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Gaulish is an ancient Celtic language that was spoken in parts of Europe as late as the Roman period. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language spoken by the Celtic inhabitants of Gaul (modern France). In a wider sense, it also comprises varieties of Celtic that were spoken across much of central Europe ("Noric"), parts of the Balkans, and Asia Minor ("Galatian"), which are thought to have been closely related. The more divergent Lepontic Celtic of Northern Italy has also sometimes been subsumed under Gaulish.〔; cf. 〕〔McCone, Kim, ''Towards a relative chronology of ancient and medieval Celtic sound change,'' Maynooth, 1996〕 Together with Lepontic and the Celtiberian language spoken in the Iberian peninsula, Gaulish forms the geographic group of Continental Celtic languages. The precise linguistic relationships among them, as well as between them and the modern Insular Celtic languages, are uncertain and are a matter of ongoing debate, due to their sparse attestation. Gaulish is found in about 800, often fragmentary, inscriptions including calendars, pottery accounts, funeral monuments, short dedications to gods, coin inscriptions, statements of ownership, and other texts, possibly curse tablets. Gaulish texts were first written in the Greek alphabet in southern France, and in a variety of the Old Italic script in northern Italy. After the Roman conquest of these regions, writing shifted to the use of the Latin alphabet. Gaulish was supplanted by Vulgar Latin〔for the early development of Vulgar Latin (the conventional term for what could more adequately be named "spoken Latin") see Mohl, ''Introduction à la chronologie du latin vulgaire'' (1899) and Wagner, ''Introduction à la linguistique française, avec supplément bibliographique'' (1965), p. 41 for a bibliography.〕 and various Germanic languages from around the 5th century AD onwards. ==Classification== It is estimated that during the Bronze Age, Proto-Celtic started fragmenting into distinct languages, including Celtiberian and Gaulish. As a result of the expansion of Celtic tribes during the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, closely related varieties of Celtic came to be spoken in a vast arc extending from present-day Britain and France through the Alpine region and Pannonia in central Europe, and into parts of the Balkans and Asia minor. Their precise linguistic relationships are uncertain because of the fragmentary nature of the evidence. The Gaulish varieties of central and eastern Europe and of Asia Minor (known as Noric and Galatian respectively) are barely attested, but from what little is known of them it appears that they were still quite similar to those of Gaul and can be considered dialects of a single language.〔 Among those regions where substantial inscriptional evidence exists, three varieties are usually distinguished. * Lepontic, attested from a small area on the southern slopes of the Alps, around the present-day Swiss town of Lugano, is the oldest Celtic language to have been written, with inscriptions in a variant of the Old Italic ("Etruscan") script appearing around c.600 BC. It has been described either as an "early dialect of an outlying form of Gaulish", or else as a separate Continental Celtic language. * Attestations of Gaulish proper in present-day France are known as "Transalpine Gaulish". Its written record begins in the third century BC with inscriptions in the Greek alphabet, found mainly in the Rhone area of southern France (where Greek cultural influence was present via the colony of Massilia, founded c. 600 BC). After the Roman conquest of Gaul (58-50 BC), the writing of Gaulish shifted to the Latin alphabet. * Finally, there are a small number of inscriptions from the second and first centuries B.C. in Cisalpine Gaul (modern northern Italy), which share the same archaic alphabet as the Lepontic inscriptions but are found outside the Lepontic area proper. As they were written after the time of the Gaulish conquest of Cisalpine Gaul, they are usually identified as "Cisalpine Gaulish". They share some linguistic features both with Lepontic and with Transalpine Gaulish; for instance, both Lepontic and Cisalpine Gaulish simplify the consonant clusters ''-nd-'' and ''-χs-'' to ''-nn-'' and ''-ss-'' respectively, while both Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaulish replace inherited word-final ''-m'' with ''-n''. Scholars have debated to what extent the distinctive features of Lepontic reflect merely its earlier origin or a genuine genealogical split, and to what extent Cisalpine Gaulish should be seen as a continuation of Lepontic or an independent offshoot of mainstream Transalpine Gaulish. The relationship between Gaulish and the other Celtic languages is also subject to debate. Most scholars today agree that Celtiberian was the first to branch off from the remaining Celtic languages. Gaulish, situated in the centre of the Celtic language area, shares with the neighbouring Brythonic of Great Britain the change of the Indo-European labio-velar consonant /kʷ/ > /p/, whereas both Celtiberian in the south and Goidelic in Ireland retain /kʷ/. Taking this as the primary genealogical isogloss, some scholars see the Celtic languages to be divided into a "q-Celtic" and a "p-Celtic" group, in which the p-Celtic languages Gaulish and Brythonic form a common "Gallo-Brittonic" branch. Other scholars place more emphasis on shared innovations between Brythonic and Goidelic, and group these together as an Insular Celtic branch. discusses a composite model, in which the Continental and Insular varieties are seen as part of a dialect continuum, with genealogical splits and areal innovations intersecting.〔Cited after 〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Gaulish language」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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