11. Semitic

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11. Semitic

^--1

Celtic

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English:

The transitivity of language contact* *

Abstract

Dedicated to the memory of two dear friends and colleagues:

Wolfgang Ullrich Wurzel (J940~200J)

Willi Mayerthaler (J945~2002)

The concept of transitivity of language contact, the phenomenon that a linguistic feature may survive several successive language shifts, is characterized and illus~

trated. Research rules for the discovery of such features in the case of Semitic ~

Celtic and Celtic ~ English are given. Three topics discussed in earlier chapters, (I) the rise of the verbal noun in Insular Celtic and English and its use in the pro~

gressive, (2) the subject disagreement rule in Insular Celtic and English (there called "Northern subject rule"), and (3) the loss of the affected possessor construc~

tion (the sympathetic dative) are referred to as examples of this transitivity. The phenomena discussed here for the first time in this context are (a) the use of subor~

dinating 'and' in Semitic, Irish, and Irish English, and (b) the use of verbal expressions instead of, or together with, words for 'yes' and 'no'. - The Appendix pre~

sents the "Pokorny list", a list of 64 properties of Insular Celtic attributed by Pokorny (l927~30) to substratal Hamito~Semitic influence.

11.1. Research strategies for the reconstruction of language contact in the British Isles

If one wants to establish a possible impact of historical and linguistic contacts between speakers of language A and speakers of language B, it is not enough, on the linguistic side, to study the two languages and search for shared features. Thus, if the goal is "to discuss the nature and extent of the historical and linguistic contacts between speakers of Celtic languages and speakers of Germanic languages and their impact on the development of the English language",1 it is not enough to study Insu- lar Celtic and English and search for shared features. That is, the question cannot lie entirely in the hands of Celticists and Anglicists. Rather, one has to envisage how English would have developed had it lacked such contact influences, that is one has to compare the development of English to that of those of its Germanic relatives that have not lived in a

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180 Semitic -+ Celtic -+ English

comparable Celtic neighborhood. Clearly one has to follow a method which can be succinctly characterized in the following rule of thumb:

Research strategy for discovering Celtic influences in English:

Wherever English deviates structurally from general Germanic (including Anglo-Saxon Old English) and also from other contact languages, chiefly Scandinavian Germanic and French, while at the same time agreeing with Insular Celtic, especially Welsh, that feature is interpreted as owed (directly or indirectly) to Celtic influence.

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I believe that this is precisely the research strategy that all researchers of the question have applied. And indeed the research supporting the thesis that English has been structurally influenced in its historical development by Celtic substrata has a long tradition. I am in the fortunate posi- tion of not being under obligation to demonstrate this, because there is a well argued and illustrated summary of this research, namely Preusler's article "KeItischer Einfluss im Englischen" of 1956, and furthermore there is a recent and equally instructive overview for this research, namely Hildegard Tristram's Vancouver paper of 1999 published in the same year as a booklet in S1. Petersburg under the title "How Celtic is Standard English?".

There is, however, a peculiar aspect to the theory underlying this method. Scholars who study the structure and devolopment of English in such a perspective do not follow a whim or some arbitrary decision but have a strong motivation. They want to explain why English is different from the other Germanic languages, and when the answer is that it has developed differently, again the question is, Why has it? They con- sider reference to Insular Celtic as having explanatory force, inasmuch as these languages show the same features as those which make English different from Germanic: They want to explain English by reference to Celtic.

Strangely a simple fact is often forgotten in this context: Germanic and Celtic are branches of the same genetic language family. They are indeed neighboring branches of the Indo-European language family and as such especially similar in several ways. Without deeper knowledge one would have to ask, How can an appeal to Celtic be explanatory of non-Germanic traits of English if Celtic is itself of the same general structure as Germanic? I have emphasized the paradoxical aspect of this approach in my short paper "English as a 'Celtic' language" (Venne- mann 2000c) where I said, with reference to Wolfgang Meid's Die keltischell Sprachen und Literaturen (Meid 1997: 9, 16): "Celtic is a

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Semitic ~ Celtic ~ English 181 branch of Indo-European. and from what is known about the oldest Celtic on the Continent, and in traces even in the Isles, it was structurally very much an Indo-European language." Clearly, if "Celtic" is understood in this sense then reference to Celtic cannot possibly explain any features of English that appear un-Indo-European. Put explicitly:

The Celtic paradox:

If one explains an unusual feature FE of English by reference to a similar feature Fe of Celtic, that feature Fe of Celtic is just as unusual in Celtic as the feature FE is in English and is therefore just as much in need of explanation as the feature of English itself.

To be sure, within a purely Anglicist perspective the explanation may be satisfactory, because an Anglicist is only responsible (so to speak) for English. But in a wider perspective the problem has only been pushed back one level, and there it remains just as unsolved as it was at the beginning.

The general problem of structural etymology - specifically syntactic etymology - is the same as in lexical etymology. Let us look at a Fin- nish example, the etymology of viina 'spirits, alcohol, booze'.2 Since the word cannot be explained as a native Uralic

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^Z97etymon, etymolo- gists have looked for an outside source and established viina as a loan- word from Germanic (Gmc. +win-a- 'wine'),3 But in a wider perspective this only pushes the explanation back by one level, because the word is not a native Germanic word either: Germanic clearly borrowed the word from Latin (vinum), It so happens that in this particular case the etymo- logical reconstruction must go back by yet another level, because Latin (as well as the rest of Indo-European) does not natively possess this word either. Closer inspection has shown that the word is a Mediterra- nean loan-word, probably borrowed into a number of branches of Indo- European from Semitic (East Mediterranean Coast Semitic +wayn); cf.

Hebr. yn, yayin; Phoenician, Ammonite yn; Old Canaanite ye-nu, ye-ni (all with regular +w > y); also Sabaic inscriptional wyn or yyn, plur. ~wyn

or ~ywn 'vineyard'. From a Syro-Palestinian language the word was borrowed into Arabic and South Arabian (Arabic wayn(um) , Gecez wayan).4 A parallel from English is the adjective grand, which is clearly not a native Germanic etymon. It is from an Anglicist point of view fully explained by reference to Old French grand (Modern French grand/grande) which, with its cognates in other Romance languages, is simply Latin grandis/grande 'great, big'. However, this word is unex- plained in Latin. If I am right (cf. Vennemann 1998f), the word is a

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182 Semitic -+ Celtic -+ English

borrowing from a prehistoric Vasconic language (cf. Basque handi 'big').

These lexical parallels may suffice to show what is to be done when faced with problematic syntactic constructions or developments of Eng- lish that have been traced to similar constructions or developments in Celtic: If these Celtic constructions are not recognizably Indo-European, which indeed they rarely are because otherwise the English constructions in need of explanation would not be so problematical to begin with, the Celtic constructions or developments have themselves to be attributed to borrowing. And indeed those scholars who make this kind of reference to Celtic do not mean the Indo-European Celtic characterized above but the special forms which Celtic has attained in the British Isles (including Ireland). As I said in "English as a 'Celtic' language"

(Vennemann 2000c: 401): "It is the Celtic of the Isles, Insular Celtic, which has developed the peculiar properties whose reflexes in Englishes amaze us." I wrote "peculiar", and I meant it. For if I be allowed to quote myself once again, this time from "Atlantis Semitica: Structural contact features in Celtic and English" (the embedded quotation is from Eska 1999: 155):

Even in papers not addressed to the question of why Insular Celtic has developed in its peculiar way, or specifically to the question of outside influence, one can read such descriptions as "the exotic characteristics of the Celtic languages from an Indo-European perspective" (Vennemann 2001e: 365, n.6).

But regardless of whether scholars see anything peculiar in the specifically Insular Celtic developments or not, they acknowledge that those features have only been acquired after the language was transplanted to the Isles. E.g., R.P.M. and W.P. Lehmann characterize Insular Celtic, specifically Old Irish, in the following terms:

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In Old Irish, verbs stand initially in sentences, preceding subjects and objects . ... This sentence order, often labeled VSO for Verb-Subject-Object, brings about characteristic features of syntax and morphology, and apparently also phonology. These features have nothing to do with genealogical relationships, but rather are determined in accordance with language type. Arabic, Classical Hebrew, and many other languages belong to the VSO type (Lehmann and Lehmann 1975: 5).

Yet W.P. Lehmann leaves no doubt that this particular typological trait of Insular Celtic is an innovation:

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Semitic -7 Celtic -7 English 183 Proto-Celtic must be reconstructed as OV. It is equally clear that the Insular Celtic languages shifted from OV to VSO structure after they were established in Britain (Lehmann 1994: 99).

But why did this shift occur? Contrary to the Lehmanns (1975) I am convinced that these peculiar features can only be attributed to borrowing, i.e. to prehistoric language contact; and I am likewise convinced that now, a quarter of a century after the cited statement was made, and in view of progress made in the field of language contact,S this should be evident to every general linguist seriously asking questions in this domain. And even with a modicum of general linguistic knowledge one can identify the language, or language family, from which these peculiar borrowed features stem.⁶They are the Hamito-Semitic languages, as has been established beyond a shadow of a doubt by scholars such as John Morris Jones in his long article "Pre-Aryan syntax in Insular Celtic"

(1900), Julius Pokorny in his book-length series of articles titled "Das nicht-indogermanische Substrat im Irischen" (1927-30), and Orin David Gensler in his University of California, Berkeley, dissertation of 1993 titled "A typological evaluation of Celtic/Hamito-Semitic syntactic parallels". Since there seem to be few copies around of the latter work, and since its publication as a book is likely to be delayed by further years, I would like to quote once again (as in Vennemann 1997b: 45lf.) a passage summing up Gensler's findings. To understand the quotation, one has to keep in mind that CHS is Gensler's abbreviation for 'CelticlHamito-Semitic', namely for the linguistic type represented by these languages.

On the basis of the sample used in this study [64 languages from around the globe, cf. Gensler p. 4], nothing remotely close to the full-blown Celtic/

Hamito-Semitic linguistic type recurs anywhere else in the world. The relative- ly few languages which are "best matches" - actually rather poor matches - are scattered all over the globe, from the West Coast of North America to the Cau- casus and New Guinea. However, the continental average score for Africa is higher than for any other continent, and drops only slightly when the CHS languages Egyptian and Berber are omitted; West Africa scores especially well, and appears especially hospitable to several of the 1299 CHS features (ad- positional periphrastic, word-initial change, kin terms, inter alia). Conversely, Europe has one of the lowest average scores, and when Welsh and Irish are excluded its score drops far below that of any other continent. Celtic [by which Gensler exclusively means Insular Celtic, cf. his p. 1] is thus radically out of place in a European landscape, whereas the Hamito-Semitic languages simply intensify a structural trend seen over much of Africa. A weak form of the CHS

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184 Semitic -?' Celtic -?' English

type, then, would appear to have a natural home in Africa, in pal1icular North- west Africa. Within Afroasiatic, the highest-scoring languages are on the Medi- terranean; scores fall away in every direction, but the Chadic language Hausa (in West Africa) scores much higher than Cushitic Afar (in East Africa). The dia- chronic evidence, too, argues that the (weak) CHS type is something quite old in Africa: the African and Arabian case studies all show stronger CHS-ness further back in time. All this, in conjunction with the blood-type agreement between the British Isles and Northwest Africa, argues for some sort of prehistoric scenario specifically linking these two regions (Gensler 1993: 426).

In my view this case is closed, the thesis of a Hamito-Semitic substratum underlying Insular Celtic being one of the most reliably established pieces of scientific knowledge there is in any empirical discipline. As Gensler has shown, the substratum really was not simply Hamito-Semitic, which is a huge family including hundreds of languages in Africa and Asia (which is why it is also called Afro-Asiatic or Afrasian), but more specifically Hamito-Semitic of the Mediterranean type, which includes Libyco-Berber, Ancient Egyptian, and Semitic. In order to stress the similarity of the substratum to this particular manifestation of Hamito- Semitic, I sometimes refer to it as Semitidic or simply Semitic, e.g. in Vennemann 1995: § 1.7

This theory of Morris Jones, Pokorny, Gensler, and others immedi- ately provides a research strategy for identifying the non-Indo-Euro- pean structural features of Insular Celtic, viz. on the model of that given for the non-Germanic structural features of English above:

Research strategy for discovering Semitidic influences in Insular Cel- tic:

Wherever Insular Celtic deviates structurally from Indo-European (in particular, where it is sufficiently known, from Continental Celtic), while at the same time agreeing with Semitidic, i.e. with Mediterra- nean Hamito-Semitic, that feature is interpreted as owed (directly or indirectly) to Semitidic influence.

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11.2. Consequences for the study of English language history

What follows from this for the study of English? An answer was suggested by Pokorny in several of his writings on the substratum question;

the following quotation is from his article "Keltische Urgeschichte und Sprachwissenschaft":

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Semitic ---? Celtic ---? English 185 Interessant ist tibrigens festzustellen, daB sehr viele der oben angeftihrten nichtidg. Elemente des Inselkeltischen auch auf dem Umwege des Keltischen ins Englische gedrungen sind, das dadurch ein ungermanisches, ja sogar direkt nichtindogermanisches Geprage erhalten hat (Pokorny 1959: 161).8

It is this suggestion of transitive loaning which is at the root of the title of the present article.⁹

The basis of this transitive loaning is a sequence of language shifts:

the shift from Semitidic to Celtic yielding Insular Celtic and the shift from Insular Celtic to Anglo-Saxon yielding English. The theory of language contact teaches that in such language shifting some properties of the substratum find their way into the superstratum while others do not, but unfortunately the theory is not yet strong enough to predict which features ascend in this way and which do not. Thus it would not at present be correct to expect that exactly the same features that ascended from Semitic into Insular Celtic also ascended from Insular Celtic into English. As it stands, I find that more features went from Semitic into Insular Celtic than from Insular Celtic into English. When I read through Pokorny's book-length series of articles from 1927-1930 which deal with the Semitidic-to-Insular Celtic part of the process and ask myself which of the numerous features treated there were continued into English by transitivity, I find comparatively few, and some of them had already been noted in passing by Pokorny himself. \0 Celtic has really been transformed from the Indo-European type into the Semitic type; syntactically the resultant Insular Celtic is more similar to Semitic than to any of the other Indo-European languages. The same is not true of English. Nevertheless English is of all non-Celtic Indo-European languages the most similar to Insular Celtic and, by implication, to Semitic.

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11.3. Why is English less similar to Celtic than Insular Celtic is to Se- mitic?

I have been asked with regard to my transitivity model why we observe this difference of degree between the syntactic approximation of Insular Celtic to Semitic and that of English to Insular Celtic. I think the answer cannot really come from linguistics alone but requires assistance from history. I believe (and I stress that this is merely a belief, because I am not a historian) that the linguistic difference mirrors a difference in conquest patterns. In my opinion the Celtic conquest and occupation of the Isles was mostly a matter of small numbers of male warriors marry-

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186 Semitic -) Celtic -) English

ing into the pre-existing population, whereas the Anglo-Saxon conquest and occupation of Britain was a combination of military conquest and immigration, beginning with bands of warriors leaving the Continent for Britain and resulting in a veritable exodus, if we can believe the Vener- able Bede's report in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

According to Bede, the Germanic invaders of Britain came from three tribes, the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes, first merely tribus longis nauibus 'in three warships', whereas later mittitur confestim ilio classis prolix/or, armatorum ferens manum fortiorem 'at once a much larger fleet was sent over with a stronger band of warriors'. After identifying the parts of Britain taken by the Jutes and the Saxons he says about the Angles in particular:

Porro de Anglis, hoe est de ilia patria quae Angulus dieitur, et ab eo tempore usque hodie manere desertus inter prouincias Iutarum et Saxonum perhibetur, Orientales Ang/i, Mediterranei Angli, Merci, tota Nordanhymbrorum progenies, id est illarum gentium quae ad boream Humbri f1uminis inhabitant, ceterique Anglorum populi sunt orti ([Bede] 1969: 50)."

Even if this purported depopulation of an entire country is to some extent exaggerated, the passage does suggest that entire tribal units left the continent for Britain, rather than merely bands of belligerent males.

There is some non-linguistic evidence to support my supposition.

The Celts were not able to preserve their Indo-European societal organization in their new habitats but adopted the matrilineal organization of those they had conquered (Zimmer 1894, 1911 ).12 By contrast, the Anglo-Saxons managed to transplant their Germanic societal organization essentially unmodified to Britain (Whitelock 1972, Green 1998, Sarnowsky 2002).

There is also an area on the borderline between linguistics proper and the non-linguistic domains where Insular Celtic was massively influenced by its Semitidic substratum while English was not affected by Insular Celtic in the same way: the linguistic

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³⁰²coding of mental real- world apprehension in metaphors and idioms. This is an area which Pokorny treats at some length, showing that Old Irish differs from Indo- European by deriving abstract and concrete concepts in the form of concrete images in exactly the same way as Semitic. E.g. Old Irish forms concrete nouns, such as agent nouns, by means of fer 'man', macc 'son, boy', ben, be 'woman', ingen 'daughter', des, lucht 'group':

fer chad 'singer' (from Gital 'singing') fer forcitail 'teacher' (fromforcUal 'teaching')

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Semitic ^-7Celtic ^-7English 187 fer denma 'doer, Gm. Tater' (from denom 'doing')

fer legind 'scholar', macc Legind 'student' (from Legind 'reading') Perfect analogs of such formations are found in Semitic (cf. Pokorny

1927: 367-370):

Hebr. bacal ha!omop "lord of dreams", i.e. 'dreamer' Assyr. bel emaki "lord of strength", i.e. 'a strong one'

In Berber similar expressions are formed with bu, originally meaning 'father', then 'owner of' or 'belonging to':

bu tagant "one belonging to the forest", i.e. 'wild boar'13

bu-assuk "one belonging to the street", i.e. 'homeless street boy'14 Likewise Berber forms, with u 'son', expressions of the kind "son of obedience", i.e. 'an obedient one', "son of the permitted", i.e. 'some- thing legal', and, with ult 'daughter', expressions of the kind "daughter of obedience", also "daughter of prostitution", i.e. 'prostitute' .15 The plural is formed with id 'folks, people, group', fern. ist, e.g. ist buassuk

"female people of the street", i.e. 'street prostitutes'. The plural forms may be compared to Irish plurals with des or lucht, e.g. in des cotalta

"people of sleep", i.e. 'sleepers'. I find the degree of similarity between the Irish and Arabic expressions for 'echo' especially striking:

Ir. mac aUa "son of the rock (a ill) "

Ar. ibnat al- jabal "daughter of the mountain (jabal)"

See further examples in Adams 1975: 240-242. All of this is not Indo- European. It is, however, wide-spread in both ancient and modern Se- mitic languages, cf. Lipinski 1997:

It is characteristic of the Semitic languages to use such words as 'master', 'father', 'son', etc., with various nouns as descriptives. E.g., Hebrew bacal ha- hcflomot, lit. 'the master of the dreams', means 'the dreamer', and ben s3bac-

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³⁰³sana, lit. 'son of twenty-seven years', means 'twenty-seven years old' ^.16In Arabic, , aba sawarib, lit. 'father of mustaches', designates a man with a long mustache, while ^:Jaba l-yaq~an, 'the father of the vigilant', is the rooster, the cock. This usage is wide-spread in Amharic where such expressions formed the so-called 'adjectival syntagms', used mainly as attributes or appositions;

e.g. bald arat 3g3r, 'four-footed', lit. 'master of four feet'; ndfsd bis, 'evil-min- ded', lit. 'spirit of evil' (Lipinski 1997: § 51.22).

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188 Semitic ~ Celtic ~ English

The fact that English and Insular Celtic have reacted so differently to their respective substrata with regard to this pattern of idiom formation again suggests that the intensity of influence, and therefore probably the social significance, of those substrata must have been quite different.

Only recently, during the Golf War, have we learned to say things such as the mother of battles (from Arabic ^Jummu l-maCariki) and, when the war was over, the mother of confetti parades.

Stephen Laker (Munich), in an e-Ietter of 21 July 2002, and in his tum giving credit for the argument to Peter Schrijver (Munich), has added another possible reason for the fact that English is structurally less similar to Celtic than Celtic is to Semitic. There is some likelihood that when the Anglo-Saxons arrived in Britannia many Celts had actually been Romanized and were Latin-speaking, at least in Lowland Britain. This is what the situation in other parts of the Roman empire teaches us, e.g. in France which has remained Romance to this day, and in Bavaria which remained partly Romance for several centuries even after the collapse of the Empire until it was completely Germanized.

Such an intermediate layer between Celtic and English would naturally diminish the contact influence of Celtic on English, making it less direct in the south than in the north.

11.4. Three transitive paths into English

If we ask what applications for transitive loaning from Semitic through Insular Celtic into English we find, we can distinguish three paths:¹⁷ ( I) Semitic ~ Celtic ~ Standard English

(2) Semitic ~ Celtic ~ English dialects (3) Semitic ~ Celtic ~ Celtic Englishes

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"Celtic Englishes" is here used as in Tristram (ed.) 1997, 2000, namely for varieties of English spoken where "a Celtic language had once been spoken, or indeed, where it is still spoken today", put differently:

"where a code-switch from a Celtic language to English has occurred or is occurring at present. ,,18 Clearly "English" must here be understood as excluding Anglo-Saxon,19 because otherwise all varieties of English, having developed originally through a language shift from Brittonic to Anglo-Saxon, would be Celtic Englishes. This case should be excluded from the definition.

Case (3) has to be distinguished from case (2). Whereas English dialects, developing from varieties of Anglo-Saxon on Brittonic substrata,

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Semitic -7 Celtic -7 English 189 have been Celticized only once, Celtic Englishes, having developed or still developing from English (and not from Anglo-Saxon) on more recent Celtic substrata, have been Celticized, or are being Ceiticized, a second time. Case (3) then requires to distinguish two kinds of examples: one, (3.a), in which a particular Semitic/Celtic feature does not show in Standard English but does in a Celtic English, and another, (3.b), in which a particular Semitic/Celtic feature does show in Standard English as well as in the British English dialects and then shows to a higher degree in a Celtic English.

By way of illustrating case (1) I have used in "Atlantis Semitica"

(Vennemann 200lc) the rise of the verbal noun and the progressive as a first and the loss of external possessors as a second example. For case (2) I have used the subject disagreement rule (for English: the Northern subject rule) in "Atlantis Semitica" (Vennemann 200lc). For case (3) I present two Irish English examples in the present paper, one at some length for (3.a) in sections 11.5 to 11.7 and one briefly for (3.b) in section 11.8.

Pokorny was aware of all these possibilities. For while he was pri- marily concerned with Hamito-Semitic substratal influences on Insular Celtic, he stressed the occurrence of instances of transitive loaning when he said, with reference to the excessive use of possessives in Insular Celtic:

E[s] laBt sich beobachten, daB das Kymrische Uberal! dort (und noch after) das Possessiv verwendet, wo das auch im Englischen im Gegensatz zurn Fran- zasischen und den anderen gerrnanischen Sprachen der Fall ist. Ich zweifle daher nicht, daB der englische Brauch auf das keltische Substrat zurtickgeht, der wie- derum in diesem Faile voridg. beeinfluBt ist. Nach einer Mitteilung Sethes pflegt auch irn AIWgyptischen das Possessiv in den gleichen Hillen wie im Keltischen gebraucht zu werden. DaB die englische Konstruktion tatsachlich unrnittelbar auf das keltische Substrat zurUckgeht, laBt sich u.a. daraus erschlieBen. daB z.B. in den englischen Dialekten Schottlands entgegen dem gerneinenglischen Brauche auch die Worte fUr Mahlzeiten das Possessiv anneh- men, was genau mit dem Gaelischen Ubereinstimmt (Pokorny 16.253).20

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But in no case did Pokorny elaborate his observations. Thus by far the most work in this domain still has to be carried out.

11.5. Subordinating 'and' in Irish English and in Irish

In the present paper I would like to illustrate, for the first time, the third of the three cases defined in the preceding section, Semitic -7 Celtic -7

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190 Semitic ---f Celtic ---f English

Celtic Englishes. My attention was drawn to this example by Patricia Ronan's title announced for the Colloquium documented in

"Subordinating oeus 'and' in Old Irish", together with her abstract.

Since the abstract is a most succinct introduction to this topic, I would like, with Dr. Ronan's permission, to reproduce it here.

One of the more salient features of Hiberno-English (HE) is the use of subordinating and as in:

I only thought of him there and I cooking my dinner (Filppula 1999: 196) Gaelic substrate influence for this feature is often argued for (e.g. Filppula

1999; Harris 1984) as a similar construction can be found in Modern Irish.

Other scholars, however, are critical and point to earlier English examples (e.g.

Hacker 1994). It is also argued that differences exist between the HE construction and a similar Scots construction, which speak against a common Gaelic origin of the two. Amongst others, these are pragmatic features, such as mainly temporal meaning in HE versus concession in Scots.

This paper will examine the Old Irish forerunner of the Modern Irish construction, earliest attestations of which go back to the 8^thcentury. They display the Old Irish conjunction ocus, 'and', or in other cases what is termed its 'shortform' os.

For this paper a corpus of Old Irish texts is analysed as to their use of ocus/os. Two different patterns of use seem distinguishable; 1 st a type of as +

personal pronoun with optional further predication which seems to have em- phatic or concessive pragmatics. 2^nda type consisting of as (also written 7) or ocus + personal pronoun or noun, often predicated by a periphrastic construction of preposition and verbal noun with apparently subordinating semantics.

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It is suggested that these different pragmatic functions may have led to different typical uses in different varieties of Modern English dialect.

References: [Filppula 1999, Hacker 1994, Thurneysen 1927, Wagner 1959]

Since Ronan will provide the most explicit comparative Irish / Irish Eng- lish²¹ illustration of the phenomenon in her contribution (Ronan 2002) to Filppula, Klemola, and Pitkanen (eds.) 2002, I will only supply a few examples myself. I borrow some of the Modern Irish examples from Filppula (1999: 198f.).22 I take the liberty of boldfacing the relevant and or agus clauses.

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Semitic ~ Celtic ~ English 191 IrE: He fell and him crossing the bridge

(i.e. 'while he was crossing the bridge') II'. Thit se agus

e

ag dul thar an droichead.

'FaIl+PAST he and he (him) at go over the bridge.' II'. Thainig Sean agus

e

^6lta.

'Came John and him drunk', i.e.

'John came while in the state of drunkenness.' II'. Thainig Sean agus mala leis.

'John came and a bag with-him', i.e.

'John came and he had a bag with him.' If. PhOs se Albanach bui agus

e

^{san IRA.}

'He married an orange girl and him in-the IRA', i.e.

'He married an orange girl while in the IRA.'

As for the following examples, Filppula (1999: 199) says: "A further feature of the Irish system is that the agus-clause may precede the main clause in the same way as in the HE example in (54)." The example in Filppula's (54) is the following:

A nephew of mine was very sick in the hospital in Galway and I was goin' to the phone to find out how he was. And I going into the town of Bally- gar a car pulled up beside me. It was Father Turby [ ... J

Filppu!a's Irish examples are from Boyle (1973: 224):23 II'. Agus/ach

e

a bheith 6lta, thiocfadh Sean.

'And him being drunk, John would come', i.e. 1307 'Whileffhough being drunk, John would come.' II'. Agus

e

san IRA, phos

se

Albanach buL

'And him in-the IRA, he married an orange girl', i.e.

'While in the IRA, he married an orange girl.'

Filppula (1999: 199) points out that "in Old Irish ocus/acus and os were used in similar subordinating contexts, especially before stressed forms of the personal pronoun with the meaning 'and I' or 'I being'. He cites the following example from Thurneysen (1975: 548):

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192 Semitic -t Celtic -t English

do . bertis cech n-olc form os- mese oc taircitul cech maith doib-som 'they used to inflict every evil on me, though I was (lit. 'and 1')

prophesying every good to them'

Pokorny (1927: 139) shows with the following examples that the construction is found throughout the history of Irish:

OIr. B010c airiuc don t-sluag os sf thorrach

'Sie war beim Bedienen fUr die Schar und sie schwanger,24 Con' riccim se friss os mi athgoite

'Ich treffe ihn und ich schwer verwundeC 25 Mlr. FO'fhuaratar innte side oeus siat oc ernaigthi

'Sie trafen (sic) darin und sie beim Beten,26 Dene prostrait ocus t'aiged Cd talmain 'Faile nieder und dein Antlitz auf die Erde,27 If. BM fear ann agus

e

ar leath-shuil

'Es befand sich ein Mann dort und er einaugig,28

An amhlaidh a mheasfa go n-6lfainn

e

^sinagus mo bhean marbh?

'1st es so, daB du dachtest, ich wUrde dies trinken und meine Frau tot7'29 Tair ag dul go Corcaigh agus gan eolus na sJighe agat

'Du gehst nach Cork, obgleich (wort!. und ... ) du den Weg nicht kennst'30 That subordinating 'and' is a feature not just of Modern Irish but also of the older stages of the language is likely enough in view of the fact that the same feature occurs f308 in all varieties of Insular Celtic, namely not only in Irish and Scottish Gaelic but also in Manx, Welsh, Cornish, and Breton (Gregor 1980: 215-219).31

Concerning the possible semantics of the agus clauses under consid- eration, Filppula (1999: 199), following earlier authors, mentions the following: temporal, attendant circumstance, equivalent of relative clause, concessive, causal, concomitance, similarity.

I agree with those who view the Irish English use of subordinating and as modeled on the parallel use of ocuslagus 'and' in Irish. The most succinct formulation of this view is P.W. Joyce's (1910/1988: 33), cf. Filppula (1999: 197): "This, although very incorrect English, is a classic idiom in Irish, from which it has been imported as it stands into

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Semitic ~ Celtic ~ English 193 our English." The view is also formulated by Filppula (1991: 628) and more generally for all varieties of English that have been in close contact with Gaelic, including not only Irish English but also Scots and Hebridean English, by Klemola and Filppula (1992: 316f.).

In my understanding P.W. Joyce's is a perfect explanation. But is it really? Well, it is as far an Anglicist's concerns go. But in a wider perspective it is only the first step. The question that remains is the following: Considering that Irish is an Indo-European language and that this particular subordinating use of conjunctions meaning 'and' is not Indo- European. how did Insular Celtic acquire it? My answer should be clear after the introductory sections above: The Insular Celtic use of the' and' word as a subordinating conjunction is directly modeled on Semitic usage.

11.6. Subordinating 'and' iu Modern Arabic

I begin my illustration with examples from a grammar of Modern Ara- bic, Cowell 1964. There all one has to do is look for "circumstantial clauses" (in Arabic grammatical terminology al-gumla Hzaliyya), be- cause in Semitic this use of 'and' is so prominent that separate chapters are provided for it. Therefore in the following passages I will show with examples from Cowell's grammar that the use of a coordinating conjunction meaning 'and' also introducing dependent or subordinate

material is firmly established in Arabic.³²The author writes on page 391 under the heading "Coordination":

The conjunction w- 'and'. This conjunction is proclitic, i.e. it is pro- nounced as a prefix on the following word [ ... J. though the coordinated term may be whole clause or phrase. The use of w- in coordination is similar to the use of English 'and', but unlike 'and', w- is also used as a subordinating f309 conjunction [po 531] and as a particle of emphasis [390, 335f3 (Cowell 1964:

391).

I omit a passage about the phonetic realization of this conjunction partly as semi vocalic [w] or [w~], partly as vocalic [u], and also the examples of the coordinating use of the conjunction, and turn to page 531, where Cowell writes under the heading "Circumstantial clauses (al-gumla /-

~aliyya)":

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194 Semitic ~ Celtic ~ English

The conjunction w- [po 391] introduces subordinate clauses with the sense 'while, when, with':

1. sIan rna b;)ddo ye~ 'o~ b;)l-fa~a~

w-huwwe rna fatal} "ktab?

'How could he help but fail in the test when he hasn't opened a book?,34 2. sa~a~at. r;)fraf as-sayyara 'I scraped the fender of the car

w- 'ana taleC la-wara rnn "I-karaz (while I was) backing out of the garage.'35 3. w-huwwe rnasi w-rnatCazzeb

s;)me^c'anln b;)ke ...

4. saCha halab banet w-'aICatha ban-na~~ ^...

'(As he was) walking alone and wondering,36 he heard the sound of weeping'

(lit. " ... a moan of weeping")

'See there, Aleppo has come into view, with its citadel in the middle,3?

As illustrated in examples 2 and 3, circumstantial clauses may sometimes be rendered in English with a participial phrase rather than with a clause.

Circumstantial clauses are most often non-verbal (ex. 2, 3, 4) and quite often participial (2,3).

Most circumstantial clauses follow the main clause (ex. I, 2, 4), and most have a subject - often a pronoun subject (ex. 1, 2, 3) - right after the w-.

In some cases (ex. 4), subordinate w- clauses are not clearly distin- guishable from coordinate clauses (' See there, Aleppo has come into view, and its citadel is in the middle').

Further examples:

7.I-falla~In bi~;)bbu yaklOhon u-hanne xa"a r ...

9. w-rakqet

u-rna cha tase fiha I}layye

11. d;)" al-hadld u-huwwe I}arni 14. m;)mken adbb-li 'ahuti

w-fiha xet konyak?

'The country people like to eat them while they're green,38

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³¹⁰

'And she ran,

carrying a bowl of water in it'

(lit. "... and with her a bowl, in it water,,)39

'Strike the iron while it's hot!,40 'Could you bring me my coffee with a dash of brandy in it?,41 (Cowell 1964: 531-532)

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Semitic ~ Celtic ~ English 195 The examples show a high degree of congruence between the subordi- nating use of Damascan Arabic w- 'and' and of Irish ocus/agus 'and'.

The question arising is: Do we find the same degree of congruence at a greater time depth, assuming that the relevant language contact between Celtic and Semitic in the British Isles probably did not begin later than the middle of the last millennium B.C.? For Celtic it has been shown that the construction is as old as Old lrish,42 and I think there are good rea- sons for assuming that the construction there was based on a conjunction meaning 'and' even at its earliest attestation.⁴³The fact that the construction occurs in all Insular Celtic languages⁴⁴suggests that it be- longs to the oldest Insular Celtic layer. For Semitic I will cite evidence in the next section that the construction is there very old indeed.

11. 7. Subordinating 'and' in the old Semitic languages

In the preceding section I have cited material showing the subordinating use of w- 'and' in Modern Arabic. But just as the subordinating use of 'and' in Modern Irish is also found in Old Irish, so the subordinating use of 'and' in Modem Arabic is also found in Classical Arabic.

Pokorny (1927-30: 16.139) compares his Irish examples (cf. section 1l.5 above) to the following Arabic sentence:

qama Zaidun wa-huwa bakin 'Said stand auf und er weinend'45

Fischer (1997: 216f.) uses an almost identical example and goes on to point out that the circumstantial clause - he himself says "additional predicative clause" - "may also refer to the object":

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³¹^J

"axrajna I-"asara wa-hum mutriqiina ru'iisa-hum

'We brought out the prisoners while ["and"] they bowed their heads' marartu bi-l-marOati wa-hiya ja lisatun

'I passed by the woman while l"and"] she was sitting'

The full range of uses, much as in section 11.6 above, can be found in Wright 1898: II. §§ 182-183; see also Fischer 2002: §§ 407-408 ("Co- ordinate circumstantial clauses").

Lipinski (1997: §§ 55.1-8) illustrates the subordinating use of parti- cles meaning 'and' (wa- and _rna)46 in several Semitic languages. In

§ 55.1 he introduces the general term of "parallel clauses":

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196 Semitic ~ Celtic ~ English

One of the main traits of Semitic syntax is the preference given to paratactic or coordinate constructions over hypotactic or subordinate ones.47 E.g. the English hypotactically builrt] sentence "I saw him as I was walking in the street" will be expressed by two parallel clauses in Arabic: suftuh(ii) wa-' ana

riti~ fi s-sikka(ti), "I saw him and I was walking in the street". To say that

"the mother brings up her children by working" Harari⁴⁸ uses a paratactic construction with -rna ['and' J: ay tiddlgi-ma wdldac-zew tdliqat, lit. "the mother works and brings up her children". By saying tittam liddinamma anaku lupus,

"let him give me the clay and may I make (the mankind)", the Babylonian birth-goddess signifies: "let him give me the clay so that I can make (it)."

In § 55.6 Lipinski says specifically about circumstantial clauses:

Formal parataxis expresses logical hypotaxis also in circumstantial clauses, either nominal or verbal. E.g. Hebrew wayyabi! cEliSac Dammdeq ii-melek cAram hole, "Elisha came to Damascus and the king of Aram was ill", i.e.

"when the king of Aram was ill".49 The preterite ipus- is followed by the present future izakkar-in the Old Babylonian sentence piSu ipusam-ma izakkaram aJla PN, "he opened his mouth and he was speaking to PN", i.e. "while he was speaking to PN" .... Comparable cases can be found in Classical Arabic with a perfect followed by an indicative imperfect: baraga hariban wa-' a~~abu 1- qatili yatlubiinahu, "he went out fleeing and the companions of the killed (man) were searching for him", i.e. "while they were searching for

r

312 him";

'aqbalat cirun wa-na~mu nu~alli, "a caravan approached and we were praying", i.e. "while we were praying".

A very explicit statement concerning circumstantial clauses is made by Tropper (2000: 906) for Ugaritic, an ancient language especially close to Hebrew and to Phoenician:

Umstandssatze der Gleichzeitigkeit

Das Ug[aritische] kennt - wie andere sem[itische] Sprachen - Satze entspre- chend dem ar[abischen] Satzschema wa-huwayajCalu 'wobei/indem/wahrend er ... maeht(e)' und maeht davon insbesondere in der Poesie oft Gebraueh. Um- standssatze sind formal nieht als untergeordnete Nebensatze markiert, sondem entweder mittels w 'und' oder asyndetiseh mit dem zugehorigen Hauptsatz verkniipft. In der Regel folgen sie dem Hauptsatz. Inhaltlieh betrachtet, bezeieh- nen sie einen (logisch abhangigen) Begleitsaehverhalt zu dem im Hauptsatz mitgeteilten Sachverhalt. Der Begleitsaehverhalt kann modaler Natur (Modalrelation; d[eutscheJ Ubersetzung: 'wobei', 'indem' Lu.a.J) oder temporaler Natur (Funktion als Temporalsatze der Gleiehzeitigkeit; d[eutsche] Ubersetzung:

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Semitic ~ Celtic ~ English 197 'wahrend', 'als' [u.a.]) sein. Da die betreffenden Satze Oleichzeitigkeitsnuancen zum Ausdruck bringen, dient als verbales Pradikat solcher Satze sofern sie nichl nominaler Natur sind - die PKL [Prafixkonjugation-Langforrn], selbst wenn im Hauptsatz eine Verbalform mit Vergangenheitsbedeutung steht (§ 76.343).

Die Orenzlinie zwischen Umstandssatzen mit (primar) modaler und solchen mit (primar) lemporaJer Nuance ist flicScnd. ... Schwierig ist in Einzelfallen auch die Abgrenzung von Umstandssatzen mit Oleichzeitigkeitsnuance und fina- len Satzen mit Nachzeitigkeitsnuance (bes. § 97.10.1).50

S[prachlv[ergleichende Anmerkungl. Die ar[abische] Orammatik bezeichnet Salze dieses Typs als c~til-Satze' bzw. 'Zustandssatze' (OKA § 407); sie gelten trotz der Koordination durch wa-als abhiingige Satze (siehe OKA § 407, Anm.

2). Umstandssatze der Gleichzeitigkeit (mit iparras als verbaJem Pradikat) sind auch in der akk[adischcn] Epik weit verbreitet; zu Beispielen siehe Streck (1995: 53-63). Zu analogen Satzen im He[brliischen] siehe OBH § 159 ('circumstantial clause').51

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³¹³

will here only cite Tropper's examples of "syndetisch durch w- angeschlossene Umstandssatze" ['circumstantial clauses syndetically connected by means of w']. They are taken from Tropper 2000: 906f.;

the first two examples are also treated on p. 692 (§ 76.343). The fifth example is taken from p. 692 (§ 76.343.c).

- mid tmt~![n w {n /\ tlJt![b w t~dy em 'Sie kampfte gar sehr. wiihrend sie umherblickte; CAnatu stritt, wlihrend sie umherspahte' 1.3:1I:23f.52

{ JInX t![~q cnt / w b lb tqny \ {lJnp} ' ... lachte CAnatu, wiihrend sic in ihrem Herzen feinen bosen Plan] ausheckte' 1.17:VI:41f.⁵³

{ym ymmJ \ ltqn w r{~m cnt} \ tngrh '[Ein Tag, zwei Tage] vergingen.

wiihrend die junge fFrau CAnatu] ihn suchte' 1.6:II:4-6 (vgl. 1.6:1I:26f.)54 ap y![b Yib b hkl \ w ywsrnn ggnh 'Auch Ya~~ibu thronte im Palast, wobei

ihn sein Inneres (wie folgt) belehrte' 1.16:VI:25f.⁵⁵

- bCI[br diy hwt I w yql \ t!J.t penh 'Baclu zerbrach seine Schwingen, so daB er (sc. der Adler) ihm zu FUSen fiel' 1.l9:1II:23f.⁵⁶

The construction also occurred in Phoenician. Thus, Segert (1976:

§ 77.24) writes:

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198 Semitic ---f Celtic ---f English

Expression of subordinate circumstances by a coordinate clause. The coordinated clause expressing the state or condition is attached by w- 'and' (cf. Arab.

wiiwu-l-hiili): hint 11 ... wkhn ... chd''Strt ... 'in year 11, while A. (was) the . ; [I' " d ' cAbd cAY "57] r

pnest ... It. an pnest... - start . 1314

Segert also exemplifies the subordinating use of asyndetically combined second clauses.⁵⁸

That the subordinating use of particles meaning 'and' is a very old construction type in Semitic is also underlined by the fact that it occurs in Ancient Egyptian, as already mentioned by Pokorny (1927-30:

16. 139f.):

11m Altagyplischen] muBte ein Nominalsatz mit pronominal em Subjekt un- bedinga durch eine Parlikel, wie jsi, tj oder jSk eingeieitet werden. Die Dber- setzung dieser Partikeln stand bisher noch nicht fest, aber da sie als enklitische Partikeln 'und' bedeuteten, hat es auch Sethe nach einer gemeinsamen 8e- sprechung der erwahnten Hille fUr sehr wahrscheinlich erklart, daB sie ebenso bei Einleitung von Aussage- und Zustandssatzen als 'und' zu tibersetzen seien.

Z.B. "Ich war sein Begleiter (tj fw ~r prj) und er auf dem Schlachtfelde";59 oder "Er erbaute dieses Grab fUr seinen Sohn CU]fk fw m !lrd:) und er als ein Kind", usw.⁶⁰

Ockinga (1998: § 37.1) listsjw,jsl (with the variant sl and older forms jsk, sk), and tj as non-enclitic, clause-initial particles which, among other functions, introduce circumstantial clauses (jw only with a suffix pro- noun as subject, § 46.b). He gives illustrations for temporal interpretations of clauses introduced by JSI in § 46.a and for temporal and causal interpretations of clauses introduced by jw in § 46.b.

Hannig (1995: s.vv.) listsjsl as an obsolescent enclitic particle meaning 'and' and as a non-enclitic "concomitative" particle introducing an accompanying or aforementioned event worth knowing; and jw as a non-enclitic, especially New Egyptian particle introducing circumstantial clauses and meaning 'while, and, although'. There can thus be no doubt that in Ancient Egyptian several pal1icles meaning 'and' are used as subordinating conjunctions very much like wa- (-rna) in Semitic. As in Semitic and Irish, circumstantial clauses introduced by these particles, though usually following their main clauses, may also precede them (Allen 2000: § 12.18).61

As to Berber, Prof. Abdelaziz Allati (Tetouan, Morocco) informs me in an e-Ietter of 28 March 2002 that the situation is the following:

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Semitic -+ Celtic -+ English 199 La construction arabe c1assique que vous avez signaJee et que les grammairiens arabes appelle waw el ha:l ('waw de maniere' ou qui introduit une

r

³¹⁵^proposi-

tion de maniere) n'existe pas en berbere. Dans cette langue on n'a uniquement delLX propositions qui se sui vent dans la liaison par l'equivalent de wahv- en berbere.

y-ekka-d Zayd y-etru

il -se lever (au preterit) affixe de proximite - Zayd -iI pleurer (au preterit) 'Zayed s'est leve en pleurant'. ⁶²

This Berber example is different from the Arabic type with proclitic wa- Iw- 'and' plus a non-finite clause; it has to be because Berber does not really have an 'and' word at all; the nearest equivalents are words meaning 'with'.63 Yet the example, with its two finite clauses, is rather similar to another, equivalent type of construction in Semitic; e.g., in U garitic mere juxtaposition of two finite clauses semantically subordinating the second to the first counts as equivalent to the w-construction.⁶⁴Therefore the exemplified type is the closest match for subordinate 'and' clauses Berber can offer. It is, of course, possible that constructions more similar to the Semitic and Egyptian construction types also existed in Berber at earlier stages but have been lost, perhaps together with words for 'and'; but it is not likely that this can be proved.⁶⁵

In this and the preceding section I have shown that subordinating 'and' occurs in both Semitic and Ancient Egyptian. Even though it does not occur in the Berber languages as such but only in a similar, equivalent fashion, it seems safe to see it as a feature also of those varieties of Hamito-Semitic that have been assumed to be responsible for the spread of certain non-Indo-European syntactic properties in the languages of the Atlantic littoral, i.e. the varieties I have named Semitidic.

In section 11.5, I have cited authorities and examples demonstrating the same feature, subordinating 'and', for Old, Middle, and Modern Irish and also for Irish English.

I trust that the conclusion I draw from all this is obvious. Since circumstantial clauses with subordinating 'and' are not Anglo-Saxon or Germanic or Indo-European, we need a structural loan-etymology, and it is found in Irish. However, since Irish is itself an Indo-European language and thus cannot have inherited this construction

r

316 from Proto- Indo-European, we again need a structural loan-etymology, and it is found in Semitic (in the wider sense of Semitidic). To the extent that this demonstration is correct, we are thus in possession of a perfect example of case (3.a) of the contact scenario (3) of section 11.4, Semitic ~

Celtic ~ Celtic Englishes, that case in which a particular Semitic/Celtic

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200 Semitic - j Celtic - j English

feature, namely subordinating 'and', does not occur in Standard English but does in a Celtic English, namely Irish English.

11.8. Transitivity of language contact? 'Yes' and 'no'

In the present section I would like to sketch an example of (3.b), Semitic

~ Celtic ~ Celtic Englishes, in which a particular Semitic/Celtic feature does occur in Standard English, owing to the general primary Celticiza- tion of all varieties of the language, but is found with greater intensity in a Celtic English, owing to the secondary Celticization of that variety of the language. The Celtic English considered is again Irish English.

One of the peculiarities of Irish English - from a Standard English point of view - is the sparing use of Yes and No in answers to Yes/No- questions. Filppula (1999: 165) cites the following examples where the auxiliary or modal of the Yes/No-question is repeated:

Do people eat it still?

They do.

Are you telling me their names?

I amn't.

D'you have the song?

I haven't, I only have the opening line of it.

He goes on to cite examples where "the response part 'echoes' the question, i.e. repeats it in the appropriate affirmative or negative form":

So, you belong to that parish?

Belong to that parish.

Do you remember Johnny Doran comin' around?

I do remember Johnny Doran comin' around.

Filppula (1999: 165f.) cites other patterns, all characterizable as avoid- ing a direct response by means of Yes or No.

Concerning the first type of response exemplified, named "Modal only", Filppula (1999: 165f.) cites frequencies in the Hiberno-English corpus, which are highest for the Clare dialect (38.5%) and lowest for Dublin speech (6.6%). He interprets the results as follows:

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Semitic ~ Celtic ~ English 201 The figures show that the "Modal only" type of response is most frequent in the (south)western dialects, and especially in Clare dialect, where it accounts 1317 for well over a third of all direct responses. By contrast, the same type is a rather peripheral feature in both of the eastern dialects, and in Dublin speech, in particular.

The most plausible explanation for these differences is the continuing influence of Irish upon the usage in the west of Ireland.

In Filppula's presentation, this conclusion does not come as a surprise.

He had begun it by pointing out that "Irish has no exact equivalents of the affirmative and negative particles yes and no" (160).Instead, "Irish repeats the verb of the question, usually in the shortest available form"

(161).

An dtiocfaidh tu? 'Will you come?' Tiocfad. 'I will come. ^,66

The reduction may even go further: In certain environments, and differ- entially in the regional varieties, the auxiliary verb dean 'make, do' may be substituted for the verb used in the question (Filppula 1999: 161f.):

Ar 61ais an tae? 'Did you drink the tea?' Dheineas. 'I did.'

01 ceann eile! 'Drink another one!' Nf dheanfad. 'I won't (do).'

When the copula is used in responses, it has to be accompanied by its specifier because, being unaccented, the copula cannot stand alone:

Is e an muinteoir e? 'He is the teacher?' (Is is the copula.) Ise. 'Heis.'

As in the case of subordinating 'and' as well as other features of Eng- lish explained by recourse to Insular Celtic, one wonders how Celtic itself acquired that particular feature. The question is asked by Pokorny (1927-30: 16.236-238), who also suggests an answer. He sees the phenomenon as a more general one, a tendency never to utter individual words but always to use entire sentences, however short. Pokorny begins by referring to Irish English and then describes the situation in Irish:⁶⁷