Abstract :
My contribution explores the potential of Standard Average European (SAE) as a
methodological yardstick for the assessment of the Celticity of Standard English (SE), i.e.
the degree to which SE may have been influenced by Insular Celtic languages. SAE allows
a quantification of the extent to which SE differs from other SAE languages and at the
same time shows similarities with Insular Celtic languages which are generally thought
to deviate from SAE. The concept of SAE will be introduced and a complex test case will
be analyzed: the rise of identical reflexives and intensifiers and the frequency of ‘labile’
verbs, e.g. to break both intransitive and transitive, in English. Reflexives and intensifiers
are identical in Insular Celtic, but separate categories in SAE. According to Haspelmath
(1993), labile verbs are unusually frequent in English by SAE standards, and they are also
very frequent in Insular Celtic. It will be shown that the frequency of labile verbs in SE and
Insular Celtic results from the identity of reflexives and intensifiers in these languages.
Since the frequency of labile verbs thus can be shown to be a typologically secondary
phenomenon, it is the rise of the new system of identical reflexives and intensifiers in
SE which is methodologically the relevant linguistic subsystem within the complex test
case for which Insular Celtic influence can be proposed and which can be adduced as an
argument in favor of the Celtic hypothesis. For the assessment of the Celtic hypothesis, it
will therefore be rewarding to complement the initial comparison of SE and Insular Celtic
with further data from SAE and general typology whenever the linguistic subsystems
under scrutiny allows the inclusion of such data.
