Zompist Bboard Again

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Tue May 12, 2026 9:37 am Some scholars have ascribed the Insular Celtic initial mutations to a pre-Celtic language of the British Isles that acted as a substratum, but that hypothesis is controversial as we don't know which language was spoken there before Celtic, so this amounts to an ignotum per ignotius ('unknown by even more unknown') argument, and the Semitic languages that have been proposed as the pre-Celtic substratum so often (IMHO a ridiculous idea) have nothing of that kind.

Tiberian Hebrew has lenition after inseparable prepositions and the word for 'and'. I think it's optional in other places.

Richard W wrote: ↑Tue May 12, 2026 2:38 pm

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Tue May 12, 2026 9:37 am Some scholars have ascribed the Insular Celtic initial mutations to a pre-Celtic language of the British Isles that acted as a substratum, but that hypothesis is controversial as we don't know which language was spoken there before Celtic, so this amounts to an ignotum per ignotius ('unknown by even more unknown') argument, and the Semitic languages that have been proposed as the pre-Celtic substratum so often (IMHO a ridiculous idea) have nothing of that kind.

Tiberian Hebrew has lenition after inseparable prepositions and the word for 'and'. I think it's optional in other places.

Thank you; I didn't know that. Still, I see little reason to assume a Semitic or Semitic-related language in pre-Celtic Britain and Ireland. IMHO the Bell Beaker people probably spoke an IE language that was, however, not the ancestor of any of the IE languages that were spoken in Western Europe in historical times - Celtic can hardly be that old, considering the degree of similarity between the attested Celtic languages, and there is evidence of the sound change *o > *a in the Bell Beaker language, which did not happen in either Celtic or Italic. What languages were spoken in the British Isles before the immigration of the Bell Beaker people, though, is anyone's guess. (For Razaric, my fictional take on those languages, I fancy a relationship to Basque.)

Richard W wrote: ↑Tue May 12, 2026 2:38 pm

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Tue May 12, 2026 9:37 am Some scholars have ascribed the Insular Celtic initial mutations to a pre-Celtic language of the British Isles that acted as a substratum, but that hypothesis is controversial as we don't know which language was spoken there before Celtic, so this amounts to an ignotum per ignotius ('unknown by even more unknown') argument, and the Semitic languages that have been proposed as the pre-Celtic substratum so often (IMHO a ridiculous idea) have nothing of that kind.

Tiberian Hebrew has lenition after inseparable prepositions and the word for 'and'. I think it's optional in other places.

Isn't lenition in Hebrew a relatively recent innovation under influence from Aramaic, in which it was innovated, not something inherited from Proto-Semitic (assuming the insane hypothesis that there was Semitic in the British Isles in the first place)?

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue May 12, 2026 4:36 pm

Richard W wrote: ↑Tue May 12, 2026 2:38 pm

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Tue May 12, 2026 9:37 am Some scholars have ascribed the Insular Celtic initial mutations to a pre-Celtic language of the British Isles that acted as a substratum, but that hypothesis is controversial as we don't know which language was spoken there before Celtic, so this amounts to an ignotum per ignotius ('unknown by even more unknown') argument, and the Semitic languages that have been proposed as the pre-Celtic substratum so often (IMHO a ridiculous idea) have nothing of that kind.

Tiberian Hebrew has lenition after inseparable prepositions and the word for 'and'. I think it's optional in other places.

Isn't lenition in Hebrew a relatively recent innovation under influence from Aramaic, in which it was innovated, not something inherited from Proto-Semitic (assuming the insane hypothesis that there was Semitic in the British Isles in the first place)?

It is! There was no such thing in Proto-Semitic, and there is no such thing e.g. in Akkadian or in Arabic. To sum up, all that Insular Celtic has in common with Semitic is VSO word order and some typological correlates thereof, but VSO order, while much less common than SOV or SVO, is not all that rare, and found in many places all around the world where nobody would assume a Semitic substratum, such as Mesoamerica or the Philippines. The Semitic substratum hypothesis is indeed ridiculous.

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2026 5:03 am places all around the world where nobody would assume a Semitic substratum, such as Mesoamerica

Are you sure about NOBODY? But what if I say it did have a substrate of, say, descendants of Carthaginians sailing to America?

(Joking, ofc)

þeprussianfrog wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2026 10:13 am

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2026 5:03 am places all around the world where nobody would assume a Semitic substratum, such as Mesoamerica

Are you sure about NOBODY? But what if I say it did have a substrate of, say, descendants of Carthaginians sailing to America?

Of course, no hypothesis is so bizarre that there is no crackpot supporting it I was talking about reasonably sane linguists. My point was that the Semitic substratum hypothesis was utterly unfounded because the only thing Semitic and Insular Celtic have in common - VSO word order - is found in places where assuming the former presence of Semitic speakers would be just crazy.

þeprussianfrog wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2026 10:13 am (Joking, ofc)

Fair

Travis B. wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2026 12:16 pm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of ... e_Americas

As I said, no theory is too crazy to be believed, or at least, claimed to be believed, by someone. And of course, it is perfectly legitimate to explore such a theory in a conlang. "Bad science can make good fiction", it is said (I forgot by whom).

EDIT: Of course, it is not impossible that Phoenicians reached the Americas, but there is no convincing evidence, and it seems unlikely that such expeditions could have made a profound impact on the languages of Mesoamerica. Phoenician merchantmen reached the British Isles, too, and some people have tried to explain Insular Celtic VSO word order by the impact of a "Pidgin Punic" that developed there, but most linguists consider this idea rather insane. Such trade contacts don't have that kind of influence on local languages; at most, they leave behind loanwords.

Long time no see. Monkey see, monkey do.