Latin perfects and Fluent Etruscan in 30 days

[ERobert52 at aol.com]

Adolfo Zavaroni writes:

> 1) According to some sources, Etruscan and Raeti were
>  autochthonous (let's drop the legend that Etruscans came
>  from Lydia and the Georgiev's unreliable attempts to
>  demonstrate that Etruscan and Hittite are cognate;
>  I wasted two years in trying to find an Anatolian origin:
>  it was vain, also because of my scarce knowledges).

>  2) Livius (I do not remember exactly the passage) says
>  that Raeti were Etruscan who took shelter on the Alpine
>  valleys, but it is more probable that they were there
>  from time immemorial.

Of course, everybody came from somewhere else originally. The Kaminia
stele from Lemnos shows beyond doubt that there were speakers of an
Etruscoid language situated not far from Lydia. Lydian itself does not
appear closely related to Etruscan and its relatives genetically, but
there may be Etruscoid substrate influence on Lydian, for example:

Lydian brafra <-? IE *bhrater + influence of Etruscan ruva (brother)
       ce~n-  <-? Etruscan zin-  (dedicate?/make?)
plus the usual enclitic -k, genitives in -s and -l, similar looking
demonstratives, etc. that other Anatolian languages share with
Etruscan.

You don't have to believe the Etruscans and Raeti came from Anatolia,
but Etruscoid was spoken in that area.

>  3) My interpretations starting from the hypothesis
>  "Let's suppose that the Etruscan words are borrowing
>  from archaic (Indo)European languages and viceversa"
>  match many Germanish lexemes, but also Celtic
>  (certainly 3 years ago my knowledge of Gaulish
>  and Celtic language was lower), while the comparison
>  with Latin and Osco-Umbrian is vitiated by the fact that
>  in general scholars are inclined to think that the direction
>  of the borrowing is the direction from "already-known"
>  (Latin, Umbrian)  to "unknown that has to be explained".

The trouble with the interpretation of Etruscan still being an ongoing
process is that if one tends to detect or imagine cognates in IE roots
as part of the interpretation process, one cannot then go and point to
these 'cognates' and say that they prove a relationship. That would be
a bit tautological, unless the volume of the evidence was
overwhelming.

>  4) Several Venetic words (and other inscriptions of the
>  nearest areas) are explained by means of comparisons
>  with Germanish roots and others with Celtic roots.

According to Lejeune, there are 2 Venetic words that may be explained
by comparison with Germanic alone, although in general Venetic appears
to be very close to Latin:

.an.s'ore.s <->? Gothic 'ansts' (grace/favour) , and
SSELBOISSELBOI <->? Gothic 'silba' (self)

Any others in mind?

>  Conclusion: the "easiest" explanation is that a wide area
>  of Central Europe was occupied by peoples whose
>  languages were similar (common substrate). Most of their
>  lexemes passed to Proto-(Indo)-European languages,
>  of course in different quantities.

>  One could find the roots belonging only to the ancient
>  Italic languages, to Germanish and possibly to Celtic
>  and then to check if they are attested in Etruscan.
>  In this period it is above my possibilities.

I think that the circumstances and chronology of the split of
Proto-Germanic from PIE (and the breakup of Western IE generally) have
not yet been satisfactorily explained as far as I know, let alone the
role of pre-IE substrates in the end result. I also wonder whether the
traditional locations of the Proto-Germanic homeland in S. Sweden /
N.Germany are correct. The traditional view says they hadn't extended
very far south even by 100BC. Yet in 222BC when the Germans emerge
into recorded history in military alliance with the Celts, they appear
already to be under Celtic domination. How is it that the Germans
could 'expand' into the Alps yet be under Celtic domination at the
same time unless some of them were already there prior to that?

Another question: Assuming Etruscan and Raetic are related, any
guess at a time depth for their common ancestor?

Ed. Robertson