Etruscans

[David L. White]

> Maintaining a *linguistic* identity on a small island in a high-traffic zone
> for several centuries would be quite unusual. Continental comparisons are
> hardly valid. To maintain pockets of linguistic conservatism on small
> islands, you must have islands remote from most of the world's traffic, such
> as the Faeroes.

        Yes (or maybe), but it seems we are converging on the opinion that
the Lemnians had probably come from the mainland.  The basic rule is that
people can maintain their identity, ethnic or linguistic, if they feel like
it, and we are not much in a position to judge at this remove.

> I agree that <Turse:noi> is not native Greek, but IMHO it was more likely
> borrowed into Greek from Umbrian, other p-Italic, or "Italoid" (Messapic,
> Venetic, etc.) than from Egyptian. It is more difficult for me to envision
> the Umbrians borrowing a term for their own neighbors from Egyptian by way
> of Greek.

        Upon further reflection, I think the Semitic intermediary, if there
was one, was probably Carthaginian or Phonecian, since these folk are known
to have had markets in the area.  That the version with "ty", as opposed to
"thou" passed through some non-Greek intermediary is indicated by the lack
of aspiration.  Note also that it must be earlier.
Whether the Umbrians would have borrowed a term for their neighbors from
Greek depends to some extent on how the neighbors got there.  If they arose
indigenously, not likely, but if they just happened to have barely beaten
the Greeks getting out to prime colonization real-estate, and the Umbrians
were in contact with the Greeks, such a borrowing does not seem unlikely.

> I don't follow your phonologic argument. Medial /rs/ became /rr/ in
> Classical Attic, including <Turre:noi> as well as appellatives like <arre:n>
> 'male', <cherros> 'dry land'. The occurrence of /rs/ in other Greek dialects
> is not *per se* evidence for borrowing.

        I thought, perhaps wrongly, that /s/ before vowels was lost in all
Greek, prior to subsequent re-introduction in borrowings like /sitos/.  At
least some of the change must be early, as /h/ appears for IE /s/ in
Mycenean.  So there would have been a point at which /se/ would have seemed
non-native, especially in the somewhat awkward sequence /rs/.  I assume /rh/
is a later semi-nativization.   But perhaps I have not got my facts
straight.

> A lot of things *can* happen, but all you seem to be promoting here is what
> *might* have happened between Italy and Lemnos without presenting any
> argument. It doesn't require a Ph.D. degree (or even a kindergarten diploma)
> merely to contradict someone.

        I am not merely contradicting (I'm having a argument?).  Where
people can flow, influences can flow, and where we see Etruscan influence on
Lemnos, we can't tell which it was.

> Yes, you have a valid point about ethnonomastic typology which casts serious
> doubt on Alessio's derivation of Etruria from *Etro-rousia. Several Etruscan
> words do show double forms which could be regarded as examples of epenthesis
> or apocope of initial /e/:

> (1) eca, ecn, eclthi, etc. demonstratives vs. ca, cn, clthi, etc.
> (2) esals 'of two', eslem 'but two', eslz 'twice' vs. zal 'two'
> (3) escuna 'allows' vs. scuna, scune, scuvse, etc.
> (4) eprth- 'type of office' vs. purth, purt(h)-

        I am grateful for these examples, especially the last one.  All I
had been able to come up with was "Herecele".

> A similar alternation of *Etrs-/*Turs- could account for the two series of
> ethnonyms. The Recent Etruscan self-name was Rasna (trisyllabic with sonant
> /n/) but Tursikina, apparently a gentilicium, in Heurgon's recension of the
> fibula of Clusium (ca. 600 BCE) indicates that Turs- was in use earlier.  A
> variant *Etrs-/Etrus- is not implausible.

        Good.

> As I now see, my argument about /k/ was empty. The Iguvian Tables contain
> other ethnonyms, Naharkum and Iapuzkum, which indicate that the correct
> division in Umbrian is Turs-kum, not Tursk-um. Sorry.

        I do not see how this makes the argument empty.  But I do not think
it matters much.  It is possible that what I had taken as /sk/ as an attempt
to signal a sort of retracted /s/ is really /s-k/, but the resmblance of
words would still be there.  Furthermore, the two scenarios are not mutually
exclusive.  It is possible that a foreign word with /s^/ might have readily
been analyzed as having /s-k/ if such an analysis made sense in the
borrowing language.

> Anyhow, given the plausibility of connecting Tusci and Etrusci, I must
> admit that your theory has half a leg to stand on. I still see no reason
> whatever to link Troia with these.

        Not counting the Lydians and the Aeneid.   /truia/ occurs in
Etruscan, where I would imagine it must be taken as a Greek borrowing.  But
since Greek has what might be called "invisible /s/" in some circumstances,
/truia/ might have been /trusia/.  That is not very far from either /trus-/
or /turs-/.  No, I am not saying "it is proven", but we have a very
suspicious coincidence here, especially once the Turshas are thrown into the
mix.

> As for Tw-rw-s "Tursha", without the informed
> opinion of a competent Hamitist, we are playing ping-pong in the dark with
> the phonology.

        I admit I do not know why "TWRWS" and "TRWS" are anglicized as
"Tursha".  Perhaps because that is the only version that would have been
phonotactically acceptable in Egyptian?  It looks as if an attempt was made
to borrow the word as heard ("Ngaio"?), only to reject this as
"unpronounceable" by Egyptian mouths.  (Similar things would probably have
happened in Carthaginian mouths.)  Be that as it may, I can only presume
that the Egyptologists know what they are doing, and that there is good
reason to believe that a borrowed ethnonym /turs^-/ existed in Egyptian.
That in turn is not very far from /turs/.

Dr. David L. White