Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

On Sat, 10 Feb 2001 12:04:47 -0000, "Douglas G Kilday"
<acnasvers at hotmail.com> wrote:

>Sorry. I unwittingly changed reference-frames, confusing the directions in
>an argument which was poorly organized from the outset. I'll try this again:

>(1) The tops of certain letters (A,N,M,R) show that the "vertical" lines of
>text (holaies etc., aker etc., etc.) must be read with the head tilted
>right. From this position, the writing appears to go from right to left (but
>"physically" it goes from bottom to top) as determined by the direction of
>these letters and the fact that these lines all start on the reader's right
>(the "physical" top of the shield).

Yes.  These three lines are written bottom-to-top, right-to-left.

On the side of the stele, one "sentence" is written left-to-right,
top-to-bottom (Sivai:avis:s'ialchvis:marasm.avis.aomai), the other
(Holaiesi:phokias'iale...) is boustrophedon, starting right-to-left,
top-to-bottom.

>(2) The writer might just as well have chosen the opposite convention. This
>shows that his "default" direction for letters was right-to-left within a
>line of text *viewed* horizontally.

>(3) The bustrophedon segment overhead was presumably started in default
>direction, so it must be read from <maras'm> to <s'ivai>. These *lines* (not
>the letters within them) are then to be read physically from top to bottom.

Comparing with the inscription on the side, both with respect to
writing direction and with respect to the actual text, I don't think
this follows.  On the side we have:

sivai avis s'ialchvis marasm avis aomai

This matches the central inscription (boustrophedon, bottom-to-top):

sivai evistho seronaith s'ialchveis avis marasmav[is ais[?]]

>>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.

>I believe the suffix -i is comitative, originally denoting physical
>association or proximity, from which the sense of means or instrument arose
>(cf. Eng. "with", "by"). The locative suffix was originally -ith/it(h)i; the
>longer form may be a compound with the comitative (cf. Eng. "within"). I
>take Lemn. <seronaith> to be a locative, so 'in Phocaea' would be
>*Phokiaith. The comitative *Phokiai 'near Phocaea' would not be reduced to
>*Phokie here because Lemnian, like Archaic Etruscan, does not contract final
>-a of noun-stems with -i of suffixes; that is a feature of Recent Etruscan.

>The correct equation is "gen.+com.=dat." Gen.+loc. gives forms like
><unialthi> 'in Uni's (temple)', <tinsth> 'in Tin's (region)'. The Rec. Etr.
>form in -sla is not a true "double genitive" but the genitive of the
>possessive in -sa. I regard the -si in Phokiasi not as a case-ending but as
>a derivative suffix denoting place of origin (cf. Arch. Etr. Uphaliasi 'from
>Uphalia'). The sibilant in <phokiasiale> is clearly a sigma, not the zig-zag
><s'> used for genitives here (our notation follows North Etr. sibilant
>orthography).

I'm following Beekes and v.d. Meer here, who reconstruct:

s-gen.  *-si
l-gen.  *-la
loc.    *-i

abl = gen + gen [ *-la-si > -las > -ls; *-si-si > *-sis > -is]
dat = gen + loc [ *-la-i > -le; *-si-i > -si]

The locative in -i (for a-stems: *-a-i > -e) could optionally be
extended with the postposition -thi (-ethi < *-a-i-thi).

So I would analyze <Holaiesi phokias'iale> as:

Dat. holaie-si-i > Holaiesi "For Holaie"
Gen. phokia-s(i)  "of Phokaia" + dat. phokia-si-ala-i > phokias'iale
"for the Phokaian", with palatalization of -si- (> -s finally) when
followed by the genitive suffix -ala-, and -ai > -e, as in (later)
Etruscan.  Cf. Vanalas'ial, which is a double genitive: "of (that) of
*Vanala" [or an ablative "from *Vanala", although in Etruscan we only
have *-(a)lasi > -(a)ls, not *-si(a)la].

On the other hand, we don't have *ai > e in <Seronaith> and <Seronai>,
"in Seruna", <Morinai-> "in Murina" (and futher -ai in <sivai>,
<arai>).

>>> The letter <z> is found elsewhere on Lemnos, at Kabirion in the
>>> fragmentary inscription <zari...>.

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

>True. Now that I think about it, invoking different schemes for writing
>sibilants at Kaminia and Kabirion is rather lame. On an island as small as
>Lemnos, one does not expect to find a variety of orthographic conventions
>within the same speech-community. However, <s'ivai> still seems more
>plausibly interpreted as the comitative of an appellative than as the
>zero-case of a proper name, IMHO.

I don't know what the significance is, but Cyrus H. Gordon (I
know...), gives the inscription on the Psychro stone as:

EPITHI
ZE:THANTHE:
ENETE: PAR SIPHAI
i-pi-ti (or: i-ne-ti), in Linear script.

comparing the name Siphai (bar Siphai = "son of Siphai") to the
Semitic personal name S-p-y in I Chronicles 20:4.

>>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 haven't seen this argument. Do the odds refer to the probability of <mara>
>being a numeral, or to the probability of <mara> meaning 'five' if it is
>assumed to be a numeral?

To the a priori probability that whoever it was died in his
sialchveith year rather than in his sialchvei and X-th year.

>Given that the Etr. title <maru> presupposes a verb <mar->, one could regard
><maras'm> as participle + enclitic, with the following <avis'> dependent on
>either the participle or on the action implied by the verb. Then <maras'm
>avis'> could mean 'and having been maro of the year' (if there was only one
>annual maronate on Lemnos) or 'and having been the maro in charge of
>regulating the year' (if there were several marones, and one controlled the
>calendar). This is speculative, but IMHO makes more sense than taking <mara>
>as a numeral. The Etruscans did not repeat <avils> with decades and units,
>and I don't believe I've ever seen an epitaph of the form "died aged 60
>years and 5 years".

I haven't either, but I don't see much of a problem.  In a
non-mathematicized society, to say "in his sixtieth and his fifth
year", may have have elicited a response like: "in his sixtieth WHAT
and fifth year?".

>>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.

>I'm not opposed to the -ch in <mach> being secondary, but the problem of
>relating <muv-> to <ma-> remains. Not that it can't be done using phonologic
>processes which are reasonable *per se*, but to convince us
>phono-nit-pickers it must be done using processes which are known or can be
>inferred from other examples *in Etruscan*.

>Zero grade? Ablaut in Etruscan? Pallottino proposed such a thing early in
>his career (1936) but seems to have abandoned it later, and I haven't seen
>any recent work supporting the idea. I certainly don't know any unequivocal
>examples of Etruscan ablaut, but being an objective person, I'm always
>willing to listen...

In Etruscan there are certainly cases that remind one of ablaut.  Take
the root <tev-> "to show, (to put?)", which appears as <tv-> in the
mirror-inscription: "eca sren tva ichnac hercle unial clan thra sce"
(this image shows how Hercules Juno's [adopted?] son [became?]").
>From the same root we have <tevarath> "referee, judge", and maybe in
Lemnian the two words <toverona[rom]> and <tavarsio>.  That would make
sense if "Sivai"'s function was indeed that of "judge" (evistho < Grk.
eu-histo:r [?])

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