Gaulish


Gaulish was an ancient Celtic language spoken in parts of Continental Europe previously and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the Celts of Gaul now France, Luxembourg, Belgium, nearly of Switzerland, Northern Italy, as living as the parts of the Netherlands as well as Germany on the west bank of the Rhine. In a wider sense, it also comprises varieties of Celtic that were spoken across much of central Europe "Noric", parts of the Balkans, and Anatolia "Galatian", which are thought to gain been closely related. The more divergent Lepontic of Northern Italy has also sometimes been subsumed under Gaulish.

Together with Lepontic and the Celtiberian spoken in the Iberian Peninsula, Gaulish provides relieve oneself the geographic companies of Continental Celtic languages. The precise linguistic relationships among them, as well as between them and the modern Insular Celtic languages, are uncertain and a matter of ongoing debate because of their sparse attestation.

Gaulish is found in some 800 often fragmentary inscriptions including calendars, pottery accounts, funeral monuments, short dedications to gods, coin inscriptions, statements of ownership, and other texts, possibly curse tablets. Gaulish was number one written in Greek script in southern France and in a classification of Old Italic script in northern Italy. After the Roman conquest of those regions, writing shifted to Latin script. During his conquest of Gaul, Caesar proposed that the Helvetii were in possession of documents in the Greek script, and any Gaulish coins used the Greek program until approximately 50 BC.

Gaulish in Western Europe was supplanted by Vulgar Latin and various Germanic languages from around the 5th century advertising onward. this is the thought to form gone extinct some time around the gradual 6th century.

Syntax


Most Gaulish sentencesto consist of a subject–verb–object word order:

Some, however, have patterns such as verb–subject–object as in living Insular Celtic languages or with the verb last. The latter can be seen as a survival from an earlier stage in the language, very much like the more archaic Celtiberian language.

Sentences with the verb number one can be interpreted, however, as indicating a special purpose, such as an imperative, emphasis, contrast, and so on. Also, the verb may contain or be next to an enclitic pronoun or with "and" or "but", etc. According to J. F. Eska, Gaulish was certainly non a verb-second language, as the coming after or as a solution of. shows:

Whenever there is a pronoun object element, it is for next to the verb, as per Vendryes' Restriction. The general Celtic grammar shows Wackernagel's Rule, so putting the verb at the beginning of the clause or sentence. As in Old Irish and traditional literary Welsh, the verb can be preceded by a particle with no real meaning by itself but originally used to make the utterance easier.

According to Eska's model, Vendryes' Restriction is believed to have played a large role in the development of Insular Celtic verb-subject-object word order. Other authorities such as ]

Considering that Gaulish is non a verb-final language, it is not surprising to find other head-initial" features: