Trojan and Etruscan

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

iffr762 at utxvms.cc.utexas.edu wrote:

>	As for the occurence of /s/, /sk/, /sh/ (English value), and /y/
>(again English value) to represent the third consonant, these are for the
>most part various efforts to represent /sh/ in languages that did not have
>that sound.  (Egyptian did.)  We see various apsects of /sh/ conveyed in
>any one of the other renderings:  sibilance in /s/, palatality in /y/,
>retraction from /s/ in /sk/.

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-).

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.

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/.

Etruscan didn't have /o/, and Lemnian (close to Troy) didn't have
/u/, so Etruscan *Trusia would correspond to Lemnian *Trosia.

What keeps bugging me is whether there is any relationship
between *turs(en)- ~ *trus- and the Etruscan name for themselves
<rasna> < *rasenna.  Something like *tu-rasenna- might work, but
what are we to do with a prefix *tu- in a suffixing language like
Etruscan?

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