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.

More on the Rhaetic inscription

As per the promise of a previous post, I'll now share my own analyses of the above inscription which I transcribe in more familiar Roman letters below (nb. σ represents the M-like letter, san).

[...]
upiku : tauke
kleimunteis
avaσuerasi : ihi

Following Schumacher, Rex Wallace quotes a translation that makes me cringe a little: "Upiku dedicated (this object) to Kleimunte on behalf of Arvashuera". I suppose I find myself cringing because I know all too well how easy it is to simply assume that hard-to-analyse words are names when they're not. And here, there are far too many quirky names involved that hang in thin air and without any clear historical connection. To be fair though, the translation probably approaches the essential meaning intended by the Rhaetic dedicant.

It's presumed that upiku is a name yet others consider it a noun referring to a religious offering or perhaps a participle in -u meaning 'dedicated' in other contexts. Wallace then quickly classifies kleimunteis as some unknown genitive noun even though -is is normally a marker of the directive case. After correcting Wallace's previously mentioned transcription error, he divides avaσuerasi into avaσue-ra-si interpreting it as a "plural pertinentive". He offers little comment on the significance of the trailing word ihi.


And now for something different

I take the first legible word, upiku, to be both a participle 'offered' and a noun meaning '(that which is) offered; an offering'. I reject Wallace's facile suggestion via Schumacher that this is a personal name. The next word, tauke, is transparently a perfective preterite verb containing the stem tau-. This stem reminds me of a presentive form tva 'shows, demonstrates' (< *taw-a) in the Etruscan inscription TLE 399, written on the back of a mirror with the depiction of Herakles suckling the breast of his mother Uni (the Etruscan equivalent of Greek Hera). So the first two words can immediately be read as '[someone] has presented (tauke) an offering (upiku)'.

In grappling with the next problematic item, kleimunteis, Wallace may have overlooked a possible preposed locative demonstrative klei followed by a noun marked with two case suffixes as per the rules of Suffixaufnahme. This way, it might be read klei mun=te-is 'to [that] in this plot' (cf. Etruscan cle 'at this', muni 'plot', -θi 'in', and -is 'to, towards').

The next line starts with avaσuerasi which is certainly an animate plural in -er (< -ar) with case marker -asi 'for, on behalf of'. This implies an unmarked noun *avaσu which strongly looks to me like a transitive particle in -u of a stative verb in -as- built on a basic verbal root *au. In fact, I've been predicting this verb's existence for a while based on Etruscan avil 'year', seemingly derived from this same verb with common noun formative -il. If *au meant 'to pass on' or 'to depart', avil would literally mean 'that which passes', hence a period of time or 'year', while avaσuerasi would be a reference to 'the departed ones', ie. the ancestral dead. After this, ihi is a cinch to crack when set beside Etruscan ei 'here, there', a locative particle with general dexis. Unfortunately this word is all too often mistranslated as a negative particle leading to much confusion.

When I put all this together, the following translation emerges from the fragmented inscription: "[Someone] has presented an offering to that in the plot on behalf of the departed here."

Rex Wallace's misreading of a Rhaetic inscription

In his blog entry New Raetic Inscription concerning a Rhaetic inscription in bronze, American Etruscanist Rex Wallace repeats an incorrect transcription a total of four times despite having posted a clear photo in the same entry showing otherwise. His error has gone weeks without correction. I mark his mistakes in red in the caption below:

The photo shows clearly the proper reading in the last line (read right to left below): avaσuerasi (σ = san, a plain /s/, while s = sigma, pronounced /ʃ/). No 'r' there anywhere. The mistake can't be a keyboard-related typo either.


How might a published Etruscanist manage to analyse an inscription without ever looking at the photo immediately available to him? It doesn't seem like just the usual careless faux-pas. But then perhaps he just switched to decaf. (Arrrggh!! The dreaded decaf! Oh how I hate thee!) At any rate, in a following post I'll discuss my own thoughts on its meaning using a more accurate transcription.

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.

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).

Adapting the rule of Cyprian Syncope

Recap: What is Cyprian Syncope?

Cyprian Syncope is a sound rule that I noticed on my own several years ago when first pondering on the language origins of Etruscan. Having recognized like many others that Minoan must fall under a Proto-Aegean language family, distinct from Indo-European or Semitic, I then reasoned that Etruscan phonotactics must have been simpler in its more recent past, aligning more with the much-stricter phonotactics of Minoan which only appears to have allowed syllables of a (C)V(C)-shape.

Cleaving Proto-Aegean into two branches, Minoan and Cyprian, I noticed that some Minoan vowels were being deleted in later Cyprian tongues due to some sort of very early stress accent, sometimes creating new word-initial consonant clusters that couldn't have been possible in Minoan. Etruscan, Lemnian and Rhaetic all have word-initial consonant clusters, showing that if they were created from vowel deletion, this must have occurred when they were once a single idiom back around 1000 BCE (ie. when these languages first arrived in Italy). This rule of syncope is unrelated to a later second syncope in Etruscan which has already been widely remarked by past Etruscanists and which took place around 500 BCE. As far as I've read, no Etruscanist has published a word on this first Syncope that I'm exploring openly here, as I have in the past online.

A slight change

This past week, reviewing my research, a new corollary on Cyprian Syncope came to me. Vowel deletion isn't always guaranteed, it seems, and I've been striving to understand why. Certainly I long ago saw this in derivational suffixes of a CV shape, eg. Proto-Aegean *-na [pertinentive] becomes both Minoan and Etruscan -na without vowel deletion. I also noticed later that a word-final structure of -CCV within a word also blocks vowel deletion. Thus the original structure of Proto-Aegean *tʰaura 'bull' (> Greek ταῦρος) is likewise preserved in Etruscan θaura. Recently though, I've been grappling with other notorious wanderworts like 'apple' and 'bee' in Western Europe, seeking Aegean solutions to these riddles, only to find that there is a new implication that some trisyllabic words with initial accent fail to delete the word-final vowel.

Without going into details about reconstructions I haven't yet detailed on this blog, I think I've arrived at a very phonetically plausible revision of the general vowel deletion rule by noting a preceding accent shift in specific cases. Thus:

1. Euphonic Accent Shift: Word-initial *CəCV́- where both consonants (C) are plosives attracts stress to the first syllable: *CəCV́- → *CV́Cə-

2. The Cyprian Syncope Rule: Any vowel in a syllable immediately preceding or following a stressed syllable is deleted.

The reason for the initial accent shift prevents consonant clusters like those perfectly valid in Greek (eg. κτεατίζω 'to gain' or χθών 'earth') from ever forming in Cyprian, thereby explaining why they are completely absent in Etruscan despite having several Greek loans.

The following table shows the regular patterns in correspondence I witness that are emerging from the attested and substratal data and will hopefully illustrate how the above rules can explain them:

Proto-Aegean	Cyprian (before Syncope)	Cyprian (after Syncope)
*aléli 'lily'	*əlélə	*lel
*ápia 'bee'	*ápiə	*ápi
*apísa 'pear'	*əpísə	*pis
*árapo 'sprout'	*árəpu	*árpu
*talóza 'sea'	*təlúzə	*tlus
*ṭapúri 'village'	*zəpúrə	*spur
*ṭínau 'moulded'	*zínəu	*zinu
*tʰáura 'bull'	*tʰáura	*tʰáura

Expanding the Etrusco-Lemnian primer

I've expanded my previously announced pdf to include not only my basic sketch of the Etrusco-Lemnian nominal declension but now also the pronouns and demonstratives as well. Sadly, no one has a clue as to what the plural pronouns were like and, as far as anyone knows, they aren't attested, so I'm restricted to the singular pronominal paradigm. Let's hope a happy-go-lucky farmer trips over a new Etruscan artifact with plural pronouns on it some day.

Anyways, lest I ramble on again, I've renamed my pdf Etrusco-Lemnian Declension and it's to be found in the Lingua Files section as always.

A modification of Indo-Aegean, plus some new grammatical ideas on Minoan

I like to explore new ideas and test them as always. One of my ever-evolving ideas is on the idea that Indo-European and Aegean are related to a common Proto-Indo-Aegean ancestor datable to 7000 BCE. Or so I've been thinking up to now but...


I decided to explore a radical new extrapolation that's got a grip on my mind recently. What would be the consequences to my theories if Proto-Indo-Aegean were dated to as much as a thousand years later in 6000 BCE? The first interesting thing about this fresh perspective is that 6000 BCE is just about the time before Proto-Semitic began to affect Mid IE (MIE) according to my currently defined chronology. Another interesting thing is that if we take for granted a more Balkans-positioned MIE vis-à-vis the later Ukraine-positioned PIE proper, then it begs the question: Where would this theoretical Proto-Aegean of mine be sitting at this time? The most obvious answer would be that it would lie somewhere to the west and/or south of the Balkans in the general area that it historically emerged (see graphic above). Yet my theory also positions Old IE (OIE) back in the northerly territory occupied by later Late IE such that the geographical path from OIE to MIE to PIE looks like a meandering vee that points towards the Aegean Sea (see graphic below). This isn't problematic since nothing says that languages have to spread progressively in only one direction over the course of time. However, this pattern, if taken as correct for the sake of argument, teases in me a further idea that Aegean would have been brought to Greece and/or Turkey by that very southerly movement that brought Mid IE into the same trading zone. It's as if to say that what I call "Old IE" circa 7000 BCE is to be revised as a still-evolving Indo-Aegean and the beginning of the Mid IE period should be called "Old IE" at 6000 BCE. It's as if the temporary spread of an early stage of PIE to the Balkans and the spread of a related Aegean branch perfectly coincide to warrant further pondering.


Given the general conceptual arguments in favour of this deviation from standard, I went towards examining all the morphological what-ifs with even more profound consequences. The unfortunate problem with Etruscan, Lemnian and Rhaetic (and probably too with Eteo-Cypriot and Eteo-Cretan) is that no personal endings appear to be attached to verbs in these languages despite the fact that many features like the 1ps and its oblique form (mi and mini), demonstratives and the declensional system (ie. the demonstrative accusative, s-genitive, animate and inanimate plural endings) all find direct connections to PIE. If Aegean is related to PIE then something has happened to these endings and they've disappeared at some unknown point in time motivated perhaps by reasons that are lost in the mists of time.

I refuse to believe the answers aren't recoverable and I don't particularly like mist. I've been poring over Minoan texts recently and while very hesitant at first, I've been rethinking on the published but nonetheless speculative view by some that -SI and -TI are the 3ps and 3pp endings respectively. This is an obviously PIE-inspired interpretation and given the lack of success in translating Minoan with PIE values, we have reason to be skeptical.

Yet...

It's interesting to observe that if we stick by my values of the Libation Formula such that *una (U-NA) means 'libation' (cf. Etruscan un 'libation') with plural *unar (U-NA-RU), and *kan- in KA-NA-SI/KA-NA-TI is cognate with Etruscan cen- 'to bring', then not only do we have a perfectly sensible phrase "a libation was given"/"libations were given" that coincides with the fact that it's written on several Cretan libation tables, but if we take the variation KA-NA-TI in PK Za 11 to be correctly read and written on purpose by scribes to indicate a different inflection, then what we have here is a language with personal endings that apparently have not been completely lost! It would seem that -TI might indeed correlate with plural subjects while -SI would correlate with singular ones.

If we additionally corroborate this with CR (?) Zf 1 (an inscribed gold pin) where we find a perfectly Etruscoid sentence with the ubiquitous SOV word order and with intriguingly Indo-European-like verbal endings, A-MA-WA-SI KA-NI-JA-MI (*Amawasi kaniami 'I (ie. the pin itself) was brought for Amawa'^[1]), then we have a very exciting verbal system that might help crack the language: 1ps *-mi (cf. PIE *-mi), 3ps *-si (cf. PIE *-ti), and 3pp *-ãti (cf. PIE *-énti).

The reasons for this strange hodgepodge grammar, neither fully Etruscan nor fully PIE by any sensible definition, would then relate back to the modified chronology that I suggest above. Speculation? You bet. But worth a look, I think.


NOTES
^[1] Ego-focussed dedicatory inscriptions such as these were plentiful in later Etruria and were also found in the Greek and Faliscan languages as well. Read for example Pallottino, The Etruscans (1955), p.253 (see link) who testifies to the Faliscan inscription eco quto ... enotenosio ... 'I (am) the pitcher of ... Enotenus ...'.

A thought on the real name for the land of the Minoans

On page 844 of Bromiley's The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1988), an intriguing and researched summary of the true name for the land of the Minoans is to be discovered:

"In an Ugaritic text concerning the abode of Kothar-wa-Ḫasis, the god of artisans, the word kptr occurs: kptr ksu ṯbth ḥkpt arṣ nḥlth, 'Caphtor is the throne of his sitting, Ḥkpt the land of his inheritance' (UT, `nt VI:14-16). The passage seems to preserve a memory of a connection with Crete as the home of their crafts; Ḥkpt may be another name for Crete or one of its regions. Economic texts from Mari speak of Kaptara, and an Akkadian text from Ugarit refers to ships arriving from Kapturi. C. H. Gordon had raised the question whether the words kpt-r and ḥ-kpt may include some morphological elements, a preformative ḥ- and a sufformative -r, leaving kpt as the basic word (Ugaritic Literature [1949], p.23 n.1), and relating this to Egyptian kft-yw. But the persistance of r in Hebrew, Akkadian and Ugaritic forms, plus the fact that final -r could become -yw by phonetic decay (see CAPHTOR II), rather support kptr/kftr as the original word."

So we can conclude with some degree of confidence that the name sounded something like *Kʰaputar, give or take some variation. For the sake of argument, I will suggest this specific form and what follows is a whole lot of speculation. I personally think of speculation as a necessary tool in the learning process, used to invigorate new paths of research and I always strive to improve my arguments with facts and evidence or to eventually abandon them, whichever logic guides me to do. However, for those overly evidentialist sorts that find any speculation without evidence too distasteful to even express, you may be spared reading further.

I'm very interested in the Minoan language and have been pursuing a hunch for years that the likeliest relationship it has is to the 'Etrusco-Cypriot' languages (Etruscan, Lemnian, Rhaetic, Eteo-Cretan and Eteo-Cypriot) whose epicenter lies in Western Anatolia and Cyprus, formerly known as the kingdoms of Alashiya, Arzawa and Assuwa. I also have a hunch that by 1400 BCE, Minoan had become a dead language but still used in ritual while, in the everyday world of the commoners, a mix of Greek and Etrusco-Cypriot languages survived on in Crete.

If I take the name *Kʰaputar for granted, I'm reminded of a plural suffix *-r that I see in the Minoan Libation Formula sometimes marking the word *una 'libation' (written syllabically as U-NA-; in the sequence U-NA(-RU)-KA-NA-SI, *una(-r) kana-si '(we) bear libation(s)', compare Etruscan -r [animate plural], un 'libation' and cenu 'brought'). Without this ending, we're tentatively left with a singular word *kʰaputa. Wild imagination may lead one to see similarity between it and the Latin-derived word 'capital' however this leads to another interesting mystery: Where does Latin caput 'head, summit' come from?

Some etymologists try very hard to make caput a Proto-Indo-European word.^[1] However, it's unclear to me why anyone would be so determined to force the word to be PIE given the meager basis. At most, they're reduced to label it vaguely as a 'regional term' or an 'Italo-Germanic innovation' which only skips over the problem of how the word came to be. However, let's try a new idea. Let's suppose for a moment that this odd word is entirely non-IE and a loan from a theoretical Old Etruscan word *χapuθ (> (?) Late Etruscan *χafθ), lent also at some point to Germanic (hence Old English heafod). At this juncture, I think many readers here might predict where I'm going with these crazy ideas.

Is it just possible that the word for 'head, summit' in both Minoan and Etrusco-Cypriot during the mid 2nd millenium BCE was originally *kʰaputa? From there, *Kʰaputar 'The Summits'(?) would become the word for the entire Minoan region, perhaps in connection to the Horns of Consecration, a very sacred and prominent symbol undoubtedly related to the Egyptian aker symbol representing the sun both emerging from and setting into the two horizons.

Now naturally, these are so far just a delightful multiplication of hypotheses and fun wordgames to toy with while passing the toke around. I recognize that it remains incumbent on me to prove them with tangible evidence if I'm ever to insist this hypothesis to others. So, as always, I'll just have to see where these ideas take me.


NOTES
^[1] Mallory/Adams, Encyclopedia of Indo-European culture (1997), pp.260-261: kaput (see link).

Minoans, Greeks, the Po Valley and Arretium

Something I googled up the other day makes me start thinking again about the precise extent of Minoan trade. Clark, Prehistoric Europe - The economic basis (1966), page 186, reads:

"Although there is no direct proof that the rich copper deposits of Etruria began to be worked for the Minoan market, it is suggestive that the earliest metal equipment of Italy should show Early Minoan influence, notably in the daggers with mid-rib and rivetted tang found in cemetaries of the Remedello culture of the Po Valley and in the central Italian Rinaldoni culture."

This piece of text reinvigorates my hunch that the very reason why Etruscans, when considered to be the offshoot of peoples with like languages in Western Anatolia and surrounding islands (ie. Eteocretan, Eteocypriot, Minoan), ended up in Western Italy by the first millenium BCE was because trading routes and mining sites were in some way already established in the Po Valley, Western Italy and Sardinia during late Minoan times.

I came across this while reopening the case concerning the etymology of Arretium, a town in NE Etruria, which I can confidently say is unanalysable in the Etruscan language, despite Arretium being purportedly founded by the Etruscans themselves... but this is a slightly separate issue. For that, another quote seems interestingly apt, but in part related to my first quote above, from Voyage to the other world - The legacy of Sutton Hoo (1992), ed. by Kendall/Wells, p.31:

"By the fifth century B.C., true Celtic art was born - called by archaeologists the Early La Tène style after its type-site in Switzerland. The inspiration for this art again seems to have come through northern Italy and the Adriatic. This process is probably due to a shifting of trade routes between temperate Europe and the Mediterranean as trade from Massalia began to decline and the focus of Greek trade shifted to the Po Valley."

In other words, a historical continuity of trade between Northern Italy and Greece via the Adriatic since Minoan times. So this is in part why I'm now pursuing a hunch that Arretium could perhaps be a Greek name in the end, namely from Erythrion, a name built on the word erythros 'red' (< PIE *h₁reudʰ-) which could presumably be inspired by copper mining in the area. Interestingly, Erythrion is attested elsewhere as a personal name. The name would then also presumably pass into Old Etruscan as *Aritium with the -r- dropped to naturalize pronunciation for Etrurian ears and predictably shortened to Aritim as attested.

The Lost Vowels of Pre-Etruscan Syncope

It's been a while since I've wrote about issues concerning Aegean or Etruscan linguistics. However, lately the issue of lost vowels in Pre-Etruscan Syncope sprang to my busy mind.

Many suffixes that are consonant-final in Etruscan appear to come from vowel-terminating suffixes at some Pre-Etruscan. In fact the vowels were probably lost at a stage when Rhaetic, Lemnian and Etruscan were still the same undifferentiated tongue. So far, I think I can ascertain what some of these lost vowels were in some suffixes and words. For example, the Etruscan derivational suffix -aχ appears to have been in origin *-aku. “How can I be so certain?” you ask? Luckily, alternations exposing the past are still present in Etruscan such as seen in *araχ “falcon, hawk” (glossed as arakos by Hesychius) versus aracuna “(one) of the hawks or falcons” where former *u is preserved when the pertinentive suffix -na is attached. I've also ascertained so far that the intransitive participle -θ was once *-ta whereas the homophonous agentive suffix -θ (as in the names Aranθ and Vanθ) was once *-ti. I could be wrong but that's my theory so far.

Since all vowels seem to equally disappear word-finally during Pre-Etruscan Syncope, I would naturally assume that the transitive participle suffix -u must consequently come from an earlier diphthong *-au. In Minoan, this ending may indeed be preserved as a diphthong in the inscribed word DI-NA-U /'tʃinaw/ “moulded” in inscription HT 16 for example (c.f. Etruscan zinu).

That's where I'm at in regards to Pre-Etruscan Syncope so far but I still have a lot more questions to answer (and it certainly would be nice if an extensive Minoan document floated our way soon in order to make its translation a helluvalot easier).

How Rhaetic should be translated with a methodology this time

Kontinuitäten und Brüche in der Religionsgeschichte, ed. M. Stausberg, Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 31 (2001), p.365 (see link):

"Names, I-formulations, and invocations are early textual forms in Etruscan, but also in related, textually more primitive, languages such as Rhaetic. Helmut Rix has found and defined structures similar in Etruscan and in Rhaetic namely expressions in which words in an oblique case defined by him as the perternitive case, on -ale or -si, are linked to a word with a predicate form ending in -ku. Rix defines the latter as perfect-like passive verbal nouns building upon an active form on -ke, thus zina-ke 'has produced' and zina-k-u 'is produced'. Rix, therefore, can point to a complete formal agreement between Etruscan: mi zinaku Larthuza-le Kuleniie-si - 'I (am) produced by Larthuza Kulenie', and Rhaetic: Lasp-si elu-ku Pitam-nu-ale - '(am/is) dedicated by Laspa, the son of Pitamne'. The similarities between Etruscan and Rhaetic are essential while, among others, the Rhaetic alphabets are possible sources of inspiration for the runes inasmuch as Rhaetic inscriptions are known from the beginning of our era."

Here, the term I-formulation refers to the quirky scribal habit of giving an object an inscription in the first person such as "I am the vase of Aranth Veliana" or "I was given to Thufltha by Aule," for examples. These I-formulations are found in Faliscan, Latin and Greek languages as well and so one shouldn't assume that they're merely an Etruscan idiosyncracy.

Now, the reason why I'm quoting the above paragraph is to give people a contrasting example of the way in which translations are accomplished correctly with proper methodology, as opposed to being done incorrectly as in the pdf linked to my previous post. We read here that Rix isn't merely trying to equate words together at whim but is defining a common Etrusco-Rhaetic morphological structure. Rix doesn't go out of his way to offer inane translations but instead finds readings that are both respectful of the archaeological context of the inscription in question and yet also perfectly in line with grammar typical of Etruscoid languages like Etruscan and Lemnian. Rather than focussing on one word at a time, Rix successfully cross-correlates numerous historical and linguistic facts together to create a most-plausible solution that is fully coherent, consistent and thorough.

So stick that in your eyes, Drs Toth and Brunner.

Kook alert: Rhaetic is now a Semitic language?

Here's something to add to the "crazy folder". The 2007 article in this pdf that I came across yesterday is entitled Rhaetic: An extinct Semitic language in Central Europe by Professors Dr. Alfréd Tóth and Dr. Linus Brunner. The claim should look suspicious to even moderately educated readers from the start but even if one is temporarily lured by these doctorate-bedecked authors, the ludicrous translations that these highly imaginative but weakly methodical sorts typically produce betrays the rather lengthy historical preface they go through all in order to add credibility to the hopeless translations that follow:

reit[i] emuiu thinake
"My Ritu, I have given firewood." (page 74)

la [e]ste phutikhinu
"Estu, don't kill us!" (page 77)

la sbaphi rimaki nageki khašikhanu epetav
“Don’t dry out my bath; we need your help; I give berries (fruits?).” (pages 79 & 80)

Must I go on? It's good for a laugh. Thankfully even these documents serve a purpose as a kind of "intellectual shibboleth" since scholars who cite these nonsensical works for anything other than an example of undiagnosed psychological disorder are likewise probably not dealing with a full deck of cards. Life is short. Let's not make it shorter with craziness, okay people?

Never judge a book by its nom de plume

Just today, a fellow by the name of "Brian Damage" gave me a comment in my box:

"Bravo!!!! Perhaps the most insightful work on Etruscan Extispicy I have ever read."

I would have taken it at face value and been very flattered if it weren't for that suspicious name of his and my overanalytical mentality which gave me the hasty impression that this was some sort of joke at my expense similar to what Language Hat's peanut-gallery commenters were doing to me recently. So into the reject bin it went. Whoops! Unfortunately, once something is rejected, Blogger doesn't allow you to undo the function.

Upon review of Brian's blog where he indeed mentioned my work on Etruscan haruspical traditions in all intellectual seriousness and in relation to his personal explorations into paganism and modern heathenry, it seems that I've made yet another booboo in judgment (let's just add it to my long list, hahaha). So it turns out this is not a practical joke afterall despite his deceptively jocular username. Therefore, I'm very sorry, Brian, for rejecting your comment and thank you very much for enjoying my blog rants.

He adds an interesting thought about the connection between Rhaetic and Southern Germanic peoples. This is something that I'm interested in too after my recent investigation of the name Arretium, which I've begun to believe is in origin a Germanic name (not Etruscan as often claimed without concrete proof despite attested Aritim-i "in Arretium"). I'm starting to think this is one historical, archaeological and linguistic aspect that I'm still missing in my knowledge of the involvement of Etrusco-Rhaetic speaking peoples in Italy. I've yet to find a published account of this topic that's satisfying though. My sense is that there's a bunch of little bits of information strewn about that one needs to assemble together oneself to get a better picture of things. The easter egg hunt continues.

Nyah, nyah, I told you so (or... Let's now talk seriously about Proto-Aegean)

Ah, it's sunny again, so understandably I will be making this blog brief as I enjoy the weather (and in Winnipeg, it's our prerogative to enjoy it considering that we only get hot summer weather for three months of the year).

Anyways, back to the topic of this blog, I always find it funny how something has to be published in a book before many people feel that it's "real" enough to believe. Of course, I'm not complaining about the great comments and feedback I'm getting back from this blog. However, there are times when things that, at least in my mind, seem to be so clear and well-known in published literature as to be virtually unquestionable are fought by some readers tooth and nail without careful rationale other than "it doesn't satisfy my skepticism", I have to admit it makes me roll my eyes at times. Again, I'm not complaining because when one decides to reach out of one's own bubble and blog to the world, this just comes with the territory.

Now, the reason why I mention this is because whenever I assert on this blog that Etruscan and Rhaetic are closely related languages, there's a tension in the air and I swear that I can hear vultures looming above me. There are evidently a lot of online die-hards who still scough at this view as though this were the most ludicrous idea they had ever heard of. (But then, these are sadly often the same people that have desperate need to believe that Etruscan is related to North-East Caucasian or some other highly dubious claim that I have no interest in.)

Roger Woodard writes on page 142 in The ancient languages of Europe (2008), published by Cambridge University Press (see link):

"To the same language family as Etruscan there belong only two poorly attested languages: Lemnian in the Northeast of the Aegean (sixth century BC; Agostiniani 1986) and Rhaetic in the Alps (fifth to first centuries BC; Schumacher 1992:246-248; Rix 1998). Lemnian and Rhaetic are so close to Etruscan that Etruscan can be used to understand them. The date of the common source language, Proto-Tyrsenic, can probably be fixed to the last quarter of the second millenium BC. The location of its homeland is disputed, however; possibilities include: (i) the northern Aegean, whence Proto-Etruscan and Proto-Rhaetic speakers would have come in the course of the Aegean migration westwards at the end of the second millenium (similarly Herodotus [I.94] identifies Lydia as the Etruscan homeland); (ii) central Italy, from which Proto-Lemnian speakers would have migrated eastwards and Proto-Rhaetic speakers northwards. A decisive judgment is not currently possible."

Of course, I still maintain that the latter possibility (i.e. that these "Tyrsenic" languages are autochthonous to Italy, as per Dionysius of Halicarnassus) mentioned in the quote above is merely mentioned as a kind of diplomatic tip-of-the-hat to a historically vocal camp of thought that is destined to devolve into a new-age minority religion in the next century while the former (with perhaps some slight modifications) becomes the future standard view.

The loss of mediofinal 'h' in Pre-Proto-Etruscan

I recently suggested that the virtual absence of mediofinal "h" in Etruscan is a feature common to both Lemnian and Rhaetic as well but it may not be clear to my readers why I'm insistant on that idea, so let's discuss.

Just to be sure, I looked up in my database what words contain medial h. Of the more than thousand entries I have, I came up with only two results: cehen 'here before' and the name Uhtave. The name Uhtave is clearly of Oscan origin, from Úhtavis, and related to the common Roman name Octāvius. It is squarely an Italic, and hence, un-Etruscan name. The word cehen, while a native word, does not in reality show an archaic medial h afterall because it is transparently a recent compound composed of cei 'here' and *hen 'before' (c.f. hanθe 'in front'). Even if these two lonely items were attributable to a pre-Proto-Etruscan stage though, it would need a clear explanation as to why so few instances of mediofinal h exist in this language.

My attentive readers may have noticed that I've already asserted several times on this blog that -va (a plural inanimate ending) is an allomorph of -χva. The term allomorph is just linguistobabble for a piece of language, such as a suffix, that shows predictable variation in its form in different positions or circumstances. So in this case, we may observe that Etruscan -va always pops up after nouns ending in vowels or in sibilants like s or ś, whereas the Etruscan speakers regularly chose -χva when the preceding noun stem ended in most other consonants. Some may wonder why I'm so sure that they are allomorphs of a single suffix instead of two distinct suffixes, but we can put this skepticism to rest right away.

The evidence for allomorphy in the inanimate plural is clear after examining the pair maχ '5' and muvalχ '50'. Lo and behold, we find the same internal alternation of χ and v and for the same reasons. We know that letter chi is used for the sound /kʰ/ (as in Classical Greek) and the letter vee is used for what is in fact a bilabial approximant /w/ (much like Classical Latin vinum 'wine', also pronounced with initial /w-/). Clearly then there is an original sound, let's label it Q for now, that evolves into both chi and vee in Proto-Etruscan based on environment. Through this sort of internal reconstruction, we may then hypothesize that pre-Proto-Etruscan probably had the following items: *maQ '5', *muQalχ '50', and inanimate plural *-Qva.

All we need to do is figure out what the quality of this original phoneme is and we're home free, right? The answer to the mystery of the paucity of /h/ in mediofinal positions in Etruscan, Lemnian and Rhaetic, quite simply lies in this alternation of chi and vee.

So if we now replace our mystery phoneme *Q with *h, everything is resolved. We can both phonetically explain the origin of the alternation as well as explain the curious disappearance of h in both word-internal and word-final positions. Most likely, medial *-h- which was probably a velar fricative became weakened at some point intervocalically and after sibilants. The only thing that remained was the "backness" of the sound which came to be reinterpreted as /w/ and consistently written with the letter vee once the ancestors of Etruscans, Lemnians and Rhaetic finally adopted their alphabet. In other positions, a velar fricative can easily harden to a velar aspirated stop, hence this would explain the evolution to chi after certain consonants and in word-final position. We may then be so bold as to predict the following for a pre-Proto-Etruscan stage: *mah '5', *muhalχ '50' (probably < *mahálχu), and an inanimate plural marker *-hva.


UPDATES
(May 20 2008) I corrected my confusing flaw that Tropylium has mentioned to me. My hypothesized antecedent form of the Etruscan inanimate plural should be *-Qva (and thus in conclusion *-hva) rather than *-Qa and its result *-ha as I had initially written. Naturally, since this hypothesized *h should only result in either Etruscan chi or vee based on the pair '5' & '50', and since the Etruscan form of this suffix, -(χ)va, usually shows both sounds together, then *-hva would seem to be in order. Although, *-ho might also be a possibility if it can be shown that word-final *-o normally erodes to *-a with residual labialization. Sorry about that. There are a lot of details here.

Rhaetic inscriptions Schum PU 1 and Schum CE 1

After not a peep after five days, I feel guilty for not blogging. So here's a fiesta of more thoughts I have on the Rhaetic language. Enjoy, everyone!

Schum PU 1

This one particular inscription that looks especially Etruscan-like. It seems to read as follows, although Adolfo Zavaroni transcribes it differently on his website under Schum PU 1:

iχ χan φelturies kala hepru śia hil / klanturus

I swear I see a legible sentence in here whose equivalent in Etruscan would be:

*Iχ, can Velturies-cla hepru śia hil.

If we interpret the hapax hepru as a noun referring to the artifact on which the inscription is written, we get the following phrase: "Thus (iχ), this (χan) plaque (hepru) from the Velturie (Φelturies-kala) is set down (śia) to the property (hil)."

The verb here appears to be śi, conjugated in the present tense (-a). The direct object (χan hepru) is then separated by the name of the donors in the genitive case (Φelturies) further augmented by a genitive-declined demontrative postfix (kala). This leaves the unmarked nominative hil which I've already translated as 'property, land' in my Etruscan database. This word curiously follows the verb, however this is not unusual in Etruscan for reasons I'm currently developing. It may have something to do with animacy whereby an inanimate noun (which hil is proven to be in Etruscan due to plural hilχva attested in the Liber Linteus) probably cannot be treated as the subject of a transitive verb and therefore is dethroned to a position after the verb to specify mere agent of the action instead (like a kind of 'afterthought', let's say) while still treated as an unmarked nominative noun. So, I would dare say that in both Etruscan and Rhaetic (and probably also in Lemnian), OVS word order may signal agent-focussed sentences, much like how Mandarin's passive is constructed by marking the agent with preposed bei and placing the agent/object before the verb and after the patient/subject despite the default SVO word order.

---

Schum CE 1

I recently came across Philip Baldi, Foundations of Latin (2002), p.154 which provides translation to another one of Rhaetic's inscriptions, Schum CE 1 (see corresponding picture on Zavaroni's website or on p.155 of the aforementioned book). The translation was suggested by Pisani 1964:323 as follows:

laviseśeli velχanu
lup.nu pitiave
kusenkus trinaχe
φelna vinutalina

"(Of the son of Lavis), to Velxanu (someone) gave (this)wine-bearing tankard, for Pitiave of Kusenku."

This is somewhat similar to what I'm interpreting, except that, despite the denialist account of Rhaetic's relationship to Etruscan in Baldi's book, I know of perfect Etruscan parallels available, both of each words individually and of the sentence structure as a whole. First off, I would think it wise to resist reading the above as a single sentence since these different lines are written in various places on the surface of a situla and cannot possibly have been intended to be read as a single sentence as Pisani suggests. It looks like this book needs to be reedited a tad.

There is such a name in Roman records as Lavus (as well as Lavinus), and appears to be present on the Tabula Cortonensis in its list of names. The same name resurfaces in Schum WE 1. It should be self-apparent that Velχanu refers to none other than Velchans, a deity that Etruscans also worshipped. Naturally, the object is being dedicated to him. I suspect that the Rhaetic language changed all instances of word-final -l (as we would find in Etruscan) to -u. Such a change is interestingly reminiscent of a similar development in Old French where word-final /l/ became velarized to a 'dark l' which most English speakers are familiar with. Note Schum PU 5 (inscribed simply: vaku), which corresponds nicely with Etruscan vacil 'votive offering', as testimony to this change.

The reading of lup(i)nu as a part of a compound name of Velchans is ad hoc and unlikely because, as I said earlier, the artifact simply cannot be intended to be read as a single sentence, based on the way the phrases are positioned throughout the artifact. The verb lup is found in Etruscan which I currently give the value of 'to cross over; to die' (n.b. most Etruscanists simply give it the value of 'to die'), commonly used in Etruscan funerary inscriptions, but it appears to be further marked with mediopassive -in- and participle -u (unless of course the latter is the genitive-II ending).

The word trinaχe is immediately recognizable by the Etruscan verb trin (attested several times in the Liber Linteus) and appears to be marked by passive -aχ- and preterite -e, just as we would find in Etruscan. That gives it a semantic value of 'it was poured'.

If I understand correctly Pisani is equating vinutalina with 'wine-bearing' but we also find Etruscan vina and θalna which together give it a similar meaning while also providing thought-provoking cognates. The use of -na as a derivational suffix is characteristically Etruscoid but Baldi dismayingly tries to give us a Latin etymology by what is in effect a whim without carefully explaining the disparity in its phonetics and without expounding on the morphology exhibited in these words that, as I've already shown, is more Etruscan-like in nature than Latin-like.

Certain elements are still a mystery to me. I don't have a clue what kusenkus is supposed to be or whether it really is a name. I have never seen it in Etruscan records and I can't think of a parallel Roman name for the life of me. All I can say for now on that item is that it appears to be marked in genitive -s and may more likely refer to either the situla itself or to the liquids to be poured from it. Likewise, I'm unsure of the value of pitiave either but the claim that it's a name seems to be a slothful ex nihilo. If not a name, it has the look of an inanimate plural noun declined in the locative (-va [plural] + -e [locative]). Perhaps lup(i)nu pitiave "dead with [pitia-things]"?

So, obviously nothing too certain yet but I think there are some interesting connections with Etruscan to be had here. I guess I'll just have to work harder to crack this walnut.

Rhaetic for Dummies

Here's something light-hearted to enjoy for a laugh (because it's not good for much else). Giancarlo Tomezzoli and V. A. Choodeenov take us through a mental safari journey in The "Spada di Verona". It starts off looking somewhat professional enough with an abstract of the article framing the topic that follows:

"The Maniscalchi - Erizzo Museum in Verona (Veneto, IT) hosts an interesting collection of Roman, Venetic and Rhaetic antiquities among which a copy of the so called 'Spada di Verona' i.e. Sword of Verona. The inscription is redacted in the alphabet, closely resembling the Venetic, in which the Magrè inscriptions are written. The use of the Magrè alphabet would indicate a Rhaetic origin of the inscription. The inscription appears to be written from right to left in continuo and no indication is provided in it for indicating a possible separations between the words."

Ignoring the glaring grammatical error (i.e. "a possible separations"), the use of obscure Latin phrases like in continuo might lure the curious neophyte into the pitfall of mistaking it for something academic until the authors' psychoses finally leap off the page...

"A possible method of separating the words is to directly recognize in the inscription similar or corresponding Slavic language elements like name and verbs. However, in applying this method two alternative word separations and consequently two alternative interpretations of the inscription emerged."

To be blunt, this is the reasoning of a gradeschooler. I'm thinking of an IQ number between 0 and 90. I daren't investigate from which university this abstract might have come, if at all. A creative whim should not be mistaken for a "method". Of course, the abstract immediately begs the obvious question: Why Slavic? And the obvious possible answers are: a) half-baked nationalism, b) lack of education, c) cognitive deterioration, d) a poorly executed joke, e) all of the above.

The whole point of a method is to eliminate possibilities through deduction, not to add to them with baseless assumptions. Sufficed to say, no sensible linguist recognizes this "method" as they describe it and it's a case study of how not to crack an undeciphered language. If their method has a name, why not call it the Dumb and Dumber method? Although, come to think of it, this may infringe on Hollywood copyright. Language Log explains a very similar, oft-used scam called mass lexical comparison normally operating on protolanguages in Bill Poser's The Emperor's Clothes (April 18, 2006). Say no to drugs, kiddies. That includes the drug of idées fixes.

"Proto-Aegean" - What I mean and what I don't

Language Hat recently gave me good review^[1] and of course I'm very thrilled and flattered. However, there was something in there that made me want to write a response and clarification:

"Talk of things like 'Proto-Aegean' makes me nervous, but this guy is no pushover for sloppy comparisons and hand-waving correspondences"

Gee, thanks! Erh, I think? Well, I can't say that I didn't bring upon myself this nervous skepticism. Being skeptical of what one reads, particularly when reading a quirky online blogger one isn't familiar with, is actually healthy and I expect it if one's skepticism is based firmly on objective reasoning rather than subjective feelings. It's a good sign that one's brain is functioning. The term "Proto-Aegean" isn't part of the linguist's general lexicon as yet and I'm fully aware of that fact. So I need to explain what I mean by "Proto-Aegean" in order to help people understand that I'm not as kooky as I may seem at first glance.

First off, let's go through all the nutty ideas commonly out there that I absolutely reject. I reject any attempts to translate an undeciphered language such as Etruscan or Minoan based purely on look-alike matches with random foreign languages. I do however support methodical analysis of grammatical patterns and context to deduce a more sensible translation that's a little more multi-dimensional. I reject the work of those who casually connect Minoans to Semitic by extracting inscribed words out of context or who believe that Etruscan is a language closely related to Turkish, Luwian, Abkhaz, Klingon, Esperanto or any other clearly absurd language. I really don't care whether these nutty theories are published in a book or not, or whether the theorists have a degree or not, so I guess I'm irreverent that way. I do however accept detailed morphological comparisons between language groups that show me that the author actually thought about what (s)he was writing at least several months in advance. For Etruscan however, no such detailed analyses of grammar or comparisons to other language families currently exist. In fact, 'mystery' is far more sellable than the nauseating details that I like to explore on this blog, so I doubt that I'll see a comprehensive book published on the Etruscan language for some time to come. This blog is in large part a rebellion against the dumbed-down websites and books out there on ancient languages and proto-languages. I feel that we can do much better. Our global society needs to stop thinking like mindless, relativistic vegetables and to start valuing the power of logic and self-education more.

So concerning the issue of the origins of the Etruscans, everything that we may attribute to the term 'Etruscan', whether it be Etruscan religious practices^[2] (e.g. haruspical rites), alphabet^[3], or language^[4] appear to point to eastern origins. Whatever trivial aspect of Etruscan civilization remains which can be said to be autochthonous often turns out to be of non-Etruscan origin, attributable to some Indo-European-speaking people such as Faliscans, Romans or Sabines. Herodotus records in Histories 1.94 that the Etruscans are of Lydian origin and I think that this is fundamentally correct. It's easy in the modern age to dismiss Herodotus as the 'Father of Lies' as I've sometimes read, but how many of these armchair skeptics have bothered to read word for word what the classical historian actually said in original Greek to know what they're fighting against? I've seen people distort Herodotus' account to mean somehow that Etruscans were Lydian speaking or that this is some proof that Etruscans spoke Turkish (even though the Turkish language is an import from Central Asia during the Middle Ages and closely related to Mongolian)! So given all these simple facts, I like to connect the dots and state the obvious: The Etruscans are from Anatolia. If others are too fearful of this conclusion that many other academics have suggested despite my footnotes and the several facts I cite throughout my blog, well sheesh. What can ya do?

Etruscan is also not alone but is widely accepted to have been related to Lemnian and Rhaetic^[5]. Lemnian was spoken on the island of Lemnos in... {drumroll please}... the Aegean. Big shocker there. So moving on with my spooky Proto-Aegean concept with my head held high, I think I'll get a little cocky. I suggest (more tentatively, I admit) that Eteo-Cretan, Eteo-Cypriot and Minoan^[6], languages also centering around the Aegean islands and Cyprus, were also part of this Proto-Aegean linguistic group.


So now let's draw a circle around Greece, Western Anatolia, Cyprus, Crete and the Aegean islands. We then start to see the linguistic pattern that I'm getting at. An entire language family forgotten in the mists of time and modern-day mystery mongering. What's somewhat irritating to me and which should be irritating to you, the reader, is how we have an 'Etruscan mystery', a 'Minoan mystery', an 'Eteo-Cretan mystery' and an 'Eteo-Cypriot mystery' going on at the same time. If you research any one of these subjects, you'll get next to nothing on their languages or their translations. It's all "Who knows?" and "What if?". Why is this region and this time period such a freakin' mystery? Is it really because we lack information to piece it all together or is it because our power of concentration lacks get-up-and-go to solve problems without the use of a computer crutch?

Anyways, this is what I mean by "Proto-Aegean". It sits there before you readers, waiting to be developed further.


NOTES
^[1] While Language Hat gave me a good review, the blogger for whatever reason has a very laissez-faire policy on comments such that his commentbox filled up quickly with the most obscene rhetoric from anonymous trolls. I deemed it wise therefore to promply divorce this blog from that senselessness completely. The original review with comments are here but I also made a response with pictures of the original comments on his site that I found were deeply offensive for him to have published.
^[2] I've already discussed the comparison of the Babylonian liver model with the Etruscan Piacenza Liver model as one clear piece of proof that Etruscan haruspicy originated from the same practices found in Western Anatolia and the Fertile Crescent in my unfinished, multi-part rant called Finding Structure in the Piacenza Liver despite academic claptrap. If you don't believe me, you can always consult the Encyclopedia Britannica at your local library that will tell you the same thing I am here (minus the museum photo of the Babylonian artifact, that is).
^[3] See for example Fischer, A History of Writing (2001), p.88, fig.54 (link). Keep in mind that the author here falls into the trap of assuming a priori that Etruscans obtained their alphabet from the Greeks rather than directly from Phoenicians. However the existence of the Pyrgi Tablets proves that trading contacts between Etruscans and Phoenicians were already well established before 500 BCE. Simultaneously, there is no conclusive proof as yet that Etruscans obtained their alphabet specifically from the Greeks, nor do I wager that we will ever find it.
^[4] R.S.P Beekes explores the Anatolian origin of Etruscans in his article The Origin of the Etruscans [pdf]. Also some words are clearly of direct Semitic origin which can be seen most clearly in the numerals (e.g. Etruscan śar '10' versus Phoenician ʕsr, Hebrew ʕeśer-, Tigre ʕasər and Ugaritic ʕašar-).
^[5] Fortson, Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction (2004), p.246 (see link).
^[6] An interesting quote from Chadwick, The Decipherment of Linear B (1967), p.34 (see link) reads: "In 1940, a new name appears for the first time in the literature of the subject: Michael Ventris, then only eighteen years old. His article called 'Introducing the Minoan Language' was published in the American Journal of Archaeology; [...] The basic idea was to find a language which might be related to Minoan. Ventris' candidate was Etruscan;" However interestingly, Ventris sought to connect Linear B, rather than Linear A, to the Etruscan language. Too bad. Regardless, he managed to decipher Linear B as an older form of Greek, leaving Linear A undeciphered to this day.

UPDATES
(Feb 20 2008) I created a quick illustrative graphic of this conjectured Proto-Aegean. Enjoy!