Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)

[Douglas G Kilday]

Miguel Carrasquer Vidal (16 Jan 2001) wrote:

[snip of DGK's material on Lemnian alphabet]

>But Lemnos is only 50km or so off the Chalcidian coast.  It is
>definitely not an Ionian, Aeolic or Cycladic island.  In fact, the
>surprising thing would be if the alphabet did *not* belong to the
>Euboico-Chalcidian family.

Lemnos is about the same distance from the Troad, so the Phrygian alphabet
would not be surprising here. In fact, if the Lemno-Tyrrhenians were the
relic of a great migration from Anatolia (which I have been arguing against)
it would be surprising if they had severed all ties with their homeland and
gone in the other direction to get an alphabet.

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. To my knowledge, no Etruscan inscriptions found in
Italy use the peculiar conventions of the Lemnian alphabet (O instead of U,
L with upper stroke, treatment of sibilants).

>Larissa Bonfante says the word [nefts] was borrowed in Etruscan from Latin,
>and in fact it might have been borrowed from any Indo-European
>language having a reflex of *nepot-, including Greek (Homeric
><nepodes>) or even Carian (<nchoth> or <nphoth> "child", if I can
>trust Woudhuizen's sources [Meriggi]).  So this word is rather
>inconclusive, except that it's obviously easier to go from <naphoth>
>to <nefts> than the other way around.

Good point. I can't prove that <naphoth> was picked up in Italy. Given the
proximity of other IE languages from which it might have been borrowed, I
must admit its presence on the stele is inconclusive.

>> The stele also contains <aker tavars'io vanalasial>, evidently the name of
>> the honored/deceased in regular Etruscan form: Aker = praenomen, Tavars'io
>> = gentilicium, Vanalasial = metronymic.

>The two lines are usually read: "vanalasial s'eronai morinail / aker
>tavars'io" (I'm sure there's a reason for reading "vanalasial", but on
>every copy I've seen, what I read is: "va.m.ala.sial:
>s'eronaimorinail").  There is no compelling reason not to accept your
>alternative reading "Aker Tavars'io / Vanalasial S'eronai Morinail",
>but if the first 3 words are the name of the deceased, what is the
>meaning of <s'eronaimorinail>, apparently the genitive of "in Seruna,
>in Murina"?

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, and that the
writer considered top-to-bottom (from his viewpoint) the normal order for
lines of text. (The vertical inscriptions, both <aker> etc. and <holaie>
etc., show that the writer regarded right-to-left as the default direction,
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.

On my crude copy, the third letter of <vanalasial> exhibits a slight
extension which might, but probably shouldn't, be interpreted as an
additional stroke making it into M. Most authors who have seen the stele
concur on reading N (for me, of course, "autopsia" is out of the question).
As for the apparent interpuncts within words Pauli, in the first edition of
the inscription (1886), did not regard them as functional. Lejeune (1957)
thought they represented the syllabic punctuation characteristic of South
Etrurian and Campanian inscriptions in the VI cent. BCE and argued for an
interdependence between Etrurian and Lemnian writing systems. However, the
points visible on my copy, particularly within <vanalasial>, do not agree
well with true syllabic punctuation, in which the points usually follow the
first letter of a word (especially a vowel), divide two consonants within a
word, or follow the whole word. They are best attributed here to the
porosity of the stone.

I don't *know* the meaning of <s'eronaimorinail>, but if <aker> etc. is read
as a man's name in PN-GN-MN format, what follows probably indicates his
locality. We agree that <s'eronaith> is probably a locative and <morinail>
probably refers to the Lemnian town of Murina. <S'eronai> is plausibly a
proximate use of the comitative (cf. Rec. Etr. murce Capue 'served near
Capua'). <Morinail> might stand for the genitive *morinaial. The meaning
could be something like 'near S'eruna of Murina' = 'born near S'eruna which
is in the district, or under the jurisdiction, of Murina'.

>I'm personally convinced that the name of the deceased is "S'ivai", as
>the central message of the stele seems to be (repeated twice: in the
>front center, and on the side):  S'ivai evistho S'eronaith sialchveis'
>avis' maras'm av[is' ais'] / S'ivai avis' sialchvis' maras'm avis'
>aomai  [approxiamtely: "Sivai, "evistho" in Seruna, of years 60[?]
>and[?] 5[?] years died[?]"].

I'm inclined to regard <s'ivai> as cognate to Etr. <zivas>, as several
authors have suggested. <Zivas> has been controversial for over a century.
Bugge, who considered Etruscan to be IE (closest to Armenian), rendered it
'lebend' on the basis of resemblance to <vivus>, <quick>, etc. Cortsen
scoffed at this and countered with 'tot'. Pallottino regarded <zivas> as
gen. pl. 'dei morti'. IMHO <zivas> is most likely the gen. sg. of an
abstract noun *ziva meaning 'sepulture, burial, funeral' or the like, or the
honor of the funerary ritual. If so, Lemn. <s'ivai> is probably an
instrumental (or similar) use of the comitative meaning something like 'with
interment', 'with a funeral', perhaps 'with honor'.

>On the other hand, Lemnian shows little or no trace of the ubiquitous
>Etruscan 3rd.p. preterit ending -ce (there is <phoke>, but in view of
><Holaies'i Phokiasiale>, one can doubt whether this is a verb or a
>reference to Phocaea), and it is in fact impossible to recognize any
>verbal form in Lemnian (maybe -io ?).

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. Had they borrowed the Greek word for 'seal', it is unlikely
they would have used it in a solemn funerary inscription. I think <phoke> is
most likely a preterit, though I can't prove it.

> The gap between <naphoth> and
><nefts> has already been commented on.  Neither <z> nor <f> occur in
>this short fragment (and how would Lemnian have rendered <f>?), and
>Etr. <u> (no <o>) is Lemnian <o> (no <u>) [this might merely be an
>orthographic issue, in view of Morina=Murina].

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. Not having the sign
8 (transcribed <f>), the Lemnians might have used the digraphs FH or HF
(transcribed <vh>, <hv>) as in Etruscan of the VII cent. BCE, or they might
have used phi (again hypodifferentiating, as later Greeks did with Latin
<f>). The phoneme <f>, however written, is not common in Archaic Etruscan
and its absence from known Lemnian texts is not surprising. If /o/ and /u/
are not phonemically distinct, their representation is initially a matter of
taste, subsequently one of custom. These are all orthographic issues. What
they indicate is that the Lemno-Tyrrhenians acquired the alphabet
independently of their relatives in Etruria. No sweeping conclusions about
phonologic divergence should be attempted.

> 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'! 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'.

> In sum, I see little reason to think that Lemnian
>differs only trivially from Etruscan, despite the fact that it is
>clearly related to it.

Whoa! I didn't intend by the term "dialect" to imply that the differences
between Lemnian and mainland Archaic Etruscan should be dismissed as
"trivial". The Lemnian stele fills in some of our knowledge of Archaic
Etruscan, for example by providing the Archaic form of the decile suffix,
which is unattested in Italy. From the comparative standpoint Lemnian is an
*effective* dialect of Archaic Etruscan, whatever its *functional* status
might have been in terms of mutual intelligibility with the Etrurians.

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.

DGK