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12 - With the Back to the Ocean: The Celtic Maritime Vocabulary

from Part III - The Cultural and Linguistic Significance of Bell Beakers along the Atlantic Fringe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2023

By
David Stifter
Edited by
Kristian Kristiansen ,
Guus Kroonen  and
Eske Willerslev
Kristian Kristiansen
Affiliation:
Göteborgs Universitet, Sweden
Guus Kroonen
Affiliation:
Universiteit Leiden
Eske Willerslev
Affiliation:
University of Copenhagen
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Summary

The aim of this chapter is to establish the semantic field of maritime vocabulary of the Celtic languages, especially that part of the maritime vocabulary that can be reconstructed for Proto-Celtic, the common ancestor of all Celtic languages, and for the prehistoric stages of the Insular Celtic languages. The approach taken in this study is to analyse the relevant lexemes etymologically, and to assess the findings from the point of view of linguistic archaeology. Linguistic archaeology seeks to extract as much information as possible from the synchronic and diachronically reconstructable semantics and morphology of words in order to make inferences about the environment and living conditions of the language’s speakers from a prehistoric and early historic perspective. Maritime vocabulary, which is the focus of this study, includes all elements of the lexicon that refer to the topographical, biological, and economic environment of the sea and the shore, and to human interaction with them.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Indo-European Puzzle Revisited
Integrating Archaeology, Genetics, and Linguistics
 , pp. 172 - 192
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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