Talk:Insular Celtic languages

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[edit] Sprachbund vs. genetic unit (cleanup request)

the section "Language contact vs. common origin (cleanup request)" below supersedes the comments i've made here earlier --Green ink 11:22, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't see that this article addresses the idea of a "Sprachbund" at all; nor have I ever heard of such a suggestion before. As I read it, the article is entirely about Insular Celtic as a genetic unit. User:Angr 16:25, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

copied from User talk:Angr:

on the article's talk page, you say that the article wasn't about the sprachbund situation of that same set of languages. i disagree.

1. you're right, the article primarily is about the genetic unit, not about the sprachbund.
2. but yes, the sprachbund needs to be mentioned. after all, what proponents of the i.c. hypothesis say is that of the innovations shared between goidelic and brythonic languages, not all can be attributed to the sprachbund situation.
3. for practical purposes, such as organizing the celtic studies department of a university, both the sprachbund and the genetic unit contribute to making it useful to treat these languages together as a topic of study.

i don't think the sprachbund issue warrants a page of its own. i do think it should be separated out from discussion in the present state of the article; but after that, it should be merged into the insular celtic languages article. put more simply, the article needs to be clarified.

all i've been planning to do was express my (i think: relevant) confusion, and not to do anything else about it after that. i don't do flame wars, and with very few exceptions, i only read wikipedia. no hard feelings. --Green ink 17:36, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I gave the impression I was being defensive or offended by your comment! If there's anything verifiable by means of reliable sources on Insular Celtic as a Sprachbund, by all means put it in! All I'm saying is that when I read the article in its current state, it seems to me to be only about IC as a genetic unit. I don't see anything in the current text that suggests otherwise. But the current article certainly needs sources for the information about the genetic unit IC too! User:Angr 17:48, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

partial and abridged copy from User talk:Green ink:

User:Angr [has been] right, "sprachbund" was off the mark. [...] 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". [...] --Green ink 10:47, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Language contact vs. common origin (cleanup request)

The article appears to confound two issues: Insular Celtic language contact and an Insular Celtic common origin. For that reason, I've requested a cleanup. However, it does make sense to have them together in the same article, only they should be explained separately before discussing how these issues come together. I'd suggest having a separate section for each in the introduction of this article. In detail:

Insular Celtic language contact 

Due to language contact, these languages have shared innovations after they were or became separate languages. This could be an outright sprachbund (emergence of traits originating from neither parent language). More plausibly, this could be heavy adstratal influence of Brythonic on Goidelic. Example: absence of a third (=neuter) gender, which Old Irish still had but modern Irish, like the Brythonic languages, doesn't.

Insular Celtic genetic unit 

These languages share a common ancestral language (=I.C. proto-language) that is not an ancestor of any other known language. Therefore, they may also share innovations because those occurred before they split up into separate languages.

Importantly, these two issues are not mutually exclusive. The relevance of language contact has never been disputed, as its effects have continued into historic times, see above. The Insular Celtic Hypothesis, however, turns on evidence that some shared innovations cannot as plausibly be explained as the result of language contact and therefore must have occurred before the languages even separated. Demonstrating this would presumably take too much space for an encyclopedic article. Nevertheless, the general line of argument should be summarized and suitable references cited (also) for further reading. --green ink (t) 08:32, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

My answers are mostly at User talk:Green ink. User:Angr 11:26, 1 August 2006 (UTC)