Further Linguistic Considerations on a New Celtiberian Bronze

A new Celtiberian bronze in the Latin alphabet, probably dating back to the mid 1st c. BC, has been made public and partially studied in 2025. Recently, a welcome work has seen the light that includes a reliable photograph. It contains a number of minor text corrections of this Celtiberian bronze. Therefore, an adjustment of the author’s previous views, as put forward in her preliminary work, published in Voprosy onomastiki, is in order. This article is complementary of the former one and shall address the problems inherent in the editor’s personal interpretation of the bronze, as well as some issues regarding Celtic inflectional endings. Specifically, the paper focuses on the form of the non-neuter dual nom.-acc. ending, which continues *-ŏ in Irish and Gaulish and therefore significantly differs from the mark *-ō (< *-oh1) inherited by most Indo-European languages. In all likelihood, the dual owes this innovative ending to the numeral *duu̯ŏ ‘two’. The author contend that Celtiberian took part in this important inflectional innovation, and that this text contains institutional terms suggestive of Celtiberian towns having had two co-rulers or military leaders. A number of new onomastic and lexical items are identified and when possible translated, the paper also aims to clarify some aspects of the syntax of the whole document. On the phonetic side, the author maintains her views on the disappearance of IE *-d in auslaut in the dialect of the Arevaci and the presence of ablative forms in this text, however, the idea that final nasals had been weakened is to be revised: in the author’s present view, they had possibly been neutralised as -m and reflected as -<m> at least in the dialect of the Arevaci.