Paleo-Sardinian language

Paleo-Sardinian, also known as Proto-Sardinian or Nuragic, is an

There is toponymic evidence suggesting that the Paleo-Sardinian language may have had connection to the reconstructed

So e.g. sakkáyu, -a, sakkáġġu, -a is in Sardinian a lamb or a goat of a year or a year and a half; brings to mind the Aragonese segało, Catalan sagall, Béarnese sigàlo «goat of the same age», which my colleague Rohlfs combined with the Basque segaila «chèvre d'un an» which seems to be derived from the Basque sekail, segail «svelte», sakaildu «décharner, maigrir». Of course, not everything is equally certain, and the investigation must be continued and expanded. Naturally I am far from wanting to identify Sardinians and Basques, Sardinians and Iberians, I believe that one must always bear in mind that other influences may also have manifested themselves, long-standing Mediterranean influences, Ligurian and perhaps even Alpine influences. Certain coincidences between Sardinian and Albanian are also notable.

— Max Leopold Wagner, Osservazioni sui sostrati etnico-linguistici sardi, 1933^[2]

Massimo Pallottino, referring to various authors such as Bertoldi, Terracini and Wagner himself, highlighted the following similarities between Sardinian, Basque and Iberian:

Various Sardinian onomastic elements recall Iberian place names, not only in the roots (which often have a pan-Mediterranean diffusion) but also in the morphological structure of the words, for example: Sardinian: ula-, olla-; Iberian: Ulla; Sardinian: paluca, Iberian: baluca; Sardinian: nora, nurra, Iberian: nurra; Sardinian: ur-pe, Iberian: iturri-pe.

Added to this is a fact that, due to the number of concordances, cannot be considered casual and appears to be of the highest interest: the existence, that is, of specific analogies between elements of the lexical heritage of the Basque language and individual lexical relics or toponymic entries in Sardinia:

Examples: Sardinian: aurri (black hornbeam); Basque: aurri (name of tree) Sardinian: bitti (little lamb); Basque: bitin (little goat); Sardinian: golosti (holly); Basque: gorosti (holly) Sardinian: sgiàgaru (dog); Basque: zakur (dog); Sardinian: mògoro (height); Basque: mokor (clod, trunk); Sardinian: òspile (small enclosure); Basque: ospel (shady place) Sardinian: orri, orrui; Basque: orri (juniper) Sardinian: usai, useis; Basque: usi (forest);

The correspondences also extend to formative elements: for example -aga, which in Basque is used for toponyms with a collective meaning (harriaga-pile of stones from harri-stone) and which can explain the Sardinian type nuraghe compared to nurra (also the Iberian toponym Tarracone to the Sardinian maragoni).

— La Sardegna nuragica, Massimo Pallottino, Ilisso edizioni, 1950, p. 96.

Archaeologist Giovanni Lilliu hypotheized that the "Basque-Caucasian" idioms of the Bonnanaro culture replaced the previous languages of "pan-Mediterranean" type spoken by the preceding cultures.^[3]

Eduardo Blasco Ferrer concluded that it developed in the island in the Neolithic as a result of prehistoric migration from the Iberian Peninsula.^[4] The author in his analysis of the Paleo-Sardinian language finds only a few traces of Indo-European influences (*ōsa, *debel- and perhaps *mara, *pal-, *nava, *sala), which were possibly introduced in the Late Chalcolithic through Liguria.^[5] Similarities between Paleo-Sardinian and Ancient Ligurian were also noted by Emidio De Felice.^[6] According to Blasco Ferrer:

The results thus obtained have shed light on the true nature of the Paleo-Sardinian substratum, that is, of an agglutinative language, which shows clear structural correspondences with the Paleo-Hispanic languages, in particular with the reconstructed Paleo-Basque and with Iberian.[...] The investigation highlights for the first time the stratified components of the pre-Semitic (Phoenician-Punic) Paleo-Sardinian substratum, that is, a primary Paleo-Basque and Iberian component, plus two minor components, one Peri-Indo-European and one Paleo-Indo-European

— ^[7]

However for the linguist and

(Rohlfs).

The non-Latin suffixes -ài, -éi, -òi, -ùi survive in modern place names based on Latin roots. Terracini sees connections to

Sulcitani

, has also been identified as Paleo-Sardinian.

Several linguists, including Bertoldi, Terracini, Wagner and the Swiss Johannes Hubschmid,^[9] proposed various linguistic layers in prehistoric Sardinia.^[6] The oldest, pan-Mediterranean, widespread in the Iberian Peninsula, France, Italy, Sardinia and North Africa, a second, Hispano-Caucasian substrate, which would explain the similarities between Basque and Paleo-Sardinian, and, finally, a Ligurian substrate.^[6]

Etruscan–Nuragic connection

The linguist Massimo Pittau

Rhaetic language spoken in the Alps and to the language attested by a few inscriptions found on the island of Lemnos.^[12][13][14]

Some examples of Nuragic names of Indo-European origin might be:[15]

• calambusa «sprig of
  Greek
  kaláme «cane, stem» (Indoeur.).
• népide, nébide, nébida, nébidi "fog" (Barbagia and southern Sardinia); Sardian or Nuragic relict, to be compared – not derived – with the Greek néphos «fog» (Indoeur.) (LISPR).
• saurra «humidity of the night, frost, dew» (Log.), toponyms Saurrecci (
  Vedic rasá «dew» and with the Sanskrit
  rásah «humidity» (DELL) and therefore Indo-European. (corrige DILS, LISPR).

Some scholars, attribute to the Etruscan element or, better, to a "Rhaetian-Etruscoid" strand the suffix -èna, that characterizes a series of toponyms attested in

Ogliastra), eg. Arzachèna, Lugulèna etc.^[16]

Other hypothesis

Archeologist Giovanni Ugas suggested that the three main Nuragic populations (Balares, Corsi and Ilienses) may have had separate origins and so may have spoken different languages:

• the
  Beaker culture.^[17][18]
• The
  Ligurian
  origin.
• The Iolaei/Ilienses, who inhabited the southern plains and today's Barbagia, likely would have spoken a pre-Indo-European language, possibly similar to Minoan and other languages of that area.^[19]

The common subdivision of modern Sardinian into the three dialects of

Sarrabus region.^[21]

According to Guido Borghi, researcher of

Proto-Indo-European *Dʱĭhₓ-s-kə̥̥̆ₐ-lĭhₐ with the meaning of "the little (mountain) in the set of the territories which are in plain sight".^[22]

See also

• Paleo-Corsican language
• Pre-Nuragic Sardinia
• Nuragic civilization
• List of ancient Corsican and Sardinian tribes
• History of Sardinia
• Prehistory of Corsica

Notes

1. ^ Eduardo Blasco Ferrer, ed. 2010. Paleosardo: Le radici linguistiche della Sardegna neolitica (Paleosardo: The Linguistic Roots of Neolithic Sardinian). De Gruyter Mouton
2. ^ "Max Leopold Wagner, Osservazioni sui sostrati etnico-linguistici sardi" (in Italian). Retrieved 7 February 2023.
3. ^ Giovanni Lilliu, La civiltà nuragica 1982, p.25
4. ^ Blasco-Ferrer 2010, p. 161, 162.
5. ^ Blasco-Ferrer 2010, p. 152, 161, 162.
6. ^
   doi:10.35462/flv76.2
   . Retrieved 8 January 2023.
7. ^ Il libro dello studioso catalano sulle radici linguistiche del neolitico isolano Paleosardo, ecco quali sono le sue origini (in Italian), retrieved 27 February 2017
8. ^ Sulla Sardegna preromana, retrieved 2 February 2023
9. ^ Heinz Jürgen Wolf 1998, p. 20.
10. ^ Pittau, La lingua sardiana o dei protosardi, Cagliari 2001.
11. S2CID 243365116
    .
12. ISBN 978-0-521-56256-0
    .
13. S2CID 191436488
    .
14. ISBN 978-0-19-517072-6
    . Etruscan origins lie in the distant past. Despite the claim by Herodotus, who wrote that Etruscans migrated to Italy from Lydia in the eastern Mediterranean, there is no material or linguistic evidence to support this. Etruscan material culture developed in an unbroken chain from Bronze Age antecedents. As for linguistic relationships, Lydian is an Indo-European language. Lemnian, which is attested by a few inscriptions discovered near Kaminia on the island of Lemnos, was a dialect of Etruscan introduced to the island by commercial adventurers. Linguistic similarities connecting Etruscan with Raetic, a language spoken in the sub-Alpine regions of northeastern Italy, further militate against the idea of eastern origins.
15. ^ Massimo Pittau, Appellativi nuragici di matrice indoeuropea
16. ^ Mauro Maxia, Toponimi ricorrenti nel Mediterraneo occidentale, 2008, p.221-227
17. ^ Ugas 2005, p. 18.
18. ^ Ugas 2005, p. 29.
19. ^ Ugas 2005, p. 255.
20. ^ Ugas 2005, p. 253.
21. ^ Ugas 2005, p. 254.
22. ^ Ong & Perono Cacciafoco 2022, p. 14.

References

• Alberto G. Areddu, Le origini albanesi della civiltà in Sardegna, Naples, Grafica Elettronica, 2007.
• Blasco-Ferrer, Eduardo (2010). Paleosardo: Le radici linguistiche della Sardegna neolitica [Paleosardo: The Linguistic Roots of Neolithic Sardinian] (in Italian). De Gruyter Mouton.
• Johannes Hubschmid, Sardische Studien, Bern, 1953.
• Massimo Pittau. La lingua sardiana o dei Protosardi, Cagliari: Ettore Gasperini, 2001.
• Giulio Paulis, I nomi di luogo in Sardegna, Sassari, 1987.
• Giulio Paulis. "Il paleosardo: retrospettive e prospettive", Aion: Annali del Dipartimento di Studi del Mondo Classico e del Mediterraneo Antico — Sezione linguistica 30, no. 4 (2010): 11-61.
• Ugas, Giovanni (2005). L'Alba dei Nuraghi. Cagliari: Fabula editrice.
  OCLC 462763778
  .
• Heinz Jürgen Wolf (1998), Toponomastica Barbaricina, Nuoro
• Ong, Brenda Man Qing; Perono Cacciafoco, Francesco (2022). "Unveiling the Enigmatic Origins of Sardinian Toponyms". Languages. 7 (2): 131.
  hdl:10356/159558
  .