Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2001 20:55:32 -0000, "Douglas G Kilday"
<acnasvers at hotmail.com> wrote:

>I now think the Lemno-Tyrrhenians were probably the offshoot of a Tyrrhenian
>community living in Acte, the easternmost peninsula of Chalcidice, along
>with other non-Hellenes (Thuc. IV.109). Despite de Simone's doubts, I find
>it most plausible that they acquired the alphabet in Chalcidice (or perhaps
>Euboea), not in Italy.

Agreed.

>My reading of these two lines follows Ribezzo and Buffa. The reverse order
>is the "lectio difficilior". Looking at the crude copy in my possession, I
>see that <tavars'io> is compressed with respect to <aker> in order to fit
>between the latter and the horizontal <s'ivai>. It is clear that
><maras'...s'ivai> was written before the vertical inscriptions,

Yes.

>and that the writer considered top-to-bottom (from his viewpoint) the normal
>order for lines of text.

Surely you mean bottom-to-top (Holaies naphoth, aker tavarsio...).

>(The vertical inscriptions, both <aker> etc. and <holaie> etc., show that the
>writer regarded right-to-left as the default direction,

I don't follow.

>so <s'ivai> cannot start the horizontal inscription and must end it.) Had
><vanalasial> been written first, it is unlikely that the writer would have
>stopped with <morinail> and taken the chance on running out of room with
><aker tavars'io> in a closed space.

How high was the stele (and how tall the person that wrote it)?

>Ubiquitous? Where do you find the suffix -ce on the Cippus Perusinus? (Okay,
>unfair question, the CP isn't a funerary monument.) I doubt that <phoke>
>refers to Phocaea, as *Phokia would have constituted a single morpheme for
>the Lemnians.

I'm guessing Phokia is present in <Holaiesi Phokias'iale> "for Holaie
of Phokaia" (with "double genitive" -s'i-ala + locative -i [gen+loc =
dat.]).  The locative "in Phokaia" would then be *phokiai > *phokie,
and maybe further reduced to Phoke.  But I wouldn't bet much on it.

>The letter <z> is found elsewhere on Lemnos, at Kabirion in the fragmentary
>inscription <zari...>. If <s'ivai> is indeed cognate with Etr. <zivas>, it
>indicates that the convention at Kaminia was to hypodifferentiate the
>sibilants, using the zigzag which we choose to write <s'> for both phonemes
>written <s'> and <z> in standard North Etr. orthography.

This (<z> in other Lemnian inscriptions) can easily be taken as an
argument against equating zivai with Etr. zivas.

>> Lemnian <mara> in the
>>formula <sialchvis' avis' maras'm avis'> must surely be a numeral, but
>>fits none of the Etruscan ones (the only one that comes even remotely
>>close is <mach> "5", a little bit closer [but still remote] if we
>>consider the derivative <muvalch> "50", showing that the -ch was not
>>part of the root, but probably identical to -c(h) "and" [cf. PIE
>>*pen-kwe "... and 5"], so something like *mawa-k(h) "[... and ]5",
>>*mawa-alkh "50").

>Surely a numeral? Surely non-numeric terms can stand next to words for 'year'!

As I argued on another list, the odds are 9 to 1 in favour of my
interpretation (*if* the Lemnian decad/unit order was the reverse from
Etruscan, making it a possibility of merely 45% that I'm right).

>I'm personally skeptical about <muvalch> being derived from <mach>.
>Rix has suggested *machvalch <- *machv (the <v> is superscript indicating
>labialization), but the process *uv <- *achv is otherwise unrecognized in
>Etruscan, hence completely "ad hoc". <Mach> and <muvalch> are probably from
>distinct roots; likewise <zal> 'two' and <zathrum> 'twenty'.

But that's not a comparable case.  The suffix (Etr.) <-alch> gives:
<ci> "3", <cialch> (<cealch>) "30"; <s'a> "6"(or "4"), <s'ealch> "60"
(or "40"), <semph> "7", <semphalch> "70", <cezp> "8", <cezpalch> "80".
AFAIK, *<huthalch> [maybe another argument for <huth> = "4", cf. Russ.
<sorok> "40"] and *<nurphalch> are unattested, but in any case, the
suffix <-alch> is always added to the simplex numeral.  In my opinion,
the easiest way to explain <muvalch> is thus that the simplex of "5"
is <muv-> [*mw(a)-] (some kind of zero grade of *mawa-), and that the
-ch in <mach> is secondary.

>My argument that the Lemno-Tyrrhenians came from Italy stands or falls with
>the interpretation of <aker tavars'io vanalasial>. If this is indeed a name
>in PN-GN-MN format, its only reasonable origin is west-central Italy. If
>these words mean something else, I would argue that the probable source of
>these Tyrrhenians was the upper Adriatic region. By far the most plausible
>hypothesis IMHO has the Etruscans entering Italy by the NE land-route. I
>repeat my contention that sea-migration from Anatolia has no solid evidence
>behind it.

The presence of Etruscoid Rhaetic in Northern Italy is indeed
suggestive of a land route (although expansion from Etruria cannot be
ruled out).  I have no firm convictions on the matter.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl