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From: John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>
Subject: Progressive tenses (was: language relatedness ...)
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Daniel von Brighoff wrote:

> >English certainly inherits its lexicon
> >from several sources, and may have acquired some of its grammar from
> >Celtic (the periphrastic tenses are uncannily close to those in Welsh,
> >in particular the "progressive" tense, which has no counterpart in
> >German nor in French).
> 
> But does in Castilian and Catalan, which clearly must have acquired it
> from--well, um, Celtiberian?  I've never before encountred the theory that
> the Celtic verbal system influenced the English one.  In fact, according
> to my fragmentary recollection of Welsh linguistic history, the
> "progressive" shows up first in English.  May I ask for references?

I have no references on tap either, but I have been told that
Irish agrees with Welsh here, suggesting that if borrowing was
involved, it was in the direction Welsh -> English.

-- 
John Cowan						cowan@ccil.org
			e'osai ko sarji la lojban
