The origin of absolute vs. conjunct inflection and verb-initial basic word order in Insular Celtic

Whether Insular Celtic has to be reconstructed as a common ancestor between Goidelic and Brittonic languages is not commonly accepted by scholars. The major evidence sustaining the strict relation between these two sub-branches of Celtic languages comes from the verbal system. For instance, the so-called "absolute" endings (as opposed to a set of "conjunct" endings) apparently are not diffused in Continental Celtic. Furthermore, only Goidelic and Brittonic languages consistently seem to show VSO as basic order of constituents. In this thesis, I will specifically endeavour to account for these peculiarities of Insular Celtic. Concerning absolute vs. conjunct endings, it has to be stressed that in both Irish and Welsh a fully inflected verb form never occurs besides a subject pronoun. It is hence tempting to believe that this is because the subject was (originally) already there, and then agglutinated to the verb as an enclitic in case of simple verbs (giving rise to the absolute endings) or between the preverb and the verb in case of compounds (conjunct endings). In the second place, as far as basic word order is concerned, I will take into consideration the case of Old Irish polar interrogative sentences. These are introduced by the particle in. In my view, it is likely that verb-initial polar interrogative sentences originated from cleft sentences. This verb-initial pattern could then have extended also to non-interrogative (declarative) sentences.