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.

Overseeing in Ancient Anatolia

A particular Etruscan word currently haunts my mental processes, zil 'to oversee'. It's the verbal base of the participle zilaθ 'supervised' and the noun zilχ 'supervision'. I have some quams against the comparatively exaggerated values given by Larissa and Giuliano Bonfante that would have zilaθ mapped to English 'magistrate' and zilχ equivalent to 'magistracy'. For zilci Larthal Cusuś, which they translate as 'in the magistracy of Larth Cusu', I read less fanfare into it: 'Under the supervision of Larth Cusu'.

As with every morpheme I've entered into my database so far, I ask myself: What's the etymology of this verb zil 'to oversee'? Where does it come from? If inherited from Proto-Cyprian, a form *zila would be indicated for the 2nd millennium BCE. If Proto-Cyprian is also to be located in Cyprus and Western Turkey (including Lydia, as Herodotus had himself prescribed for the ancestors of the Etruscans), it strongly appears as though interaction with the Hattic language, cradled once upon a time in central Turkey, would not just be likely but inevitable.

This is why it's curious that we should find a Hattic word zilat being given the meaning of 'seat' or 'throne'. The Hattic word for 'to sit' is already known to be nifas though. It builds the name Hanfasuit 'She of the throne' (ha- 'down (?)' + -nifas 'to sit' + -it [feminine marker]), an epithet of a goddess that was borrowed into Hittite as Halmasuit. So what morphemes then compose zilat? An understandable hunch enters my head: Could Hattic have had a related verb stem *-zil meaning 'to oversee'? Is this a possible piece of evidence in favour of Hattic-Cyprian language contact?

If so, the proof remains unsatisfying and paltry. I naturally need further evidence to build a stronger case.

Hattic grammar and Proto-Aegean

I'm currently data-mining an excellent article about a very obscure subject, that of Hattic grammar. The article is written by Petra Goedegebuure who gave it a rather verbose title: Central Anatolian languages and language communities in the colony period: A Luwian-Hattian symbiosis and the independent Hittites (2008). It's refreshing that the author has a mature grasp of the subtleties regarding cultural identity and language. Sometimes language shifts while the culture stays largely the same; sometimes culture may alter radically with no large changes to language. A question she explores is: Can certain peculiarities of the Hattic language hint at the specifics of complex, unrecorded shifts in language and culture/cultural identity between the Hattians and the Indo-European speaking population in early Anatolia?

She gives a wealth of thorough examples showing Hattic grammar in action and my eyes have been opened. More frivolously, I believe I can now partially conjugate a Hattic verb with a modest degree of confidence: fa-nifas 'I sit', u-nifas 'you sit', an-nifas 'he/she sits', ai-nifas 'we sit' and nifas '(they) sit'. There are a camp of linguists who believe that Hattic belongs with the Abkhaz-Adyghe languages^[1] that are currently restricted to the northern regions of the Caucasus mountains and I think this most likely.


A Proto-Cyprian connection?

While a few kooks carry on dreaming that Etruscan is actually related to Hattic^[2], the two languages couldn't be any more alien to each other. Hattic is a prefixing language and exhibits an underlying VSO morphology (ie. verb-subject-object, as in Semitic and Egyptian languages) while Etruscan strictly uses suffixes. If there were any prefixes in Etruscan, we can expect them to be very rare, as is in fact typical of any SOV language (compare with other SOV languages like Inuktitut, Japanese and Turkish, for example). We can be certain then that the Cyprian languages, like Etruscan and Eteo-Cypriot, represented an entirely separate language group to Hattic.

Yet, there's still the potential that some traces of Hattian influence lurk in Etruscan through lexical and structural borrowings. Comparing the locations of Hattic (central Anatolia) and of Proto-Cyprian (western Anatolia & Cyprus) alone warrant the thought. And if not with Proto-Cyprian, could there have been an interaction with the older Proto-Aegean stage in the 3rd millennium BCE from which Minoan too would derive? This is why I've been feverishly recording Hattic vocabulary into my computer. Cross-correlation is delicious.

A new post on Pre-Greek place-names

Mr Zeke has scribed a new post Pre-Greek place-names of the Aegean complete with detailed surveys like the one above that history buffs will delight in. As I discovered with Italian placenames and Etruscan's involvement in many of them, toponyms can be a source of endless fascination and learning about the impact that substrate languages have had on their region.

In the case of the toponyms in the environs of Greece, the Aegean islands and Turkey, there's an ever-going quest to tease out the Minoan (and also Hattic) threads that inevitably must exist here. What hampers our knowledge is the lack of information about these forgotten languages but it's also precisely that aching riddle that compels us to crack it.

The saga of the sea-faring house

I can't help but notice that the word for 'house' has traveled far and wide around the Eastern Mediterranean in the earliest times:

• Egyptian par 'house' (written pr)
• Hattic wel 'house' (< Proto-Hattic *pel ?)
• Hittite pir 'house'
• Luwian parnas 'house'

My spidey senses tell me that it all stems from the Egyptian language. I suspect the word also entered Proto-Aegean as *par hence some attested nouns in Etruscan that I interpret as likely temple-related derivatives: parχ (TLE 169) and parniχ (TLE 131).

One may wonder why such a word would travel so far and wide or why it would emanate specifically from the Egyptians, but 'house' may often refer also to a politico-religious building or institution, eg. a 'temple-house', 'White House', 'House of Representatives', etc. The Egyptians often used 'house' to refer to temples, as was the association among the Luwians^[1]. If I interpret the historicity of this word correctly, then it emphasizes the influence of Egypt on religious faith throughout the 2nd millennium BCE. Even the name Egypt, a Greek name, was adapted (probably via Minoan *Aikupita) from the name for a prominent temple in Memphis, the *Ḥáʔat-Kuʔ-Patáḥ. 'House of the spirit of Ptah'. Note in this latter etymon, we have yet another word for 'house' being used in Egyptian to convey 'temple': *ḥáʔat (written ḥȝ.t).




NOTES
^[1] Huxley, Crete and the Luwians (1961), p.26 (see link).

Bronze Age Areal influence in Anatolia and Etruscan

Here's an interesting quote from Calvert Watkins on page 52 of Areal Diffusion and Genetic Inheritance: Problems in Comparative Linguistics (2001) edited by Aikhenvald and Dixon (see link):

"Consider the system of stop consonants. Proto-Indo-European had the traditional three series t d dh; already in Common Anatolian the latter two merged, yielding t and d. The correlation of voice was replaced by one of intensity (tense : lax), with the tense member realized with relative length, thus a tendency to an opposition geminate : simple. Word-finally there was probably since Indo-European times neutralization in favour of the voiced member. But more strikingly it appears that word-initially in Anatolian and there alone among all the Indo-European languages there was neutralization in favour of the unvoiced (tense) member. This explains why when the cuneiform syllabary was borrowed from Semitic, the Semitic voicing oppositions (e.g. TI vs. DI; the capitals denote values of syllabic signs) were ignored in favour of geminate versus simple: word-initial TI or DI to write the same word, but contrasting AT-TI or AD-DI vs. A-TI or A-DI. This system, and the same writing convention, is found in all the cuneiform languages, Indo-European and non-Indo-European alike."

The book goes on to mention that Hittite, Luwian, Palaic and Hurrian all show the same overall typological constraints. That is, they all seem to be pushed towards neutralization in word-initial and word-final positions with a contrast of lax and tense stops being maintained medially. So in initial position all stops tend to become lax (/t/) while in final position they all tend to become tense (such as /t:/ or /tʰ/, let's say).

Too bad Watkins didn't push this areal convergeance to its furthest logical limit because it unfortunately overlooks the Aegean languages in my view. Other languages in the area at that time which are often ignored in inquiry also, I think, demonstrate a similar pattern. Putting aside Minoan, one of the most important languages of that area during the Bronze Age, surely the Etrusco-Cypriot languages must have been present during that period, centering around the ancient territories of Arzawa and Alashiya (a.k.a. the island of Cyprus). Of the Etrusco-Cypriot grouping I propose, we may easily demonstrate Anatolia's possible influences on Etruscan, if nothing else.

Etruscan shows the same distribution of lax versus tense stops in words. The habits of Etruscan scribes when it came to spelling their language show us that unaspirated stops are the unmarked series while aspirated stops are less frequent and marked. We can see that unaspirated stops are probably "lenis" (i.e. requiring comparatively less articulatory effort) while aspirated stops are "fortis". This assertion fits well with crosslinguistic patterns and it helps to connect Etruscan's phonology with the areal convergeance described for the general area of Anatolia during the early second millenium BCE. Word-initial φ- in Etruscan is quite rare, used for foreign names and words it seems, and the other aspirated consonants are much less frequent in this position when compared to their unaspirated counterparts, as can be seen in the results thus far of my dictionary project. In word-final position, it has been noted that there is a tendency of neutralization of stop contrasts, favouring aspiration (a.k.a. "fortis"). Word-final neutralization towards fortis consonants is precisely what we expect from the patterns we see in world languages. Lenition in such circumstances on the other hand is quite rare (e.g. Lezghian's unusual word-final neutralization of stops to voiced ones). Examples in Etruscan showing word-final neutralization are flanaχ (LL 10.iii) vs. flanac (LL 11.xxix), śeχ (TLE 583) vs. śec (CIE 2611) and zilχ (TLE 126) vs. zilc (TLE 137). These spelling alternations suggest that aspiration is not a contrastive feature word-finally so that Etruscan -c and -χ are both pronounced as /-kʰ/, for example.

This adds to the heap of evidence already showing that the Etruscan language, mythos and culture originated in Anatolia just as Herodotus had wrote millenia ago.