User talk:Green ink
Insular Celtic
[edit]Well actually, it isn't evident to me at all that the languages are in a Sprachbund situation or that there is much in the way of language contact effects at all apart from some loanwords (largely ecclesiastical) from Brythonic to Goidelic, and precious little in the opposite direction. Everything else they have in common can be explained by historical development from a common source, can't it? Where have language contact/Sprachbund effects been discussed? User:Angr 19:58, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
- it's not whether it can, it's whether it must (or at least more plausibly is than the alternative). [...] --Green ink 20:20, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
- No, in fact, it is whether it can. If we know two groups of languages to be closely related genetically (as Goidelic and Brythonic are), then the default assumption is that any common innovations they have are the result of common historical development. Language contact effects are to be called on only in cases where it's clear the commonalities can't be due to common historical development or coincidence, such as postposed definite articles in Romanian, Bulgarian, and Albanian. Thus when claiming language contact effects, the burden of proof is to show that some common property could not have been due to common historical development, and is unlikely to be coincidence. That's just Ockham's razor. (Not that this always works: if the only West Germanic languages we knew about were modern standard dialects of English, Dutch, German, and Yiddish, we'd think that the diphthongization of PGmc ī and ū was a common historical development that took place in Proto-WGmc, since ice/house, ijs/huis, Eis/Haus, ayz/hoyz have diphthongs in all of them; but in fact only the German and Yiddish ones are due to common historical development, while English and Dutch are probably coincidence.) User:Angr 20:49, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
- ockam's razor doesn't say: "by default it didn't happen", but rather, it says: "unless you must, don't make any assumption whether or not it happened". we know goidelic and brythonic have had a common ancestor. but we also know that they have been in close contact since prehistory. the interesting thing is which shared trait comes from which? you say you've read answers to that, now please sum them up in the article (or let someone else have the chance of doing so). i'm looking forward to the result. --Green ink 22:11, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
- No, in fact, it is whether it can. If we know two groups of languages to be closely related genetically (as Goidelic and Brythonic are), then the default assumption is that any common innovations they have are the result of common historical development. Language contact effects are to be called on only in cases where it's clear the commonalities can't be due to common historical development or coincidence, such as postposed definite articles in Romanian, Bulgarian, and Albanian. Thus when claiming language contact effects, the burden of proof is to show that some common property could not have been due to common historical development, and is unlikely to be coincidence. That's just Ockham's razor. (Not that this always works: if the only West Germanic languages we knew about were modern standard dialects of English, Dutch, German, and Yiddish, we'd think that the diphthongization of PGmc ī and ū was a common historical development that took place in Proto-WGmc, since ice/house, ijs/huis, Eis/Haus, ayz/hoyz have diphthongs in all of them; but in fact only the German and Yiddish ones are due to common historical development, while English and Dutch are probably coincidence.) User:Angr 20:49, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
User:Angr, you're right, "sprachbund" was off the mark. that's just been me groping for a catchy expression. what i've been thinking (and talking) of rather has been language contact of various sorts. sprachbund, as you indicate, is when mutual adstratal influence results in traits that weren't found in any of the languages involved prior to the contact situation. i don't know of any such thing having been claimed about the insular celtic languages, and i wasn't meaning to propose that. thanx for helping clarify.
at the same time, i would maintain most of what i've said, after, of course, substituting my erroneous uses of the term "sprachbund" simply by "mutual language contact". many of the traits that most conspicuously characterize the insular celtic languages as a group have, in fact, only arisen during historical times -- i am told that includes consonant mutation[citation needed], as well as inflected prepositions[citation needed]. as for the innovations shared from prehistoric times, at least some of them can reasonably be expected to have arisen through language contact, too (one possible ex.: vso word order??). since all those languages are related, the interesting question is, which shared characteristics have been inherited from a common ancestor as opposed to being the result of language contact. the i.c.h. consists in demonstrating that at least some of the properties defining i.c. have more plausibly been jointly inherited than taken over by one language from another.
i've also taken your point that even "mutual influence" may be too strong. where the difference can be told at all, i've only heard about examples of brythonic having influenced goidelic, rather than vice versa. that's not surprising considering the geographical situation. --Green ink 10:47, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
- As far as I know, consonant mutation and inflected prepositions both arose prehistorically (both are present in Old Irish and Middle Welsh, and probably earlier, although the spelling system of earlier forms of both languages doesn't show mutation, and the earliest inscriptions don't include prepositional phrases anyway). You're right, these things and VSO order could be due to language contact effects, but they could also be inherited from Proto-IC, and I think the less complicated assumption is that they are inherited features, unless there's good reason to suppose they can't be. The only thing I can think of where saying it's inherited is problematic is the use of a preposition + verbal noun to form a progressive aspect (Tá mé ag dul/Dw i'n mynd); the reason this is unlikely to be inherited is that Goidelic and Brythonic use different prepositions. If it were inherited, you'd expect the same preposition to be used. User:Angr 11:03, 1 August 2006 (UTC)