IE and Etruscan

[ERobert52 at aol.com]

jpmaher at neiu.edu wrote:
> Vladimir Georgiev [Sofia] held that Etruscan was early IE and
> related to Hittite.
> ...
> nobody contested his data nor his thesis.

> ERobert52 at aol.com wrote:
>> No sensible person thinks Etruscan is IE, and most people who say
>> it is are pretty wacky,

A comparison of Etruscan with Hittite and the other Anatolian
languages shows some similar features such as noun declension endings
and the role of clitics, indeed some of the clitics are the same. Some
possible cognate lexical items have also been pointed to. These are
either due to chance, Sprachbund, borrowing, a substrate, or a genetic
relationship. However, all other things being equal, the common
ancestor of such a genetic relationship would need to be at a date
prior to the break-up between Proto-Anatolian and the rest of IE
because Etruscan is less similar to the rest of IE than the Anatolian
languages are.

What is clear is that Etruscan cannot constitute a branch of IE on a
par with, say, Celtic or Albanian, let alone be a member of such a
branch, despite repeated efforts to prove the contrary over the years
by e.g. Mayani, Gruamach etc. by attempting to look up Etruscan words
in a modern dictionary for the relevant language group that they want to
claim a relationship with. Sometimes similar suggestions even involve
throwing in some inscriptions that are actually Umbrian or Venetic and
lo and behold, Etruscan is suddenly IE. I would describe these
approaches as not sensible. I discovered another website today where
somebody's "research" had led them to the conclusion that Etruscan was
actually Ukrainian (not even Proto-Slav, nor OCS, but Ukrainian). This
I call wacky.

This should be contrasted with points of view such as the idea that
Etruscan forms part of a longer range construct including but prior
to IE (Kretschmer), or has some sort of affinity with certain
Anatolian languages (Stoltenberg), which are points of view that
deserve to be treated seriously, although their linguistic evidence
is, understandably, a bit slim. I believe Georgiev was saying
something perfectly reasonable similar to this.

On a related matter, there is obviously some sort of connection
between Etruscan and western Anatolia given the historical references
from several sources linking the Etruscans to Lydia. Frank Rossi
speculated recently (on historical grounds) that there might be an
Etruscan substrate in Lydian. However as far as I can see there is no
more linguistic evidence that would link Etruscan with Lydian than
would link Etruscan with Hittite. Or am I missing something?

Ed. Robertson