The Proto-Celtic language, also called Common Celtic, is the partially reconstructed ancestor language of all the known Celtic languages. Its lexis, or vocabulary, can be confidently reconstructed on the basis of the comparative method of historical linguistics, in the same manner as Proto-Indo-European or PIE, the ancient language which has been most thoroughly re-constructed. Proto-Celtic is a descendant of the Proto-Indo-European language and is itself the ancestor of the Celtic languages which are members of the modern Indo-European language family, the most commonly spoken language family. Modern Celtic languages share common features with Italic languages that are unseen in other branches and according to one theory they may have formed an ancient Italo-Celtic branch. The duration of the cultures speaking Proto-Celtic was relatively brief compared to PIE's 2,000 years. The earliest archaeological culture that may justifiably be considered as Proto-Celtic is the Late Bronze Age Urnfield culture of Central Europe c.1300 BCE.^[1] By the Iron Age Hallstatt culture of around 800 BC these people had become fully Celtic.^[1]

The reconstruction of Proto-Celtic is currently being undertaken, by necessity relying on later iterations of Celtic languages. Although Continental Celtic presents much substantiation for Proto-Celtic's phonology, and some for its morphology, recorded material is too scanty to allow a secure reconstruction of syntax, although some complete sentences are recorded in the Continental Gaulish and Celtiberian. Therefore, the primary sources for reconstruction come from the Insular Celtic languages with the oldest literature found in Old Irish^[2] and Middle Welsh.^[3] dating back to authors flourishing in the 6th century CE.

Sound changes from Proto-Indo-European

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The phonological changes from Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Celtic may be summarised as follows.^[4] The changes are roughly in chronological order, with changes that operate on the outcome of earlier ones appearing later in the list.

Late Proto-Indo-European

These changes were shared by several other Indo-European branches.

• *e is colored by an adjacent laryngeal consonant:
  • eh?, h?e > ah?, h?a
  • eh?, h?e > oh?, h?o
• Palatovelars merge into the plain velars:
  • ? > k
  • ? > g
  • > g?
• Epenthetic *a is inserted after a syllabic sonorant if a laryngeal and another sonorant follow (R?HR > RaHR)
• Laryngeals are lost:
  • before a following vowel (HV > V)
  • following a vowel in syllables before the accent (VHC´ > VC´)
  • following a vowel, resulting in compensatory lengthening, thus (VH > V?)
  • between plosives in non-initial syllables (CHC > CC)
• Two adjacent dentals become two adjacent sibilants (TT > ss)

Italo-Celtic

The following sound changes are shared with the Italic languages in particular, and can be used in support of the Italo-Celtic hypothesis.^[5]

• Dybo's rule: long close vowels are shortened (or a laryngeal is lost) before resonant + stressed vowel.
  • ?R´ / ? *iHR´ > iR´
  • ?R´ / ? *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.
• Possibly, vocalization of laryngeals to *? between a *CR cluster and consonantal *j (CRHjV > CR?jV)
• Syllabic laryngeals become *a (CHC > CaC)
• Syllabic resonants before a voiced unaspirated stop become *Ra (R?D > RaD)
• *m is assimilated or lost before a glide:
  • mj > nj
  • mw > w
• *p assimilates to *k? when another *k? follows later in the word (p...k? > k?...k?)
• sVs > ss, sTVs > Ts

One change shows non-exact parallels in Italic: the vocalization of syllabic resonants next to laryngeals depending on the environment. Similar developments appear in Italic, but for the syllabic nasals *m?, *n?, the result is Proto-Italic *?m, *?n (> Latin em ~ im, en ~ in).

• Word-initially, HR?C > aRC
• Before voiceless stops, CR?HT > CRaT
• CR?HV > CaRHV
• CR?HC > CR?C

Early Proto-Celtic

• Sequences of velar and *w merge into the labiovelars (it is uncertain if this preceded or followed the next change; that is, whether gw > b or gw > g?):
  • kw > k?
  • gw > g?
  • g?w > g
• g? > b
• Aspirated stops lose their aspiration and merge with the voiced stops (except that this counterfeeds the previous change, so *g > *g? doesn't result in a merger):
  • b? > b
  • d? > d
  • g? > g
  • g > g?
• *e before a resonant and *a (but not *?) becomes *a as well (eRa > aRa): *elH-ro > *gelaro > *galaro / *gérH-no > *gerano > *garano (Joseph's rule).
• Epenthetic *i is inserted after syllabic liquids when followed by a plosive:
  • l?T > liT
  • r?T > riT
• Epenthetic *a is inserted before the remaining syllabic resonants:
  • m? > am
  • n? > an
  • l? > al
  • r? > ar
• All remaining nonsyllabic laryngeals are lost.
• ? > ?
• ? > ? in final syllables
• Long vowels are shortened before a syllable-final resonant (V:RC > VRC); this also shortens long diphthongs. (Osthoff's law)

Late Proto-Celtic

• Plosives become *x before a different plosive or *s (C?C? > xC?, Cs > xs)
• p > b before liquids (pL > bL)
• p > w before nasals (pN > wN)
• p > ? (except possibly after *s)
• ? > ?
• ew > ow
• uwa > owa

Examples

Phonological reconstruction

Consonants

The following consonants have been reconstructed for Proto-Celtic:

In contrast to the parent language, Proto-Celtic does not use aspiration as a feature for distinguishing phonemes. So the Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirated stops *b?, *d?, *g?/ merged with *b, *d, *g/?. The voiced aspirate labiovelar *g did not merge with *g?, though: plain *g? became *b in Proto-Celtic, while aspirated *g became *g?. Thus, PIE *g?en- 'woman' became Old Irish ben and Old Welsh ben, but PIE *gn?- 'to kill, to wound' became Old Irish gonaid and Welsh gwanu.

Proto-Indo-European *p was lost in Proto-Celtic, apparently going through the stages *? (as in the table above) and *h (perhaps attested by the toponym Hercynia if this is of Celtic origin) before being lost completely word-initially and between vowels. Adjacent to consonants, Proto-Celtic *? underwent different changes: the clusters *?s and *?t became *xs and *xt respectively already in Proto-Celtic. PIE *sp- became Old Irish s (lenited f-, exactly as for PIE *sw-) and Brythonic f; while Schrijver 1995, p. 348 argues there was an intermediate stage *s?- (in which *? remained an independent phoneme until after Proto-Insular Celtic had diverged into Goidelic and Brythonic), McCone 1996, pp. 44-45 finds it more economical to believe that *sp- remained unchanged in PC, that is, the change *p to *? did not happen when *s preceded. (Similarly, Grimm's law did not apply to *p, t, k after *s in Germanic, and later the same exception occurred again in the High German consonant shift.)

In Gaulish and the Brythonic languages, a new *p sound has arisen as a reflex of the Proto-Indo-European *k? phoneme. Consequently, one finds Gaulish petuar[ios], Welsh pedwar "four", compared to Old Irish cethair and Latin quattuor. Insofar as this new /p/ fills the space in the phoneme inventory which was lost 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 when we wish to group the Celtic languages according to the way they handle this one phoneme. However a simple division into P- and Q-Celtic may be untenable, as it does not do justice to the evidence of the ancient Continental Celtic languages. The large number of unusual shared innovations among the Insular Celtic languages are often also presented as evidence against a P-Celtic vs Q-Celtic division, but they may instead reflect a common substratum influence from the pre-Celtic languages of Britain and Ireland,[1], or simply continuing contact between the insular languages; in either case they would be irrelevant to Celtic language classification in the genetic sense.

Q-Celtic languages may also have /p/ in loan words, though in early borrowings from Welsh into Primitive Irish /k?/ was used by sound substitution due to a lack of a /p/ phoneme at the time:

• Latin Patricius "Saint Patrick"' > Welsh > Primitive Irish Qatrikias > Old Irish Cothrige, later Pádraig;
• Latin presbyter "priest" > early form of word seen in Old Welsh premter primter > Primitive Irish qrimitir > Old Irish cruimther.

Gaelic póg "kiss" was a later borrowing (from the second word of the Latin phrase osculum pacis "kiss of peace") at a stage where p was borrowed directly as p, without substituting c.

Vowels

The Proto-Celtic vowel system is highly comparable to that reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European by Antoine Meillet. The following monophthongs have been reconstructed:

Type	Front		Central		Back
	long	short	long	short	long	short
Close	i:	i			u:	u
Mid		e				o
Open			a:	a

The following diphthongs have also been reconstructed:

Morphology

Nouns

The morphology (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 the normal masculine, feminine and neuter, the three numbers were singular, plural and dual. The number of cases is a subject of contention:^[8] while Old Irish may have only five, the evidence from Continental Celtic is considered^{[by whom?]} 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 the stem. There are *o-stems, *?-stems, *i-stems, *u-stems, dental stems, velar stems, nasal stems, *r-stems and *s-stems.

*o-stem nouns

• makk?os 'son' (masculine) (Old Irish mac ~ Welsh, Cornish and Breton mab)

• d?nom 'stronghold' (neuter)

*?-stem nouns

E.g. *?l?m? 'hand' (feminine) (Old Irish lám; Welsh llaw, Cornish leuv, Old Breton lom)

E.g. *wolk?s 'hawker' (masculine) (Gallic Latinised Volcae)

*i-stems

E.g. *s?lis 'sight, view, eye' (feminine) (Brittonic sulis ~ Old Irish súil)

E.g. *mori 'body of water, sea' (neuter) (Gallic Mori- ~ Old Irish muir ~ Welsh môr)

*u-stem nouns

E.g. *bitus 'world, existence' (masculine) (Gallic Bitu- ~ Old Irish bith ~ Welsh byd ~ Breton bed)

E.g. *d?nu 'valley river' (neuter?)

Velar and dental stems

Before the *-s of the nominative singular, a velar consonant was fricated to *-x : *r?g- "king" > *r?xs. Likewise, final *-d devoiced to *-t-: *druwid- "druid" > *druwits.^[9]

E.g. *r?xs 'king' (masculine) (Gallic -rix; Old Irish rí; Middle Welsh rhi, Old Breton ri)

E.g. *druwits 'druid' (masculine) (Gallic druis; Old Irish druí; Middle Welsh dryw "druid; wren", Old Cornish druw)

E.g. *karnuxs 'carnyx' (masculine?)

E.g. *karants 'friend' (masculine) (Gallic carant-; Old Irish cara; Welsh câr "kinsman; friend", pl. ceraint, Breton kar "relative", pl. kerent)

Nasal stems

Generally, nasal stems end in *-on-; this becomes *-? in the nominative singular: *abon- "river" > *ab?.

E.g. *ab? 'river' (feminine) (Welsh afon, Breton (obs.) aven, Scottish Gaelic abhainn)

E.g. *anman 'name' (neuter) (Gaulish anuan-; Old Irish ainm; Breton anv; Welsh enw)

*s-stem nouns

Generally, *s-stems end in *-es-, which becomes *-os in the nominative singular: *teges- 'house' > *tegos.

E.g. *tegos 'house' (masculine), Old Irish teg, tech, dative tigh; Welsh t?, Breton ti.

*r-stem nouns

• r-stems are rare and principally confined to names of relatives. Typically they end in *-ter-, which becomes *-t?r in the nominative and *-tr- in all other cases aside from the accusative: *?ater- 'father' > *?at?r, *?atros.

E.g. *?at?r 'father' (masculine)

E.g. *m?t?r 'mother' (feminine)

Verbs

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From comparison between early Old Irish and Gaulish forms it seems that Continental and Insular Celtic verbs were to develop differently and so the study of Irish and Welsh may have unduly weighted past opinion of proto-Celtic verbal morphology.^[] It can be inferred from Gaulish and Celtiberian as well as Insular Celtic that the proto-Celtic verb had at least three moods:

• indicative -- seen in e.g. 1st sg. Gaulish delgu "I hold", Old Irish tongu "I swear"
• imperative -- seen in e.g. 3rd sg. Celtiberian usabituz, Gaulish appisetu
• subjunctive -- seen in e.g. 3rd sg. Gaulish buetid "may he be", Celtiberian asekati

and four tenses:

• present -- seen in e.g. Gaulish uediíu-mi "I pray", Celtiberian zizonti "they sow"
• preterite -- seen in e.g. 3rd sg. Gaulish sioxti, Lepontic KariTe
• imperfect -- perhaps in Celtiberian kombalkez, atibion
• future -- seen in e.g. 3rd sg. Gaulish bissiet, Old Irish bieid "he shall be"

A probable optative mood also features in Gaulish (tixsintor) and an infinitive (with a characteristic ending -unei) in Celtiberian.^[10][11]

Verbs were formed by adding suffixes to a verbal stem. The stem might be thematic or athematic, an open or a closed syllable.

Example conjugations

Scholarly reconstructions ^{[4][12][13][14]} may be summarised in tabular format.

Conjugation like *bere/o- 'bear, carry, flow'

Conjugation like *m?r?- 'greaten, magnify, enlarge'

Dating

Proto-Celtic is mostly dated to roughly 800 BC (Hallstatt C), see Celtic languages.^[] The word for 'iron', traditionally reconstructed to Proto-Celtic as *?sarnom, in particular, has long been taken as an indication that the divergence into individual Celtic languages did not start until the Iron Age (the 8th century BC at the latest), but Schumacher^[15] and Schrijver^[16] have proposed to date Proto-Celtic as early as the 13th century BC, the time of the Canegrate culture, in northwestern Italy, and the Urnfield culture in Central Europe, implying that the divergence may have started in the Bronze Age already.

See also

• Pre-Celtic
• Italo-Celtic
• Beaker culture
• Urnfield
• Halstatt culture
• La Tène culture
• Goidelic substrate hypothesis
• Ligures
• Azilian

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Cowgill, Warren (1975). "The origins of the Insular Celtic conjunct and absolute verbal endings". In H. Rix (ed.). Flexion und Wortbildung: Akten der V. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, Regensburg, 9.-14. September 1973. Wiesbaden: Reichert. pp. 40-70.
• Evans, D. Simon (1964). A Grammar of Middle Welsh. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.
• Hackstein, Olav (2002). "Uridg. *CH.CC > *C.CC". Historische Sprachforschung. 115: 1-22.
• Lane, George S. (1933). "The Germano-Celtic Vocabulary". Language. 9 (3): 244-264. doi:10.2307/409353. JSTOR 409353.
• Matasovi?, Ranko (2009). Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic. Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series, 9. Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-17336-1.
• McCone, Kim (1996). Towards a Relative Chronology of Ancient and Medieval Celtic Sound Change. Maynooth: Department of Old and Middle Irish, St. Patrick's College. ISBN 978-0-901519-40-5.
• Pedersen, Holger (1913). Vergleichende Grammatik der keltischen Sprachen. 2. Band, Bedeutungslehre (Wortlehre). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. ISBN 978-3-525-26119-4.
• Schrijver, Peter (1994). "The Celtic adverbs for 'against' and 'with' and the early apocope of *-i". Ériu. 45: 151-89.
• Schrijver, Peter (1995). Studies in British Celtic Historical Phonology. Amsterdam: Rodopi. ISBN 978-90-5183-820-6.
• 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.
• Thurneysen, Rudolf (1946). A Grammar of Old Irish. Tr. D. A. Binchy and Osborn Bergin. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.
• Zair, Nicholas (2012). The Reflexes of the Proto-Indo-European Laryngeals in Celtic. Leiden: Brill.

External links

The Leiden University has compiled etymological dictionaries of various IE languages, a project supervised by Alexander Lubotsky and which includes a Proto-Celtic dictionary by Ranko Matasovi?. Those dictionaries published by Brill in the Leiden series have been removed from the University databases for copyright reasons. Alternatively, a reference for Proto-Celtic vocabulary is provided by the University of Wales at the following sites:

• Proto-Celtic to English Wordlist (PDF)
• English to Proto-Celtic Wordlist (PDF)