Talk:Lepontic language

Connection to Ligurian

I wonder who the scholars are that link Lepontic with Ligurian. It's interesting, but I have not come across it before. --Nantonos 19:57, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

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See Talk:Ligurian language for some relevant discussion of a possible Lepontic-Ligurian connection. Pasquale 22:46, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

no pictures of orginal

It will be good to have pictures of originals, the copyrigh expired 2500 years ago . —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.15.123.48 (talk) 01:15, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Intro rather convoluted

Is there a way to simplify the introduction and push some of the material further down into the body of the article? I also want to try to find a way to talk succinctly about the position adopted by McCone in eg (1996) Towards a Relative Chronology (et al??) that Lepontic is just a variety of early Gaulish. Any suggestions? CecilWard (talk) 17:20, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Not easy. But, with respect, it seems to me you just made it more convoluted. But let me give it a shot. Pasquale (talk) 20:49, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

>it seems to me you just made it more convoluted.. - :-) - fair point, in that case, go for it, all help gratefully received. I'd certainly like to try and improve the intro and treat that as a separate task from dealing with issues of clarity in the rest of the article. I think it's important to say from the outset that the status of Lepontic is disputed (not that I'm saying that I support the Lepontic=merely Gaulish PoV)CecilWard (talk) 15:51, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

edit war

Guys, you are making a mess of this. The uncertainty (or "dispute") is on whether Lepontic should be considered a dialect of Gaulish or a separate Celtic language within the Continental group, not whether it is Celtic. --dab (𒁳) 12:31, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Agree, wholeheartedly - Stifter makes it plain it is Celtic.Jembana (talk) 12:46, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for intervening, Dbachmann. I believe Jembana is hitting Undo without even bothering to read my version. I have clarified the intro, so as to leave no doubt that Lepontic is classified as Celtic. However, earlier opinions such as Whatmough's and Pisani's, on whose scholarship all the later work is founded by the way, must also be mentioned. And indeed Jembana's version does mention them, except that his version twists Whatmough's and Pisani's views to make them coincide with Kruta and Stifter. Frankly, I doubt Jembana is actually familiar with Whatmough's and Pisani's work. Plus, his version is poorly organized and includes misspellings. My objective was just to clean up his version, not to subvert it, as he seems to think. Can you please open-mindedly review both versions and tell me which one reads better? Pasquale (talk) 13:33, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

the point is that you are both hitting undo instead of working together towards an improved, clearer, better phrased and better referenced revision. Don't just stick to a fixed revision, try to understand the problem and then suggest a change that you think addresses it. A bona fide dispute between two competing revisions is almost never resolved by asking "which is better" but by compiling a third, improved revison that takes care of the problem. I really wish you could work this out between the two of you. --dab (𒁳) 16:44, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

I am sorry, Dbachmann, that's simply not true. My version was arrived at precisely by carefully editing Jembana's work, keeping all his much-appreciated "well-sourced peer-reviewed inline citations" exactly where he put them, reorganizing the paragraphs in what seems to be a more sensible order of presenting the information, and simply ensuring that the positions taken by older scholars (e.g. Whatmough and Pisani) would not be conflated with the more recent ones (e.g. Kruta and Stifter). It is important to clarify that the older, well-known position expressed by Whatmough and Pisani was that Lepontic should be considered "para-Celtic" rather than Celtic. While this may be simply a historical position now, it should not be conflated with the current view.

After reading your comment, I clarified the intro to spell out that, in the modern view, the uncertainty is on whether Lepontic should be considered a dialect of Gaulish or a separate Celtic language within the Continental group, not whether it is Celtic, which was your point of concern. Pasquale (talk) 17:04, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Pasquale, I agree your new version is better written than mine - thanks to both of you. Jembana (talk) 21:31, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, and thanks again for adding all those references to Kruta and Stifter, which are indeed very valuable. Their work certainly brings a more balanced perspective to this much-debated question. Pasquale (talk) 14:04, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

While the article now gets it right regarding what the debate is even about, I am not convinced it is justified in rooting for a "majority view". I am happy to grant with a shrug that some people think it is a "separate Continental Celtic" language while others classify it as Gaulish. But I am not convinced you can just label the former as "the majority view". My impression is that people are happy to classify Lepontic as just an early form of Gaulish. The point here is that "Gaulish" is pretty much a synonym of "Continental Celtic minus Celtiberian", and it is needlessly artificial to define each variety of Gaulish you happen to come across as "a separate language". Anyone will accept that there will have been wide variety within "Gaulish", but it is just a coincidence of attestation which kinds we are able to detect today. In other words, I do not think this is a dispute with linguistic content so much as about the definition of the label "Gaulish". --dab (𒁳) 10:00, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

The point is that there is also Cisalpine Gaulish, which shares some features with Lepontic, but also with Transalpine Gaulish, see Stifter (2008) under chapter 4.3. Transalpine Gaulish, Cisalpine Gaulish and Lepontic are all clearly distinguishable by a couple of features. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:01, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

edit war 2

Edit-warring because "Lepontic is widely accepted as a Celtic language". Of course it's a Celtic language! Who said otherwise? But it's not a dialect of Gaulish, at least not according to the author being cited to support the claim that it is Gaulish, and purposefully reverting recent to outdated sources by the same author in unwarranted. Rather than encouraging this POV warrior, I'm tagging the problems he's created. — kwami (talk) 07:14, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Here are the diffs that were reverted as "POV-pushing"[1]:

1. Continental Celtic should be in brackets in the info box, since it's not a clade
2. The word "however" implies contradiction or disagreement. In this article it is used for support or an independent topic, for example with Ligurian or the Cisalpine inscriptions.
3. The paragraph beginning "Lepontic is a Celtic language" does not belong in the lead. We shouldn't have anything we need to cite in the lead, but only a summary of the article text.
4. "Classification" is completely screwed up. I can't tell if Eska (1998) said those things, but Eska (2010) does not. A minority opinion considers [Lepontic] as simply an early form of Cisalpine Gaulish (or Cisalpine Celtic) and thus a dialect of the Gaulish language – not according to Eska 2010, where Cisalpine Celtic includes Lepontic and split off the Celtic tree well before Gaulish split from the Insular languages.
5. From "some have gone further" to the end of the paragraph should be deleted, as, at least in 2010, Eska does not hold the view being claimed of him.
6. Cisalpine Gaul [is] the term currently used by some Celticists (e.g. Eska 1998) to apply to all Celtic dialects of ancient Italy. No, Cisalpine Gaul is a place, not a language, and none of the preceding terms is used with this meaning. The following statement, that this usage is disputed by those who continue to view the Lepontii as one of several indigenous pre-Roman tribes of the Alps, doesn't have any logical connection to it, at least not as written.

— kwami (talk) 07:41, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

I agree, Continental Celtic is not a valid family/branch/node/whatever, and I don't know a single scholar who disagrees. There is no "Proto-Continental-Celtic". I'd rather leave Continental Celtic out of the infobox entirely. It's no more useful in there than Graeco-Aryan or Paleosiberian. I agree with the rest as well. Eska (2010) obviously does not consider Cisalpine Celtic a dialect of Gaulish, and includes Lepontic in Cisalpine Celtic. However, I believe Eska 1998 considered Cisalpine Celtic Gaulish, hence naming it Cisalpine Gaulish, while including Lepontic in it. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:58, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Insular Celtic has certain developments not found in Continental Celtic, thus is it perfectly valid to treat IC and CC as separate nodes. See: Ranko Matasovic, "Insular Celtic as a Language Area", in: H. L. C. Tristram (ed.), The Celtic Languages in Contact, Universitätsverlag Potsdam, 2007, p. 93-112. Online.

That's a logically invalid argument. Your premise is correct, but your conclusion does not follow. The acceptance of Insular Celtic does not automatically entail the acceptance of Continental Celtic. There are no common innovations exclusive to and defining of Continental Celtic, and Celtic can easily have more than two branches, so there is no reason not to treat Insular Celtic, Gaulish, Celtiberian and Lepontic all as separate branches. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:46, 5 July 2014 (UTC)