Linguistics
Gaulish
[EN] It is now over a century since the Coligny calendar was discovered, during which time the intricate, complex and interrelating patterns of the various terms that are layered over its months and years have to a large degree been defined, one exception being the triple marks which have so far only been defined in part. Here the patterns followed by the triple marks are further defined, along with the mark’s interactions with several related notations, including the special treatment of Day 21, the anomalous treatment of triplets that run over the end of a fortnight, and the EXO term. With the definition of the pattern that governs the years, the systematic pattern underlying the distribution of the triple marks can now be finalised with certainty, rather than filling in unknown days through conflation.
[EN] This paper examines how closely the lunar calendar months of the Coligny calendar track the individual lunations over the 62 months of the 5-year bronze plaque, and in doing so, discovers an extraordinary precision to within a day either side of the average lunation. This means that each calendar month always starts at the same point in the lunar phase and the calendar can remain in sync with the moon indefinitely. The question of the overall shape of the calendar is further defined by assigning 29 days to Intercalary One, which then shows the calendar to be a Metonic calendar through four successive cycles of the 5-year base, and that in the one 5-year plaque we have the complete and only needed part of the entire calendar. This Metonic calendar could also be embedded as part of a larger 30-year age of 6 successive cycles of the 5-year base, again without the necessity of re-shaping the 5-year base cycle.
[EN] Kuitoi Lekatos. A new reading of the inscription of San Bernardino di Briona (Novara). The Gaulish inscription from San Bernardino di Briona (Novara) is often mentioned in order to illustrate the first steps of Romanisation in Cisalpine Gaul. Epigraphical scholarship has tended to consider that this inscription contains a list of nouns among which there is a Roman praenomen, belonging to a local legatus, which is an extremely rare phenomenon. It is argued that this kuitos lekatos received this honorific title for having provided services to Rome. This paper discusses the concept of legatus in the historical context of the inscription and proposes a new reading of the text, based on an autopsy, which changes substantially the traditional one and shows that there is not any syntactical link between the name and the presumed position.
Der Beitrag skizziert die humanistische Debatte über das gallische sprachliche Erbe im 16. und frühen 17. Jahrhundert, das französisch- sowie deutschsprechende Wissenschaftler als ihr eigenes erklärten. Bei der Darstellung des Wesens der Sprache, die in Gallien vor Caesars Invasion gesprochen wurde, waren frühneuzeitliche Gelehrte auf die begrenzten Zeugnisse und lexikalischen Ausdrücke der klassischen Autoren angewiesen. In ihrer Diskussion über die gallische Sprache verbanden sie eine ausgewählte Sammlung von Zitaten zur Natur der gallischen Sprache mit der Analyse einiger gallischer Lexeme, wie sie von den klassischen Autoren überliefert wurden. Der Beitrag zeigt die verschiedenen Argumentationsstrategien der frühneuzeitlichen Gelehrten auf, mit denen sie ihre Behauptungen stützten.
The present contribution aims at outlining the 16th- to mid-17th-century humanist debates over the Gaulish linguistic heritage which both French- and Germanic-speaking scholars claimed as their own. When discussing the nature of the language spoken in Gaul before Caesar’s invasion, early modern scholars were forced to rely on the limited testimonies and lexical items provided by classical authors. In making their arguments about the Gaulish language, they combined a selective compilation of quotations on the nature of the Gaulish language with the analysis of some Gaulish lexemes as transmitted by the classical authors. The paper surveys the different argumentative strategies early modern scholars used to underpin their claims.
Les ordinaux gaulois présentent différents types de formation, le suffixe ordinal ayant annexé des accrétions au cours de leur développement. L’auteur décrit quels sont les points de départ et les modèles suivis au cours de cette histoire.
[EN] Gaulish ordinals exhibit different formation types, their suffix growing with new accretions during this development. The author describes possible starting points and intervening models.
[EN] New edition and general study of the Gaulish-Latin Glossary discovered at the beginning of the XIXth century by the librarian in Vienna, Endlicher. The author analyses the texts accompanying the two versions of the glossary in the manuscripts, mostly lists of geographical names. After an edition of the two versions of the glossary, the author delivers philological notes intended to determine the site of birth, and the most probable sources of the glossary. Concerning Lugudunum . i. desideratum montem, the authors modifies W. Meid ‘ s theory explaining this meaning by a Germanic pronunciation, leading to a confusion with Germanic words such as Engl. love. Actually the evolution of Lugu-into Luwu-is typical of late Romance as well as Germanic languages, and the confusion with these (if it took place) could have been made with the Germanic languages on both sides of the Northern Sea, Engl. love or Frisian luvu. A Germanic influence could also explain the meaning “ montem” given to dunum, and the use of the word bigardio, which should be compared to the Flemish Place-Name Bijgaarden, rather than to Gothic. The compiler was practicing a Western Germanic dialect, which is not very far from Saint-Amand, the place where the only manuscript of the longer version comes from. Concerning sources, the author has detected without any doubt the use of Historia Francorum by Gregory of Tours : brio et treide are taken from a toponym Briotreide quoted by this author (HF X, 31). The same text may have provided the glosses concerning lautro (cf. Louolautro), auallo and onno.
[EN] Several French toponyms seem to preserve the Gaulish word for «hazel » , * koslo-, such as Coulon (Yonne, former Coslumnus), Coolus (Marne, Coslus, 869), et Coole (Marne, Cosla, 983). Curiously they have kept the -sl-group. The author’s proposal is to add two compound place names, Coudun (Oise, Cusdum 1157, Cosdunum 756) and Colembert (Pas-de-Calais, Colesberc 1121, Coslesberc 1172), compounded with the elements Gaul. dūnum, and Germ. Berg. The meaning was probably «a hill covered with hazel » . The author has identified a parallel to Coudun * Coslo-dūnum, in the toponym Heusden, known by three examples, in the Belgian Limburg (Husdinio 929), in the Dutch North Brabant (Hysdene 1108), and near Ghent. He is considering a link with a toponym from Northern France, Houdain, Houdent, Houdeng. For Heusden as well as for Coudun, one has to suppose a simplification of the consonantal group -sld-> -sd-.
A close textual examination of case-marking and role in Gaulish suggests that the instrumental (and ablative) formants and functions inherited from Indo-European remained largely independent in use from those of the other oblique cases. Although a distinct morphological locative seems to have been given up at a prehistoric stage, the Gaulish of the Roman period appears to have preserved a much fuller and more synthetic system of grammatical case than did any of the medieval Celtic languages. The practice of projecting Insular Celtic behaviours onto Continental Celtic (or even cross-linguistic abstractions derived from broader linguistic theory) should not serve as a substitute for analysing Gaulish inscriptions from the perspective of interlingual intertextuality and of properly contextualized epigraphic genre. Gaulish should be understood principally as a closely historicized inscriptional language, its attested expressions constrained by typical ancient Mediterranean epigraphic pragmatics, yet representing an idiosyncratic development of Celtic linguistic tradition nonetheless.
[EN] A commented bibliography about Gallo-Greek inscriptions published since the Textes gallo-grecs (1985) of Michel Lejeune, which appeared as the first volume of Recueil des Inscriptions Gauloises.
Plus de quarante ans après la publication du livre de D. Ellis Evans, Gaulish Personal Names, l’auteur s’est donné pour tâche d’écrire un supplément à ce travail, principalement dans l’intention de compiler un index étymologique de tous les noms récemment découverts, soit à partir des nouvelles inscriptions (gauloises et celtibères), soit à partir de nouvelles lectures publiées dans les périodiques ou dans les nouveaux corpus.
[EN] More than forty years after the publication of D. Ellis Evans book, Gaulish Personal Names, the author endeavours to write a supplement to it, mainly with the intention to compile an etymological index to all newly discovered names, either from new inscriptions (Gaulish and Celtiberian), or from new readings published in the periodicals or in the new corpuses.