Studi celtici by Filippo Motta

Abstract

Reviewed by: Studi celtici by Filippo Motta Joseph F. Eska (bio) Filippo Motta, Studi celtici, ed. Andrea Nuti. Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2020. ISBN 978-88-3339-275-2. xxiv + 518 pages. €32.00. This volume of collected papers by Filippo Motta (FM), Professor of Linguistics and Celtic Philology at the Università di Pisa, edited by his former student, Andrea Nuti, should have a place on the bookshelf of everyone interested in early Celtic philology and linguistics. Many of the 20 included papers (of the 90 that he has published through 2019) were originally published in journals and volumes not commonly found in North American libraries. Some are not found in North American libraries at all. A number of the papers included in the volume are among FM’s best known works, including ‘Per un’interpretazione della Faccia B del bronzo di Botorrita’ (1980), in which he identifies the onomastic character and structure of Face B of this most important of Celtiberian inscriptions. Other well known works include ‘I Leponti. La documentazione epigrafica e linguistica’ (2000), a collection and linguistic commentary, with excellent photographs, of the Lepontic epigraphic corpus as known at the time; ‘Sulla declinazione celtica dei temi in -ā’ (1988), occasioned by the discovery of novel ā-stem inflexional morphemes in the Transalpine Celtic inscription of Larzac; and ‘Tipologie dell’onomastica personale celtica nell’Italia antica’ (2009), which examines the types of idionyms, patronymics, and onomastic formulae found in the Celtic of ancient northern Italy. Others papers are not as well known (but should be), at least in North America, but this is a question of accessibility. These include ‘Brevi note sulle bilingui ogamico-latine di Britannia’ (1988) and ‘La sala del convivio dei fabbri gallici. Per l’etimologia di gall. celicnon’ (2001), in which FM convincingly demonstrates that the well known Transalpine Celtic forms celicnon (RIG L–13; acc. sg.) and celicnu (RIG L–13; dat. sg.) are to be connected to the Celtic stem */kheːljo/-attested in OIr. céile and MW kilyd ‘fellow, companion,’1 thus superseding an earlier proposal of my own and providing a ready explanation for the phonology of the Gothic borrowing kelikn (in which 〈e〉 represent /eː/). We should also be grateful for the inclusion of two papers on the rock inscriptions from Carona (Bergamo), ‘Val Brembana Golasecchiana. Nuove testimonianze epigrafiche da Carona’ (2008) and ‘Sulle ultime campagne di studio delle epigrafi preromane di Carona’ (2016), which originally appeared in the magazine Terra Insubre aimed at a non-academic audience, but which contain useful information on these understudied inscriptions. [End Page 261] Other papers by FM included in this collection touch upon issues pertaining to Celtic culture and anthropology, etymology, and the historiography of the Italian Celticists Tristano Bolelli and Graziadio Isaia Ascoli. This well produced volume also includes FM’s bibliography through 2019 and indices of cited forms and names. One only wishes that more could have been included. ABBREVIATIONS RIG L–1–16 Lejeune 1988 RIG L–18–*139 Lambert 2002 Joseph F. Eska Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University Joseph F. Eska Joseph F. Eska [eska@vt.edu] is Professor of Language Sciences in the Department of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University. His research interests focus upon all aspects of the historical linguistics of the Celtic languages. He is the editor of the North American journal of Celtic studies and co-editor of Indo-European linguistics. References Lambert, Pierre-Yves. 2002. Recueil des inscriptions gauloises ii/2, Textes gallo-latins sur instrumentum. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Google Scholar Lejeune, Michel. 1988. Recueil des inscriptions gauloises ii/1, Textes gallo-étrusques. Textes gallo-latins sur pierre. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Google Scholar Russell, Paul. 2013. From compound to derivative. The development of a patronymic ‘suffix’ in Gaulish. In Continental Celtic word formation. The onomastic evidence, ed. Juan Luis García Alonso, 201–214. Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca. Google Scholar Footnotes 1. Subsequently discovered independently by Russell 2013: 208–209. Copyright © 2022 The Ohio State University Press