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I've done some initial research on Gaulish (and other Celtic languages), but I swear I've found more scholarly articles and documents on Celtiberian than Gaulish. What is currently the essential study on Gaulish?

Also, does anyone here know the Gaulish word for mother? I reconstructed *mātīr, but I haven't found a source to confirm that.

"GAUL: matrebo [r, f] [Dat. p] (Glanum, RIG G-64)"
says Matasovic, but he does have *mātīr for proto-celtic.

Forgot to add the quoted source:
MATREBO GLANEIKABO BRATOU DEKANTEN

That makes sense as dative plural but the question becomes what is the standard form.

Zaarin wrote:I've done some initial research on Gaulish (and other Celtic languages), but I swear I've found more scholarly articles and documents on Celtiberian than Gaulish. What is currently the essential study on Gaulish?

La langue gauloise, Description linguistique, commentaire d'inscriptions choisies, by Pierre-Yves Lambert, probably. Delamarre's Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise is also the best analysis of the attested vocabulary that we have.

Also, does anyone here know the Gaulish word for mother? I reconstructed *mātīr, but I haven't found a source to confirm that.

It's mātīr, attested on the Larzac inscription: adiega matir aiias "Adiega, mother of Aiia".

Prmysl wrote:"GAUL: matrebo [r, f] [Dat. p] (Glanum, RIG G-64)"
says Matasovic, but he does have *mātīr for proto-celtic.

Forgot to add the quoted source:
MATREBO GLANEIKABO BRATOU DEKANTEN

That makes sense as dative plural but the question becomes what is the standard form.

Yep, sounds like a dative to me, too.

Dewrad wrote:

Zaarin wrote:I've done some initial research on Gaulish (and other Celtic languages), but I swear I've found more scholarly articles and documents on Celtiberian than Gaulish. What is currently the essential study on Gaulish?

La langue gauloise, Description linguistique, commentaire d'inscriptions choisies, by Pierre-Yves Lambert, probably. Delamarre's Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise is also the best analysis of the attested vocabulary that we have.

Also, does anyone here know the Gaulish word for mother? I reconstructed *mātīr, but I haven't found a source to confirm that.

It's mātīr, attested on the Larzac inscription: adiega matir aiias "Adiega, mother of Aiia".

Thanks. I know some French, but probably not enough for something so technical. I'll either brush up my French or try to hunt down an English translation.

Welsh modreb 'aunt' and the name Modron, along with Irish ma:thair both point to a root *ma:tr-.

How did this decline in Common Celtic. I.e. where does the long /i:/ in the second syllable of the nom.sing. come from? (I would have reconstructed something like /ma:tri(:)/). It seems odd that a long vowel should be syncopated in British, especially as this would have been the stressed vowel before the accent shift (end of Old Welsh etc.)

marconatrix wrote:Welsh modreb 'aunt' and the name Modron, along with Irish ma:thair both point to a root *ma:tr-.

How did this decline in Common Celtic. I.e. where does the long /i:/ in the second syllable of the nom.sing. come from? (I would have reconstructed something like /ma:tri(:)/). It seems odd that a long vowel should be syncopated in British, especially as this would have been the stressed vowel before the accent shift (end of Old Welsh etc.)

The nominative singular was *mātīr, a fully regular reflex of the PIE hysterodynamic proto-form **méh2tēr. The accusative materan is attested in Gaulish, again a fully regular reflex of the PIE **méh2terṃ. The oblique stem, however, was *mātr- (again a fully regular etc...), and it is the oblique stem used in composition. Thus with an augmentive suffix we have *mātronā, which regularly gives W. Modron, with no syncopation. The prehistory of modreb is somewhat more obscure, and is probably not a Proto-Celtic formation. With an obscure derivational affix *-kʷih2 added to the PIE root, we have *méh2tṛkʷih2, the regular outcome of which would be *mātrikʷī in PC (and thus modreb, etc.).

For what it's worth, the OI máthir points not to a proto-form of *mātr-: rather it can only be from *mātīr.