", inVaria on the Indo-European Past: Papers in Memory of Marija Gimbutas, eds. Miriam Robbins Dexter and Edgar C. Polomé. Washington D.C.: Institute for the Study of Man, 1997. pp. 223–46
Nishimura, Kanehiro (2005). "Superlative Suffixes *-ismo- and *-isim̥mo in Sabellian Languages".Glotta.81:160–183.JSTOR40267191.
Schmidt, Karl Horst, “Contributions from New Data to the Reconstruction of the Proto-Language”. In:Polomé, Edgar; Winter, Werner, eds. (1992).Reconstructing Languages and Cultures (1st ed.).Berlin,New York:Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 35–62.ISBN978-3-11-012671-6.OCLC25009339.
Schrijver, Peter (2015). "Pruners and trainers of the Celtic family tree: The rise and development of Celtic in light of language contact".Proceedings of the XIV International Congress of Celtic Studies, Maynooth 2011. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. pp. 191–219.
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