Trojan and Etruscan

[iffr762 at utxvms.cc.utexas.edu]

On Thu, 4 Mar 1999, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:

> The problem is that you're mixing up various reflexes from
> various languages here.  The Latin forms with -sc- (Tusci,
> Tuscania/Toscana, Etrusci) are simply extensions of the roots
> Tu(r)s- and Etrus- with the Latin adjectival suffix -cus (*-ko-).

	This is probably true, but it is also possible that the use of
such suffixes could have been suggested by the nature of the sound, which
the Egyptian evidence indicates was /sh/, not /s/.

> Now assuming Greek Trooa is from the same root, it can be derived
> from *Trosia, with Greek loss of intervocalic -s-, just like
> Latin Etruria < *Etrusia with intervocalic -s- > -r-.  Again the
> suffix -ia is Latin and Greek, not necessarily Tyrrhenian.

	Again, it could be as above.

> Which reminds me, there is also Greek Tyrrhe:n- < *turse:n-.

> >	For the vowel, it is difficult to decide between /o/ or /u/, but
> >as /a/ occurs in some words that might be additional variants
> >(tarhuntassa, tauros, tarsus, tarquin), with lowering before /r/ being the
> >culprit in these, I favor /o/.  Thus the original form would be /trosha/.

	I take this opportunity to note that the forms with /u/ are all
western, so that the use of /u/ could conceivably be merely from the
Greek change of /ou/ to /u/, carried westward by colonists.

					DLW