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== Possible pre-Celtic substratum ==
BritishInsular Celtic, unlike Continental Celtic, shares some structural characteristics with various [[Afro-Asiatic languages]] which are rare in other Indo-European languages. These similarities include [[verb–subject–object]] [[word order]], singular verbs with plural post-verbal subjects, a genitive construction similar to [[construct state]], prepositions with fused inflected pronouns ("conjugated prepositions" or "prepositional pronouns"), and oblique relatives with pronoun copies. Such resemblances were noted as early as 1621 with regard to Welsh and the [[Hebrew language]].<ref>Steve Hewitt, "The Question of a Hamito-Semitic Substratum in BritishInsular Celtic and Celtic from the West", Chapter 14 in John T. Koch, Barry Cunliffe, ''Celtic from the West'' '''3'''</ref><ref>John Davies, ''Antiquae linguae Britannicae rudimenta'', 1621</ref>
The hypothesis that the BritishInsular Celtic languages had features from an Afro-Asiatic [[substratum (linguistics)|substratum]] (Iberian and Berber languages) was first proposed by [[John Morris-Jones]] in 1899.<ref>J. Morris Jones, "Pre-Aryan Syntax in BritishInsular Celtic", [https://books.google.com/books?id=t50ZAAAAMAAJ&pg=LP617 Appendix B] of [[John Rhys]], [[David Brynmor Jones]], ''The Welsh People'', 1900</ref> The theory has been supported by several linguists since: [[Henry Jenner]] (1904);<ref>Henry Jenner, ''Handbook of the Cornish Language'', London 1904 [https://archive.org/details/handbookofcornis00jennuoft full text]</ref> [[Julius Pokorny]] (1927);<ref>''Das nicht-indogermanische Substrat im Irischen'' in [[Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie]] 16, 17 and 18</ref> Heinrich Wagner (1959);<ref>Gaeilge theilinn (1959) and subsequent articles</ref> [[Orin Gensler]] (1993);<ref>"A Typological Evaluation of Celtic/Hamito-Semitic Syntactic Parallels", Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1993 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8p00g5sd</ref> [[Theo Vennemann]] (1995);<ref>Theo Vennemann, "Etymologische Beziehungen im Alten Europa". Der GinkgoBaum: Germanistisches Jahrbuch für Nordeuropa 13. 39-115, 1995</ref> and Ariel Shisha-Halevy (2003).<ref>“[http://ling.huji.ac.il/Staff/Ariel_Shisha-Halevy/docs/Celtic-Coptic-Syntax-2003.pdf Celtic Syntax, Egyptian-Coptic Syntax] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110721134007/http://ling.huji.ac.il/Staff/Ariel_Shisha-Halevy/docs/Celtic-Coptic-Syntax-2003.pdf |date=2011-07-21 }}”, in: ''Das Alte Ägypten und seine Nachbarn: Festschrift Helmut Satzinger'', Krems: Österreichisches Literaturforum, 245-302</ref>
Others have suggested that rather than the Afro-Asiatic influencing BritishInsular Celtic directly, both groups of languages were influenced by a now lost substrate. This was suggested by Jongeling (2000).<ref>Karel Jongeling, ''Comparing Welsh and Hebrew'', CNWS Publications 81 (Leiden: Centre of Non-Western Studies, 2000), pp. 149-50 (cited by Steve Hewitt, '[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1749-818X.2009.00141.x The Question of a Hamito-Semitic Substratum in BritishInsular Celtic]', ''Language and Linguistics Compass'', 3/4 (2009), 972–95 (p. 976), {{DOI|10.1111/j.1749-818x.2009.00141}}).</ref> [[Ranko Matasović]] (2012) likewise argued that the "BritishInsular Celtic languages were subject to strong influences from an unknown, presumably non-Indo-European substratum" and found the syntactic parallelisms between BritishInsular Celtic and Afro-Asiatic languages to be "probably not accidental". He argued that their similarities arose from "a large linguistic macro-area, encompassing parts of NW Africa, as well as large parts of Western Europe, before the arrival of the speakers of Indo-European, including Celtic".<ref>Ranko Matasović (2012). [http://www.jolr.ru/files/(101)jlr2012-8(160-164).pdf The substratum in BritishInsular Celtic]. ''Journal of Language Relationship'' • Вопросы языкового родства • 8 (2012) • Pp. 153—168.</ref>
The Afro-Asiatic substrate theory, according to [[Raymond Hickey]], "has never found much favour with scholars of the Celtic languages".<ref name="Hickey2013">{{cite book|author=Raymond Hickey|title=The Handbook of Language Contact|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1fr5t1KLL6oC&pg=PT535|date=24 April 2013|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|isbn=978-1-118-44869-4|pages=535–}}</ref> The theory was criticised by Kim McCone in 2006,<ref>Kim McCone, ''The origins and development of the BritishInsular Celtic verbal complex'', Maynooth studies in Celtic linguistics '''6''', 2006, {{isbn|0901519464}}. Department of Old Irish, National University of Ireland, 2006.</ref> Graham Isaac in 2007,<ref>"Celtic and Afro-Asiatic" in'' The Celtic Languages in Contact'', Papers from the Workshop within the Framework of the XIII International Congress of Celtic Studies, Bonn, 26–27 July 2007, p. 25-80 [https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/opus4-ubp/frontdoor/deliver/index/docId/691/file/celtic_languages_in_contact.pdf full text]</ref> and Steve Hewitt in 2009.<ref>Steve Hewitt, '[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1749-818X.2009.00141.x The Question of a Hamito-Semitic Substratum in British Insular Celtic]', ''Language and Linguistics Compass'', 3/4 (2009), 972–95, {{DOI|10.1111/j.1749-818x.2009.00141}}.</ref> Isaac argues that the 20 points identified by Gensler are trivial, dependencies, or vacuous. Thus, he considers the theory to be not just unproven but also wrong. Instead, the similarities between BritishInsular Celtic and Afro-Asiatic could have evolved independently.
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