THE PICTS inhabited most of Scotland in the first millennium of the Common Era. While we know from such evidence as place names (Nicolaisen 1972, 1996) that they spoke a Brythonic Celtic language, aside from these place names, the king lists (see Cummins 1995), and a handful of ogham inscriptions that have so far eluded decoding (but see Cummins 1999:60-68), nothing else is known of their language (compare Forsyth 1996, 1997a).

1. THE PICTISH SYMBOL STONES. The most extensive and most identifiably Pictish artifacts that these people left behind are the symbols that they carved on a number of stones and other articles. These display a remarkable degree of consistency and are reproduced in typical forms in Table r (overleaf, from the compilation of Sutherland 1997, who draws her figures from Allen & Anderson 1903).

Where the interests of linguistics enter the picture is in the enigmatic combinations of these symbols throughout Pictland. Usually in pairs, one over another, these combinations strongly suggest the communication of some form of information adhering to a set of rules. As Thomas points out:

Statements containing two symbols, or Pairs, do not appear to conform to any random distribution (this could almost certainly be demonstrated mathematically by a simple matrix analysis) and it may be assumed that selective rules are at work. There is a noticeable emphasis on the use of Object, rather than Animal, symbols. Repetition of complete pairs exists, and among the actual symbols used, both Animal and Object, certain symbols occur disproportionately more often than others. (Thomas 1963:37)

Such observations indicate to the linguist that some form of rule-based grammar is involved; and one mathematical matrix has been worked out by Jackson U984), although with an interpretation that is not widely accepted (Forsyth 1997b:85). Of course, before we attempt to ascertain what they might have meant, we must first determine the level of grammar on which this information was being conveyed.

1.1 THE SEMANTIC LEVEL. The first (and perhaps the most obvious) level suggested for the grammar of the Pictish symbol stones is the semantic, or more precisely the lexico-semantic. In this approach, each symbol relates to some precise designation that maintains a particular meaning.

Thomas (1963) interprets the symbols as funerary. Since there are not enough such symbols to represent individuals or indeed individual names, he suggests that they 'must perforce do this in terms of ... status and ... group-affiliation' (Thomas 1963:87). Moreover, he posits quasi-grammatical rules to account for their distribution, considering them to be personal nouns and adjectives.

Henderson (1971), while accepting the semantic and even the grammatical basis for the symbols, suggests that they may have referred rather to the ownership of land. Along somewhat similar lines, Jackson (1984) expands upon the grammatical basis and presents an impressive hypothesis that the paired symbols represent marriages within the Pictish matrilineal system. Unfortunately, the hypothesis suffers from some rather serious problems (Driscoll 1986).

More recently, Samson 1992) proffers the hypothesis that the symbols alone reveal nothing--only the symbols in combination...