Italo-Celtic Correspondences in Verb Formation

Abstract

The question of possible Italo-Celtic unity has been amply discussed so far. The notion of a special Italo-Celtic subgroup was broadly accepted until mid 20th century. It flourished under the patronage of A. Meillet, and C. Watkins contributed to the fact that many linguists today consider it implausible. Given that there is a general disagreement in relation to a possible Italo-Celtic unity, a new approach to the problem is put forward. One may presume that the alleged Italo-Celtic unity may have left some evidence in verb formation. We employed the data of the Lexikon der Indogermanischen Verben to find verbal forms which are shared by both Italic and Celtic, and no other languages. There are thirteen such forms and they are considered to be exclusive morphological isoglosses. The number of exclusive Italo-Celtic isoglosses does not provide any evidence for a specific Italo-Celtic similarity, since Italic and Greek, as well as Celtic and Indo-Iranian languages, share more exclusive isoglosses of this kind than Italic and Celtic. Each pair of Italo-Celtic verbal correspondences was given careful attention. It was demonstrated that these verbal correspondences do not indicate Italo-Celtic innovations, but rather shared retentions or incidental convergences.