The background of the Celtic languages: theories from archaeology and linguistics

University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, 2013. — 23 p. — (Research Papers: No. 31). — ISBN 978–1–907029–16–5.This paper presents theories attempting to explain the emergence of the Celtic languages from their wider Indo-European background. Time and place of this linguistic development are unknown. With regard to the manner of the emergence of Celtic, attention is drawn to models encompassing linguistic change brought about by ‘international’ processes, not dissimilar to globalization effects today. An example of supra-regional interactions visible in the archaeological record is constituted by the Bell Beaker complex. Transmission of technological and ideological information across the widely dispersed Bell Beaker groups may have had a sociolinguistic impact linked to individual mobility and socially respected plurilingualism. This may have provided one starting point to a gradual change of the western European linguistic landscape.