Etruscan / Pelasgian

[Douglas G Kilday]

philjennings at juno.com (27 Apr 2001) wrote:

>Dr. White also explains the wide dispersion of -assos names (like Tartessos)
>as possibly due to later Greek mediation.  It is in fact extreme to think of
>early Pelasgians in Spain.  But the name Tarhuntassa came and went before the
>Greeks came snooping very far into Asia Minor.  Some kind of pre-Greek
>dispersion really did happen.

Yes, this would be an extreme view. Tarte:ssos can hardly be of Pelasgian
origin. The suffix (if it is that) was probably reworked by Greeks to
conform to familiar toponyms like Hume:ssos.

>I am friendly to the idea of a dispersion of an originally unified linguistic
>community into Italy, Greece and Asia Minor.  I can see why those focused on
>Asia Minor might talk of Anatolians, and those focused on Greece might talk of
>Pelasgians.  I'm sure the people directly involved would have been surprised
>to hear themselves described by either term.

>Anatolian is sometimes held to be so early that it is on sister-sister terms
>with the entire remainder of IE.  Perhaps Pelasgian can have the distinct
>qualities Kilday gives it, if it is acknowledged as a third sister, close
>enough to Anatolian to be joined at the hip.  (Er, "joined at the assos?")

Well, I find the "three sisters" more appealing than the "right fork".
Presumably all three (Narrow PIE, Proto-Hittite, and Proto-Pelasgian)
originated somewhere north of the Black Sea. Pelasgians (sensu lato) were
the first to migrate SW around the Black Sea, leaving toponyms on the Danube
and phytonyms in pre-Dacian, then spreading west into south-central Europe
and east into coastal Anatolia and beyond.  Narrow IE-speakers expanded west
into central Europe and east into central Asia. Proto-Hittites must have
stayed put until the late 3rd mill. BCE, when they too came SW around the
Black Sea into Anatolia. (One thing missing from the debate on this list is
what speakers of "Anatolian IE" were doing before they intruded into
Anatolia, if indeed they did so.)

Linguistically, it should be noted that "Pelasgian" is much further removed
from "Narrow PIE" than "Anatolian IE" is. The failure of the "IE
Pelasgianists" (Georgiev, van Windekens, et al.) to convince anyone but
themselves is a strong reason _not_ to regard "Pelasgian" as a branch of IE.
Nevertheless, out of several hundred proposed "IE Pelasgian" etymologies,
about a dozen look like genuine cognates.

OTOH Etruscan is so far removed from anything looking like IE that I see no
hope of regarding it as a "fourth sister". As for the proposal that
Proto-Etruscan was a creole with non-IE lexicon and PIE grammar, how do we
explain the fact that Etruscan grammar is thoroughly non-IE?

DGK