Etruscan grammar - The nouns and verbs and everything

Finally after much procrastination I've at last hammered out a provisional model of Etruscan verbs. My pdf, originally focused on Etruscan declension, now includes what I hope is a coherent and natural model of Etruscan conjugation. Given the available literature, I fear that I'm the only one that dwells on these little details. So please review it in the Lingua Files section. This is to be, as always, regarded as an ever-evolving work in progress for discussion.

One will notice that while amace '(he) has been' is often parsed as am-ace and called a "perfect", I elect to interpret this more elaborately as three morphemes marking both aspect and tense: am-ac-e = be-PERF-PAST. As such, I specifically call this form the perfective past which contrasts with the perfective present-future seen in eniaca 'shall remain' (see Pyrgi Tablets) which is then similarly composed of the verb root en 'to remain', the perfective -ac- and the present-future marker -a.

My model has the benefit of finally making sense of uncomposed Lemnian -ai which marks the verbs recorded on the Lemnos Stele. Surely these too then are imperfect pasts. I don't know of a competing model that can address these various facts as well. It seems too that treating -in(-) as a mood marker works best with a grammatical structure of tense, aspect and mood. So I've settled on calling this a mediopassive which contrasts with the default active mood. It's interesting too that both Greek and Latin, two languages having notable influence on Etruscan, had this same mood. "A product of areal influence or just accidental?" I wonder.

Haider's transcription of the Minoan medicinal text

Eureka! I've finally nabbed a detailed photo of the previously mentioned Minoan spell text. With all the silly errors I discovered being committed by Etruscologists alone, I suspected that a photo might reveal similar errors in the transcription of this text too. Sure enough, I'm reminded that many have a lazy eye.

Our Minoan text is written on lines 6 and 7 from right to left (see picture below).

I can see quite clearly now that in Minoan deities in an Egyptian medical text (2001), published in Aegaeum 22, Peter Haider's transcription is dreadfully loose. One word that begins sȝ-b-w-j-ȝ-jj-... is demonstrably inaccurate. The above text (upper left corner specifically) shows that there's an extra symbol between the b (foot) and the w (coil). Why and how was this overlooked?

It goes on. Haider's alleged god name Razija or Razaja is concocted out of the seventh line which shows only r-...-ȝ-y^DEITY. The intervening gap could conceivably be anything but the author indulges in wishful thinking to connect with some Linear A fragment showing RA₂-TI. Any gain from even bothering to associate these two things is hopelessly unproductive in my view. I'm also having trouble mapping his alleged *humekatu to the correlating portion in the picture, but then again my hieratic could be rusty.

And why would the Minoan text be broken up here by an interloping Egyptian phrase *pa wūra 'the great' (which he transcribes as pȝ-ȝ wr). Something is surely wrong with the overall handling of this text but it appears this will be a long-term ball of yarn for me to unravel.


UPDATES
(27 Sep 2011) I've deleted my confused/confusing statement: "A sure error however is in the reading of Ameja itself where Haider reads a trailing eagle glyph (the final ȝ in his ˀa-m-ˁ-j-ȝ) where it's visibly a different glyph, reused in fact on the next line in case there's any doubt of its true shape." This is unfair of me considering that I misread the sparrow (representing wr) as an owl (representing m), thereby assuming the sequence that Haider reads as Ameya starts sooner. Even still, I'm completely at a loss as to how he obtained Ameya out of this sequence because then the "m" is where a gap lies. Still problematic and confusing.

The sun and the lion

Here's a seemingly simple question: How do you pronounce Egyptian rw 'lion'? Coptic has laboi 'lioness'^[1] and isn't a direct descendent of rw; it can't guide us. William Albright had suggested a pronunciation *ruw^[2][3] based on very little. To help us backtrack, we have additional data from surrounding languages and language groups and it all shows that this word travelled far and wide across the seas.

• Indo-European: Greek λέων, Latin leō.
• Semitic: Akkadian aria, Hebrew arī.
• Aegean: Etruscan leu.
• Egyptian: rw.

The reason why I'm pondering this now is because of my latest reflection on the Etruscan reflex. It's easy to dismiss the question of its origin by setting it beside Greek λέων and assuming that the Greeks gave them the word. It's not impossible from a purely linguistic standpoint afterall since there are a few Etruscan terms that have once ended in -un only to lose the trailing nasal over time - eg. Petru 'Petron', Χaru(n) 'Charon', θu(n) 'one', etc. However we should ask ourselves why the Etruscans would have borrowed the 'lion' word from the Greeks when the animal's habitat lies in Africa.^[4][5] One would think that Etruscans would adopt the word from Africans themselves. It's not as if Etruscans were unfamiliar with Africans (hint: Carthaginian trade).

So the hypothesis I've held onto for a while, is that leu could be inherited, thereby indicating earlier Proto-Aegean *lau, assuming a raising of Old Etruscan a to e before resonants, as with Old Etruscan clan 'son' > Late Etruscan clen. With the direct antecedent of Etruscan in Lydia, an Egyptian source for this word is the only thing sensible.

However, I'm beginning to ponder a more extensive idea - perhaps it's not so much Proto-Aegean *lau as *liwa. Then Etruscan leu is the result of an aforementioned Cyprian Syncope as well as the lowering of i to e. This also better explains the god mentioned in the Aleksandu Treaty, Apaliunas, whose complex name defies attempts at etymology although it's the stuff of long essays by overspecialized Hittitists.

As far as I'm concerned, Apaliunas is only understandable in Aegean terms and grammar. With the new reconstruction above we have: *apa 'father' (cf. Etruscan apa 'father') + *liwa-na 'leonine, of lions, lion-like' < *Apa-Liwana 'Lion Father'. This is apt for a sun god who would later become Greek Apollon. Unlike my former root *lau, this new form accounts more directly for the -i- in Apaliunas.

Yet there's perhaps another bonus. It's finally dawned on me that while the lion is a common sun symbol in the 2nd and 1st millennia BCE, the Egyptian language holds the key to it through simple word pun. Based on the ideogram value r` and Coptic rē, the word for 'sun' was undoubtedly once *rīʕa. The consonantal value for 'lion' is known to be rw but its vowels are harder to reconstruct because the word has not survived into Coptic times. Since I know Egyptian scribes couldn't resist good puns, I wonder if the sun was associated with lion for the simple reason that the two words shared the same vocalic matrix. Could the word then have been *rīwa? A pun between *rīʕa and *rīwa could clarify a lot.

The Semitic reflexes too seem to justify this Egyptian reconstruction since they reflect *ʔarīwu ~ *ʔarīyu. The -y- also replaces expected -w-, a typical preference of North-West Semitic languages. Glück published this very assessment.^[6] I'm sure this word is yet another Egyptian loan. The only problem is the prothetic vowel. Where is it from? The obvious answer would be from Egyptian. And so, we might want to tweak *rīwa to *arīwa. (The stress accent remains on the long vowel.)

If Egyptian contains this "prothetic vowel", should we then consider Aegean *alíwa instead of *liwa? Does this still work? Apparently so. As I said before, unstressed initial *a- is regularly dropped in Etruscan. An *Apa-Alíwana manages to keep aligned to Luwian Apaliunas. Regardless, I figure that Greek λέων must be somehow based on Minoan *(a)líwa.

More on Etruscan verb *zil-

To add to my previous rant, Overseeing in Anatolia, it turns out that a quick google search yielded a gem in my favour. To recap, since the attested Etruscan words zilaθ and zilχ strongly imply a verbal root *zil- presumably meaning 'to oversee, to supervise', I considered the possibility that the verb was simply inherited from a Proto-Cyprian form *zila-. I then considered the possibility of a relationship between this word and Hattic zilat 'throne, seat' by way of a cultural exchange between these two unrelated language groups. I asked: Could this latter word be built on a Hattic verbal root -zil? Is there a shared verb pertaining to governance between Hattic and Cyprian? Sadly, Cyprian-Hattic loans seem to be hard to examine given the gaps in present-day linguistic information of that region and time period.

Now to the aforementioned gem. I came across Yasemin Arikan's article, An official in Hittite cult: ^LUtazzelli-, where he surprisingly contemplates precisely this Hattic verb, *-zil, but with the added evidence of another Hattic word, *ta-zil, pertaining to a type of official. If I understand correctly so far, ta- creates derivative nouns as in *ta-parfasu (cf. Hittite taparfasu-, a type of ritual bread), and another noun *t-astup (cf. Hittite tastuppa-). Both of these latter nouns are mentioned in Petra Goedegebuure's article I read previously.

Pit worship and common Cypro-Minoan rites

Albert Grenier in The Roman spirit in religion, thought, and art (1926) described this important type of Etrusco-Roman ritual space quite succinctly^[1]:

"The mundus is really a mouth of hell, a way of communication between the upper earth, the abode of the living, and the subterranean world, the dwelling of the dead."

As I said before, chapter 12 of the Liber Linteus shows a case alternation between muθ hilarθ une (with locative un-e) and muθ hilarθ una (with commitative un-a). Cross-correlating the context of each of these words with other Etruscan inscriptions, I read "The mundus (muθ) is enclosed (hilarθ) with libation (une/una)." The slight variation in case of the last word must nonetheless convey the same thing, much like the creative case choices seen in the main religious formula of the Liber Linteus that likewise suggest only nuanced semantic differences if any despite different case endings. The phrase mut-ti ceśasi in LL 10 refers then to depositing (ceśasi) a holy offering 'in the pit' (mut-ti).

Additionally, considering that Indo-Europeanists haven't identified a native source for Latin mundus,^[2] it may very well be loaned from Etruscan muθ. Afterall, a large portion of Roman religious rites has already been attributed to the Etruscans before them whose traditions are simultaneously linked to similar rites like those of the influential Hittites of yore.^[3] This further contributes to the plausibility of interpreting muθ as a ritual pit.

Given the existence of this important Etruscan word, and charging forward with my previous identification of a Minoan accusative-declined noun phrase on libation table KN Za 10, tan muti Asásaramana 'the pit of Asasarama' (as per John Younger's transliteration), a common Proto-Aegean word *muti meaning 'pit, hole' is a natural sequitur. The reduction of final vowel and concommitant aspiration of plosive in Etruscan is already explained by Cyprian Syncope.

Finally there's the matter of what kind of goddess Asásarama would have represented to the Minoans. I get the impression of an archetypal fertility and earth goddess paralleling Isis and Ashtarte. If we follow the recurring themes of the religions hugging the eastern Mediterranean during the 2nd mill. BCE, this would lead me to suspect that she was also the wife of a local god of storm and/or underworld, like Egyptian Osiris or Hattic Wurun-Katte. If a fertile earth goddess, the link between Asásarama and a word 'pit', already noted as a chthonian symbolism in Hittite rites, is all the more promising.

I plan on elaborating more on the nature of Asásarama and other possible intercultural connections in a future post.

In front and in back

This is pretty interesting... Puhvel's Hittite Etymological Dictionary under the term marzai- a curious snippet of Hittite text is cited and translated: "He fritters three flatbreads and crumbles them in front and back of the male gods of the pit, he scatters fatcakes [and] meal, and libates."

The rituals cited here are the same as those of the Etruscans and, even more fun, is the fact that even the phrase "in front and back" is aped by the Liber Linteus where hante-c repine-c conveyed the identical. Common traditions in both religion and writings of the Hittite and Etruscan cultures is evident and gives us another piece of evidence in favour of an Asia Minor origin of the Etruscans (as if it weren't thoroughly proven already).

Praisos #2

I was reading the latest post from Minoan Language Blog entitled Place-names on Cretan sealstones - A key to the decipherment of Minoan hieroglyphs? where in re of the artifact Praisos #2 the author observes: "Unfortunately there is no word separation; yet - if we follow van Effenterre's considerations - we can be almost sure that the word *inai was separate." This is a sound conclusion I can agree with given the likely division between two consecutive iotas. (For those unfamiliar with this artifact, please take a gaze Ray Brown's Eteocretan Language Pages from which I've borrowed the pictures below.)

A lack of word separation can be a source of headache for the would-be decipherer but it's common in ancient texts like this one. What could help is trying to deduce what are the likeliest rules of syllable structure and grammar this language might have had. For me, since I've strongly felt over the years that Eteocretan is related to Minoan and Etruscan, I'm guided by a generalized "Proto-Aegean" model of grammar and syllable structure. So let me explain what that is and how it leads me to separating the words as I do below.


Features of a common Proto-Aegean language family

As I've said before, I define a hypothetical ancestor of Minoan, Etruscan, Lemnian, Rhaetic, Eteocretan and Eteocypriot which I call Proto-Aegean. It would have been a fairly "syllabic" language (ie. no consonant clusters) with a mild stress accent lying by default on the initial syllable, although occasionally on the second. Judging by Etruscan alone, internal reconstruction affirms this conclusion about stress as it nicely explains the eventual development of initial clusters in Etruscan words that must have once had stress on the second syllable. I maintain there were no long vowels in its simple 5-vowel, V-shaped system consisting of *a, *e, *i, *o, and *u. Stops had no voice contrast and only a plain/aspirated distinction (ie. plain *t versus aspirated *tʰ). It had a default SOV word order.

Internal reconstruction also strongly suggests a Pre-Etruscan stage with the loss of word-final vowels (eg. Etruscan avil 'year' < *awilu). In Etrusco-Lemnian languages, there is an odd overabundance of word-final aspirated stops but this aspiration is explainable as a residue of the "whispered" word-final schwas as they disappeared beside word-medial plosives, eg. *ḳota 'four' > Etruscan huθ /hutʰ/. I also deduce that Proto-Aegean had certain grammatical features such as two tenses (unmarked present-future tense & a simple past in *-i) preceded optionally by modal markers like perfective *-ka (hence the perfective past *-ka-i becomes Etruscan -ce).


Enough! Let's parse and interpret!

So, long story short, based on considerations like the above, this is what I can currently pick out from this artifact:

[...]ona  desieme  tepimits  φa[...]
[...]do--iarala  φraisoi  inai[...]
[...]  restnm  tor  sar  doφ  sano
[...]satois  steφ  siatiun[...]
[...]anime  stepal  une  utat
[...]  sano  moselos  φraisona
[...]tsa  adoφ  tena
[...]ma  prainai  reri[...]
[...]irei  rerei  e[...]
[...]n   rirano[...]
[...]askes[...]
[...]it[...]

The most certain word or word stem repeated in this document by far is φraiso, the city of Praisos from where this artifact derives. Based on Etruscan vocabulary and grammar, I offer the following possible connections that I can perceive:

desieme 'with sacrifice' (= Etr tesiame [PyrT 1.x])
φraisoi 'in Praisos' (= Etr -i [locative])
φraisona 'Praisian, of Praisos' (= Etr -na  [pertinentive])
restn-m 'then wine lees' (= Etr restm-c 'and lees' [TCort A.ii])
tor 'to give' (= Etr tur [LL 11.iv])
doφ 'oath' (= Etr θuφ)
sar 'ten' (= Etr śar [TCort ii])
utat '(it is) served, (it is) delivered' (= Etr uθ 'to deliver' [LL 10.xiii])
une 'with libation' (= Etr une [LL 8.xvii])
tena '(they) present, (they) offer' (= Etr tena [CPer B.ii])

If my assigned values are even half on-track, it suggests that the topic of this artifact involves much the same as we might find on Etruscan stelae - a list of performed rites (presumably involving wine and lees, libations, oaths and animal sacrifice) performed in Praisos as a religious commemoration of a person, deity and/or event.


UPDATES
(2011 June 24) On Bayndor's advice, I corrected a typo that I'd copied and pasted from Ray Brown's website: *desime should be desieme and *tora should be tor. I've also changed the Etruscan comparandum for tor to reflect the newly apparent infinitive (ie. -a marks the present-future tense and an unmarked form represents an infinitive which has a meaning of 'to X' or 'X-ing' when translating into English).

Threads of life and tongue

I'm going to indulge in more speculation based on Why would Apollo play a lyre?. I notice a connection with my previous etymology for 'kithara', a relative of the lyre, which I've been reconstructing lately as Minoan *ki-zera 'kithara' (= /'kitserə/). The word must literally have meant 'three-stringed', if we extrapolate both Minoan *ki 'three' and *zera 'hair, string', the former word being cognate with Etruscan ci 'three' and the latter being an Old Egyptian loan as I mentioned before (cf. Egyptian sr). With the aforementioned etymon, *lura 'lyre', as well as the many other possible "Pelasgian" terms like συβήνη 'flute-case', it strikes me that Mycenaeans had been embracing Minoan musical tastes en masse.

So here's a further question. Do the three strings of the lyre, the instrument of Apollo himself, express a deeper solar symbolism? Could it be possible that the three strings point to the three seasons of the year, for one? This implies a connection between the notion of 'thread' and the notion of 'time'. But wait, where have I heard of this before?

A little digging triggered my taxed memory. The mythical Moirai or Greae, otherwise known as the Fates, show clearly that indeed a 'thread' is symbolic of at least a human lifespan since they are said to have "cut short" the lives of mortals at their appointed time. Further, it turns out, Diodorus Siculus directly affirms that the three strings of the lyre represented the three seasons!^[1] It all paints a fascinating ancient theme intertwining, strangely enough, music theory with religion.

Returning to this hypothetical *ki-zera, it's alluring to give it an added metaphorical meaning of three 'threads' or 'ages' of the year. There's another theoretical Minoan term I've suggested before on this blog, *ki-amaira 'three-faced' which would serve as the original title of the reknowned Chimera (see Paleoglot: The Chimaira chimera). Again, the three 'faces' appear to refer equally to both the three seasons and the three parts of the day interchangeably. Indeed, it is already proved that even the periods of the day are yarned into the notion of age in the famous Riddle of the Sphinx dating from classical times. These ancient notions are woven together brilliantly into an endlessly fascinating fabric.


NOTES
^[1] The historical library of Diodorus the Sicilian (1814), chap.I, p.23 (see link): "He first found out the harp with three strings, in resemblance of the three seasons of the year, causing three several sounds, the treble, base, and mean. The treble to represent the summer; the base, the winter; and the mean, the spring."

Why does Apollo play a lyre?

It seems like a simple question but mum's the word online and even Wikipedia doesn't help although it does touch on the iconic lyre in its current draft of the Apollo article. To me, it's most likely that the deity of the sun isn't given a stringed lyre due to anything more elaborate than a word pun in some forgotten tongue. Which one, when, and in what way are the remaining questions.

In fact, the ultimate source of the word 'lyre' is still a riddle. The etymology of Classical Greek λύρα, from whence the English word, is uncertain but most often suspected to originate from a non-IE language, most probably Minoan. Note that the word dates back to Mycenaean, as attested in Linear B ru-ra-ta-e = *lūrātāe '(two) lyrists [dl.]' so it could very well be a borrowed word from the Minoan language. So I hypothesize a Minoan form *lura 'lyre' as the most credible source.

Coincidentally I've already been interpreting lursθ in the Lead of Magliano as a proper intransitive participle of a stative verb luras 'to be bright'. Within its context, Tins Lursθ would be the genitive of an epithet meaning 'Shining Sun' pointing to the highmost one, Tinia. Inscription TLE 747 also attests to lursl, a type-II genitive of its corresponding bare deverbal noun, lurs, which would then imply 'light'. Since -as- seems to be a fairly productive derivational suffix in Etruscan verbs (possibly a stative marker) I anticipate a more active root, *lur- 'to sparkle, to shine', at its base.

This latest revelation has got me wondering if there is a connection with this sun-lyre motif. Given both *lura 'lyre' and *lura- 'to sparkle', there would be natural temptation to use the 'lyre' as a creative solar symbolism. Of course, I still need to investigate this further and make sure that these translations are solid but it's one tempting thought that has me itching for more data.

Back to 'back'

Concerning the etymological 'back' problem I've been having since December, I might have found a decent cure. I had elaborated before that it's long been known that there appears to be a common word for 'back' or 'hip' across ancient Greece and Turkey: Classical Greek ischíon 'hip-joint' and Hittite iskis- 'back'. This pair just can't be a coincidence and an underlying Proto-Aegean term *iskʰis(a) seemed like a plausible fit to me.

However, I kept on feeling that unlike the previous words I've suspected to be Proto-Aegean, this one comes across as a little extra odd. Firstly I can't find a way of analysing the expected Aegean root into smaller meaningful morphemes and secondly the structure of the root seems unexpected for Proto-Aegean (eg. *s in syllable codae). Yet I know that this is at least better than the horrid attempts by Indo-Europeanists to reconstruct *h₁isgʰís- based only on two items from a very restricted geographical area. Surely this can't be correct either.

It was a tough problem so I did some yoga, smoked a spliff, watched some TV and then once my mind was distanced from the problem, I experienced a profound synaptic event. I realized that my subconscious mind had been wrestling with that initial i- for some reason. I was slow to heed my inner eye telling me of a common Hittite pattern. There's a long list of Hittite words which are the products of prothetic i- breaking up original clusters of the *sC(C)- sort. For example, ispant- 'to libate' < *spend-. So why then wouldn't iskis- be approached by IEists this way too? I suspect the answer is disturbingly circular since if one is hell-bent to deny the probability of a Greek loan from Hittite and is equally determined to make this a common IE root at all costs, then one must reconstruct this silly onset, *h₁i-.

Brainstorm time! Let's start from scratch and try this again. We have a common Greek and Hittite term for 'back' or 'hip'. Let's now just assume that the Greek word is a loan from Hittite, leaving only a single term to play with. Let's also assume that the initial i- in Hittite is prothetic like these other words. This gives us a Pre-Hittite term *skis-. Let's analyse this term as a native s-stem like some other body part terms implying that it's built on a verb stem *skei-. It just so happens that there is an identical IE root *skei- 'to cut, split'. Now, if this term originally referred to the 'spine' then it indeed 'splits' the back into two halves. Thus Pre-Hittite *skei-s- > iskis- would be 'that which divides' or 'that which is divided'. I suppose then that an Aegean or Minoan intermediary is unnecessary if the loan happened towards the closing of the 2nd millennium BCE.

A Mediterranean term for 'lower back' and 'loins'

I was messaged the other day about an interesting word with a mystery etymology. In Greek, there is ἴσχιον or ἰσχίον 'hip, hip-joint, haunches' which may be compared with the Hittite s-stem iskis- 'back'. This pair of comparanda seems to be where most inquiry stops however.

The OED mentions that this Greek word is "probably from iskhi 'loin,' of unknown origin" yet I can't find this word in Perseus online. Perhaps the editor rather meant an underlying root iskhi-, as in the word ἰσχιάζω 'move the hips', but there's no mention of the Hittite term. Many like Anna Prins (Hittite neuter singular - neuter plural: Some evidence for a connection [1997], p.218) have however acknowledged the Hittite link that establishes that this word at the very least straddled a Greco-Anatolian region, even if its exact source is unknown. Predictably forced attempts have been made by some IEists to explain this away through a hypothetical s-stem *h₁isgʰís-. This is unlikely to be true since the zerograded accented syllable dates it to Late IE at best and the word's meaning and derivation appears obscure (not to mention the severely restricted attestation of the word).

Exploring a possible Proto-Aegean (PAeg) term, we might note that the Greek evidence points to a specifically voiceless, aspirate velar stop. Aegean languages are notable for their lack of voiced stops and use of aspiration contrast in its place. Thus PAeg *iskʰis(a) 'lower back, hips, loin' might explain both although I must admit that the shape of the word seems as odd for this language just as *h₁isgʰís- does for PIE. Maybe there's a third possibility in all this that I'm not considering.

Of course I'm exploring conjectures here but it's always worth pondering alternative ideas to either illuminate further possibilities or to fully expose the absurdity of the path of thought. So far, the word for 'back' isn't known in Etruscan nor do I have the foggiest clue what it might have been, but there does seem to be an Etruscan derivational suffix -is. I'll keep my eye out for further info on this term, of course.

Aegean bread and grain

I think I might have hit upon the Proto-Aegean word for 'bread' and 'grain'. At the base of this suspicion is Greek σῖτος 'grain, wheat, wheaten bread' which has proven difficult to etymologize into Indo-European terms.

The Greek word appears best connected with Assyrian šeˀatu 'grain, barley', feminine derivative of šeˀu which is probably loaned from Sumerian še, but the devil's in the details. What's missing in our picture of the word's hypothetical transmission is the meddlesome four-dimensional hole that hovers over the space between Turkey and Greece and between the periods of the 3rd and 1st millennia BCE. In this case and the many others I've already talked about, it can be filled in by a Proto-Aegean etymon.

An Aegean word *sayáta, presumably spoken around 2000 BCE, could reasonably be loaned from šeˀatu. The phonetics in this transfer pose no problems since Aegean languages, like Etruscan or Minoan, show no evidence for phonemic glottal stops. Indeed they show the use of interloping y to break up colliding vowels between stem and suffix, as in Etruscan śealχ 'sixty' /ˈʃejəlkʰ/ < *śa-y-alkʰ (cf. Etr śa 'six'). This 'bread' word can be an added example of this intervening phoneme showing how Aegean speakers would have perceived /-ʔ-/ in neighbouring Semitic and Egyptian languages as just an allophone for /-j-/.

Minoan *siata /ˈsiə̯tə/ can evolve from the Aegean root which in turn explains Mycenaean *sitos (written si-to) and later Greek σῖτος. What's uncanny about this adventure in extrapolation here is that there exists an Egyptian scroll recording the existence of an 'Asiatic illness' for which an incantation is recommended in 'the language of the Keftiu' (ie. Minoan). These Egyptian symbols were written out phonetically to reflect actual Minoan words. One of the words is written sata (that is, sȝ-t) and is followed by a bread determinative. This fact teases me to ponder further: Is this so-called bilingual incantation actually just a ritual prescription to placate deities of illness and death with a votive offering of bread? Such a bread offering to heal the body may remind one of later Biblical symbolism associating unleavened bread with the body of Christ.

Further yet, if we follow this idea to its full conclusion, one would reasonably expect that Aegean *sayáta would contract to Cyprian *śatʰ according to the rules of Cyprian Syncope as I explored it in a few earlier posts. Strangely, we also seem to have a genitive form śaθaś in the Liber Linteus (LL 3.xviii). So can the phrase nunθene śaθaś mean '(they) brought some bread' with the genitive being used in a partitive sense, just as with du in French ils amènent du pain? It's worth a shot.

Translating a new Lemnian inscription

Michael Weiss has just notified us of a new Lemnian inscription published last year by Carlo De Simone. More details about its context are found here in Italian. According to Weiss, the inscription is:

soromš : aslaš hktaonosi : heloke
Weiss attempts to crack it by properly noting the preterite verb at the end. However drawing blanks on precise values, he describes hktaonosi as a possible 'pertinentive' and suspects that soromš : aslaš looks like a subject phrase. The last suggestion must be based on his training in Italic Indo-European languages but this language family won't help him here. Scholars agree that Lemnian is related to Etruscan and entirely non-Indo-European.

To begin deciphering this inscription, we must first transliterate this inscription better. Since we know from the Lemnos Stele that the Lemnian alphabet used omikron for /u/, we should replace o with u. If anything, this helps make the relationship with 'o-less' Etruscan more obvious, aiding in translation. Also the third item, hktaonosi, is surely malformed since we also know from Etruscan study that this is a language with a fixed stress accent on the first syllable. The cluster hk- is quite impossible so this spelling must either be a transliteration error or a scribal misspelling for, presumably, *hektaunusi.

surumś : aslaś h[e]ktaunusi : heluke
Weiss is correct that the last word is a preterite verb, specifically a perfect preterite which Etruscan marks in -ace. The stem hel- is also comparable to Etruscan where it appears to mean 'to slay, to kill'. This immediately establishes that this sentence refers to an offering being made.

We should analyse hktaunusi as a dative in -si signifying 'for' since this case suffix is found identically in Etruscan. Presumably then, aslaś h[e]ktaunusi is to whom the sacrifice was performed. Judging by other inscriptions of this nature, it's no doubt the name of an individual. This leaves surumś, an apparent type-I genitive in -ś which must be what was sacrificed.

We arrive at a provisional translation of "[Surum] has been slain for Axulos Hektaion." I presume here that the name of the recipient in question is Greek, a conclusion that I doubt would be objectionable considering its context on an Aegean island.

Taking away another root

Ever since I began distinguishing between well-grounded Proto-Indo-European (PIE) roots and mistaken ones built on historical confusion and an unhealthy denial of a non-IE Mediterranean-centered language family^[1], I can't stop finding more issues to write about! I sometimes wonder if the methodology used by Indo-Europeanists truly contrasts that by a Nostraticist or Proto-Worlder, but I try hard to suppress this rebellious, philosophical notion. I'm convinced now that many beloved PIE roots are in reality nothing more than a mirage built on a package of loanwords diffused from an Etrusco-Rhaetic language in the bustling Po Valley of early 1st millennium BCE. The previous reconstructed etyma that I've suspected openly on this blog show specific distribution patterns that imply such a geographical origin. I dare now suspect another cherished root: PIE *h₁em- 'to take'.

First of all, Julius Pokorny's 1950's work is online showing his pre-Laryngeal-Theory reconstruction, *em-, justified by evidence found in Celtic, Italic, Baltic, Slavic and Anatolian. At first blush, my skepticism appears too sensational. Yet we can first quickly peck away at the falsely segmented Hittite word *u-emiyami based on *actual* wemiyami 'I find'. The word has been connected with a quite different root, *gʷem-(ye-) 'to come', which happens to be a more convincing etymology.^[2] The habit of spelling the syllable we with two symbols, ú and e, instead of just one was a normal Hittite practice, it turns out.^[3]

So now we're just left with comparanda from Celtic, Italic, Baltic and Slavic - precisely the language groups easily accessible by trade from the Po Valley around 1000 BCE. The meaning of the verb also lends itself well to the language of trade and we may note the coincidence of Latin emere 'to buy' (hence caveat emptor 'buyer beware').

For the purposes of this revision, an Etrusco-Rhaetic verb *em 'to take' is in order to provide the source for the surrounding Indo-European forms. Etruscan evidence is rather easy to find. It's long been noted, thanks to the numerals expressed in the Liber Linteus, that numbers between 10 and 100 whose last digit is higher than 6 are conveyed by subtractive terminology. So while 13 in Etruscan is ci-śar (simply a compound of 'three' followed by 'ten'), 17 on the other hand is ci-em zaθrum, literally meaning 'three minus 20' much like Latin duo-de-viginti '18', literally '2-from-20'. Yet how do we analyse the grammar of this expression? Considering that the infinitive is expressed as the bare verb stem itself as in many other languages, this element em may very well not just mean 'minus' as the Bonfantes suggest but more specifically 'taking away from'. Thus ci-em zaθrum is literally 'taking away three from (ci em) twenty (zaθrum)'. Just like a proper SOV language is supposed to do, the infinitive verb is placed after the noun phrase and thus we know that 'three' is what is being taken away. Its simple preterite form, eme, is written twice in the continuous script found on a cup (TLE 366): nacemeuruiθalθileniθaliχememesnamertanśinamulu. In both these instances, in fact, the verb happens to follow two very common adverbs, nac 'when' and iχ 'thus', guaranteeing that I've properly divided these words.

We now need to explain what this root is doing in a non-IE language and the easy answer would be to blame it on loaning from an IE language into Etruscan, perhaps from a language like Umbrian (cf. emantur) or Latin (cf. emere). Yet lacking other evidence outside of this Po Valley trading circle, how can I be sure that this IE root even exists? Lacking further evidence, Occam's Razor guides me to the simplest answer, that it was my aforementioned Etrusco-Rhaetic root *em that spread throughout the northern territory into surrounding Indo-European languages. In a manner of comical speaking, these early IE peoples would not only have taken in novel goods from afar through exchange, but also would have taken the very verb 'to take' as well!


NOTES
^[1] Surely at the very least it's undeniable that the non-Indo-European language, Minoan, was positively influential on local languages up to 1400 BCE. Study of such a Mediterranean language family is abundantly warranted yet so entirely neglected.
^[2] In Hittite historical phonology (1999), p.297 (see link), Kimball must assume a compound dependent on a preverbal particle *u preceding an Anatolian root *em-, however note the original etymology given that doesn't require such a faith-based word-slicing in The Classical journal, vol 31 (1936), p.452 (see link) and Sturtevant, A comparative grammar of the Hittite language (1933), p.90 (see link) where the verb is derived squarely from *gʷem-ye-, a construction further attested outside of the Anatolian branch. As per the next note, the division of we- into u-e- based solely on spelling constitutes unnecessary assumption.
^[3] Melchert, Anatolian historical phonology (1994), p.25 (see link).

Missing Etruscan onsets

This time, a much shorter post about the implications of Cyprian Syncope on Etruscan and about gaps in the expected available onset possibilities. If I've defined this Pre-Etruscan syncope properly, then it's curious that Etruscan lacks some expected clusters that could not have been reason to trigger stress shift to the first syllable. As I said before, wholesale onset deletion is unlikely to have happened to deal with impending invalid clusters since this would surely overload the vocabulary with a deluge of monosyllabic homophones which would in turn undoubtedly trigger tonogenesis like in Chinese in order to compensate with this imagined "lexical condensation". (But there's no evidence for tones in Etruscan so we aren't going there.)

I now have 1800 entries with over 4300 word forms in my database so I expect to find ample stuff when I search for words in Etruscan starting with pr-. Yet what does my simple search yield? I have only 11 headings starting with this onset! Six of them are names of either Italic or Greek origin (Prastina, Prisina, Priiamne, Prumaθe, Prumaθina and Prusilna). Of the remaining words (besides the one mystery term prezu I have trouble assigning a value and origin to), pruχu 'pitcher', pruχuna 'of the pitcher', prumaθś 'great-grandson' and prunta ~ frunta 'augur of lightning') are all Greek or Latin loanwords (cf. πρόχους, pronepos and βροντή). This same pattern happens when I search for pl- , seeing likewise only 11 terms consisting of many names and few words, all non-native terms. Why should this be so? What's so exotic about this onset cluster in a language with ample terms starting with #tr or #sr?!

We might invent a rule that *pR- (R = resonant) was somehow avoided in Proto-Cyprian by its aforementioned stress shift rule while *tR- and *sR- were allowed but I wince at the irregularity in that. Yet if the cluster survived into the post-Cyprian era, it suggests one possible thing: word-initial clusters of the form *pR were regularly simplified in Pre-Etruscan by deleting *p. I must remind myself to investigate this pattern further.


UPDATE

15 Oct 2010: I changed "Yet if the cluster survived into the post-Cyprian era, it suggests one thing" to something less absolute: "Yet if the cluster survived into the post-Cyprian era, it suggests one possible thing". Afterall we must rationally acknowledge other logical possibilities that may not be considered such as, perhaps, a general softening of *pR to *fR (although I have only five headings thus far in #fR making that particular idea impractical).

Aegean phonotactics and more about Cyprian Syncope

After I posted Adapting the rule of Cyprian Syncope, Tropylium strove hard to paint it as linguistically unnatural or unoptimal while pushing some alternatives that I don't believe he researched. Being stubborn and fierce about my linguistics, I challenge his reasons for objection. Disbelief is no less in need of firm basis than belief. Let's quickly go over my theory some more to see why it's indeed natural, or at least more natural than anything I've seen anyone come up with.

Since stress accent must fall on one of the first two syllables in Aegean (and in later Minoan) we might say that accent placement is left-handed. By dividing the Aegean protoword into feet of two syllables consisting of trochees (or strong followed by weak syllables), then we see how Cyprian consistently erodes weak syllables towards the left and how this explains Etruscan's later shape. Let's simply make up some example forms to illustrate my theory at work, without being obstructed for now by the separate issue of the validity of any of my reconstructions:

Aegean		Cyprian
**áinatʰo [ˈai . na . ˌtʰo] ( ¯ ˘ | ¯ )	→	**áinatʰu [ˈai. na . tʰu] ( ¯ ˘ | ¯)
**táḳalimi [ˈta . kˤa . ˌli . mi] ( ¯ ˘ | ¯ ˘ )	→	**táklim [ˈtak . lim] ( ¯ ˘ )
**kápari [ˈka . pa . ˌri] ( ¯ ˘ | ¯ )	→	**kápri [ˈkap . ri] ( ¯ ˘ )
**sarópa [sa . ˈro . pa] ( ˘ | ¯ ˘ )	→	**srupʰ [ˈsrupʰ] ( ¯ )

In the above examples, the weak syllables all nicely squish into a previous syllable except for the first example whose diphthong blocks syncope (as per my previous post on this). The next example shows why stress shift is not just a plausible phonotactic-correcting strategy, but possibly the most optimal one to avoid unacceptable onsets, given the specific qualities of this protolanguage.

**takíru [ta . 'ki . ru] ( ˘ | ¯ ˘ )

→

**tákru ['tak . ru] ( ¯ ˘ )

Without shift, **takíru becomes Cyprian **tkir yet this disobeys constraints on onset clusters and unacceptably overloads the inherited and highly strict rules of syllabic structure. Or succinctly: "(Too much) change is scary." Certainly it takes more than a few generations before a Japanese-like language turns into a Kartvelian-like one, そうですか?

Since stop+stop sequences are simply not found in Etruscan or related languages, some rule or rules must have repaired or avoided these logically inevitable conflicts. Simple onset deletion is a common cluster-fighting strategy in world languages and this would produce **kir, although this would also surely create a tsunami of homophones! (That is, we'd see that a long list of terms like **takíru, **kʰakíra, **pakíri, etc. had all merged to **kir. Surely not.) Seeing it from this angle, onset deletion doesn't pass muster.

Lenition of the offending onset is barely a better strategy to avoid conflict in this respect because similar issues resurface. While **takíru could always plausibly yield **skír if lenition were so, what about a word like **pakíri which couldn't possibly produce **fkír in Etruscan! We might appeal to a mixture of lenition and onset deletion, I suppose, but now we're already multiplying hypotheses and assuming much too much.

By contrast, accent shift is in this case far more natural than wholesale onset deletion or piecemeal lenition. It also offers some added benefits besides its simplicity, obviously one of them being avoidance of homophony if nothing else. Also since the stress was already largely on the first syllable, this leftward stress shift would only help to pin an occasionally wandering accent permanently onto the first syllable (as in Proto-Germanic).

So accent regularization, solving cluster conflicts, preserving inherited consonantism, and avoiding troublesome homophony are a lot of things this strategy of simple stress accent shift has to offer that make it a win-win over other ideas pushed by Tropylium in my commentbox. Thus **takíru becomes Cyprian **tákru (not **tkir, **kir, or **zkir).

I want my Pre-Greek back!

I do fear that Beekes' Greek etymological dictionary is no longer accessible online. Every link cached by Google offers an ugly server response now: "Sorry, the server may be busy: please try your request later!" Yet regrettably for me, "later" never comes and "sorry" is inadequate to describe the unnatural loss I feel for yet one more valuable linguistic resource gone asunder.

Alas, to think, I was beginning to believe in academic altruism again. Perhaps this is just a horrible dream and I'll wake up soon.

Vetch and pea sail to Italy

There are many things to discuss lately. For example, on Phoenix's blog, Proto-Indo-European reduplication is revisited and I might have a few more thoughts on this. However, for now I'll complete the short thread concerning my previous suggestion of Aegean roots for 'pulse' and 'vetch', this time slightly modified to *árapu (> Minoan *árapu > Gk ὄροβος 'bitter vetch') and derivative *árapinta (> Minoan *arápinta > Gk ἐρέβινθος 'chick-pea').

What I wanted to share is that there are further interesting comparanda apparently isolated in Western Europe that many other scholars also believe are indicative of some sort of substrate, although no one is very specific about its transmission. Of course, as always, it's this vagueness that drives me nuts, so let's explore this more:

• Latin ervum 'pulse, bitter vetch'
• Germanic *arwītō 'pea' (hence OHG arawiz)

As anyone can see, it's relationship to Gk ἐρέβινθος is clear. Yet trying to explain this away with Indo-European roots isn't the solution here. Some Indoeuropeanists have nonetheless attempted to reconstruct some ridiculous roots like (*)*orgʷindʰ- or (*)*h₃ergʷindʰ, for example, which fails to address the incoherence of Germanic *-w- beside Greek -b-, not to mention the erratic vocalism (ie. Germanic *ar- vs. Greek er-)! Surely a substrate word must be at work here, not an inherited Indo-European root with a whack-load of irregular sound changes.

Then there's also Latin arbōs ~ arbor 'tree'. According to the OED, Latin arbōs is of "unknown origin". As usual, some obsessive Indoeuropeanists have attempted to explain this word away as yet another IE root (eg. Julius Pokorny and *erəd- 'to grow'). These numerous "Western IE" roots fail to convince and it's interesting that arbōs is localized purely within the Italic branch. For that matter, what other Italic cognates exist alongside this Latin term, if any?

I'm also interested in the history of Latin herba 'grass'. If we include this and arbōs as part of the substrate evidence, could the meaning of this underlying root be more general such as 'sprout', I wonder. I'll have to look further and see what other ideas have been published on these interesting words.

If we trek onward and theorize an Etrusco-Rhaetic cognate in Italy, and given my latest rules of sound correspondence, we should then expect *arpu 'sprout', which would explain both ervum and arbōs in Latin, and *arpintʰ 'pea', which would explain Germanic *arwītō (perhaps via a Venetic intermediary, *arwi(n)ton).