Can there be memory continuity over 4000 years? Is there language continuity in Ireland from the Bronze Age to the High Middle Ages? I am sure I have said this before here, from a comparative linguistic point of view it is inconceivable that the Celtic precursor language...
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...of Irish (basically Proto-Irish or Primitive Irish) arrived in this island much earlier than the last few centuries BC. I do not contend that there may have been waves of Indo-European immigrations into Ireland before this (and genetic studies suggest this very strongly)...
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...but Indo-European does not equal Celtic. This or these lost IE language(s) may or may not have been closely related to Celtic. We just don't know. But we can be sure that they are not the ancestor of the Irish language, but a different, submerged branch of the language family.
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Replying to @ChronHib
Not a linguist but given that the genetic evidence does not support a migration in the Iron Age, but it does show a Neolithic one, is it possible that they adopted the precursor to archaic Irish as a result of cultural change/spread?
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Replying to @AdmiralHip @ChronHib
If I recall, Britain shows similar migration patterns, and I think that Gaul was similar, namely that the last large migration was in the Neolithic. So would this maybe suggest that language shift does not have to be the result of direct migration?
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Replying to @AdmiralHip
Language shift is ALWAYS the result of some sort of migration. Languages DO NOT TRAVEL, it is humans that travel. The question is only what the exact sociolinguistic conditions were that favoured or disfavoured a language change. One possible scenario is that a small elite...
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Replying to @ChronHib
Yes sorry I should have been clearer: wide-scale migration that results in a population change.
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Replying to @AdmiralHip
Yes, but that's the point: people always think in categories of mass-scale migration. But that's not necessary for language shift. First of all, there are many different possible types of language replacement scenarios. But the important factor in all of them is the exertion...
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Replying to @ChronHib @AdmiralHip
...of violence - either direct physical violence incl. killings, or structural violence. It is this violence which leads to language shift.
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Replying to @ChronHib
I suppose even with intermarriage there is an element of violence. Presumably it would either require the removal of men and the marrying of elite women with the incoming elite or at the very least imposing marriage on younger and potentially less powerful elite men
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In order to control them and their offspring. I think about all the British names in the Anglian and West Saxon genealogies and it makes me wonder.
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