Tyrsenian languages

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Tyrrhenian languages
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Tyrsenian
Tyrrhenian
Geographic
distribution
Pre-Indo-European, Paleo-European, language family
Subdivisions
GlottologNone
Approximate area of Tyrsenian languages

Tyrsenian (also Tyrrhenian or Common Tyrrhenic),

Paleo-European.[3][1][4][5]

Classification

See also:
Lemnian, and Camunic language
Tyrrhenian language family tree as proposed by de Simone and Marchesini (2013)[6]

In 1998 the German linguist

Rhaetic language of the southern Alps, and the Lemnian language, only attested by a small number of inscriptions from the Greek island of Lemnos in the Aegean Sea.[7]

Rix's Tyrsenian family is supported by a number of linguists such as Stefan Schumacher,[8][9] Carlo De Simone,[10] Norbert Oettinger,[11] Simona Marchesini,[6] or Rex E. Wallace.[12] Common features among Etruscan, Raetic, Lemnian have been found in morphology, phonology, and syntax.[13] On the other hand, few lexical correspondences are documented, at least partly due to the scant number of Raetic and Lemnian texts and possibly also to the early date at which the languages split.[1][13]

History

Tyrsenian was probably a

Paleo-European language family predating the arrival of Indo-European languages in Europe.[3][4][5] Helmut Rix dated the end of the Proto-Tyrsenian period to the last quarter of the 2nd millennium BC.[14] Carlo De Simone and Simona Marchesini have proposed a much earlier date, placing the Tyrsenian language split before the Bronze Age.[6][15][16] This would provide one explanation for the low number of lexical correspondences.[1]

In 2004

gentilicia. From around 400 BCE, the Rhaeti became isolated from the Etruscan area by the Cisalpine Celts, thus limiting contacts between the two languages.[17] Such a late datation has not enjoyed consensus, because the split would still be too recent, and in contrast with the archaeological data, the Rhaeti in the second Iron Age being characterized by the Fritzens-Sanzeno culture, in continuity with late Bronze Age culture and early Iron Age Laugen-Melaun culture. The Raeti are not believed, archeologically, to descend from the Etruscans, as well as it is not believed plausible that the Etruscans are descended from the Rhaeti,[18] while the relationship between the Etruscan and Raetic languages is thought to date back to a remote stage of prehistory.[18]

After more than 90 years of archaeological excavations at Lemnos, nothing has been found that would support a migration from Lemnos to Etruria or to the Alps where Raetic was spoken. The indigenous inhabitants of Lemnos, also called in ancient times Sinteis, were the Sintians, a Thracian population.[19] While the results of the previous excavations indicate that the Early Iron Age inhabitants of Lemnos could be a remnant of a Mycenaean population and, in addition, the earliest attested reference to Lemnos is the Mycenaean Greek ra-mi-ni-ja, "Lemnian woman", written in Linear B syllabic script.[20][21] Scholars such as Norbert Oettinger, Michel Gras and Carlo De Simone think that Lemnian is the testimony of an Etruscan commercial settlement on the island that took place before 700 BC, not related to the Sea Peoples.[22][23][24] Alternatively, the Lemnian language could have arrived in the Aegean Sea during the Late Bronze Age, when Mycenaean rulers recruited groups of mercenaries from Sicily, Sardinia and various parts of the Italian peninsula.[25]

A 2021 archeogenetic analysis of Etruscan individuals, who lived between 800 BC and 1 BC, concluded that the Etruscans were autochthonous, and genetically similar to the Iron Age

Paleo-Sardinian and Minoan) "developed on the continent in the course of the Neolithic Revolution".[27] The lack of recent Anatolian-related admixture and Iranian-related ancestry among the Etruscans, who genetically joined firmly to the European cluster, might also suggest that the presence of a handful of inscriptions found at Lemnos, in a language related to Etruscan and Raetic, "could represent population movements departing from the Italian peninsula".[26]

Thera: in passing, he attributes the flight of Sintian
Lemnians to the island Kalliste to "Tyrrhenian warriors" from the island of Lemnos.

Languages

  • Etruscan: 13,000 inscriptions, the overwhelming majority of which have been found in Italy; the oldest Etruscan inscription dates back to the 8th century BC, and the most recent one is dated to the 1st century AD.[31]
  • Raetic: 300 inscriptions, the overwhelming majority of which have been found in the Central Alps; the oldest Raetic inscription dates back to the 6th century BC.[31][1]
  • Lemnian: 2 inscriptions plus a small number of extremely fragmentary inscriptions; the oldest Lemnian inscription dates back to the late 6th century BC.[31]
  • Camunic: may be related to Raetic; about 170 inscriptions found in the Central Alps; the oldest Camunic inscriptions dates back to the 5th century BC.[31]

Evidence

Cognates common to Raetic and Etruscan are:

Etruscan Raetic Gloss
zal zal 'two'
-(a)cvil akvil 'gift'
zinace t'inaχe 'he made'
-s -s -'s     (genitive suffix)
-(i)a -a -'s     (second genitive case suffix)
-ce -ku -ed   (past active participle)

Cognates common to Etruscan and Lemnian are:

  • shared dative-case suffixes *-si, and *-ale
    • attested as aule-si Etruscan 'to Aule' on the Cippus Perusinus inscriptions
    • attested as Hulaie-ši Lemnian 'for Hulaie', Φukiasi-ale 'for the Phocaean' on the
      Lemnos Stele
  • a past tense suffix *-a-i
    • -⟨e⟩ as in ame 'was' ( ← *amai) in Etruscan
    • -⟨ai⟩ as in šivai 'lived' in Lemnian
  • two cognate words describing ages
    • avils maχs śealχisc Etruscan 'and aged sixty-five'
    • aviš sialχviš Lemnian 'aged sixty'

Fringe scholarship and superseded theories

Aegean language family

A larger Aegean family including

Raetic languages. James Mellaart has proposed that this language family is related to the pre-Indo-European languages of Anatolia, based upon place name analysis.[3] From another Minoan branch would have come the Eteocretan language.[34][35] T. B. Jones proposed in 1950 reading of Eteocypriot texts in Etruscan, which was refuted by most scholars but gained popularity in the former Soviet Union. In any case, a relationship between the Etruscan language and Minoan (including Eteocretan and Eteocypriot) is considered unfounded.[2]

Anatolian languages

A relation with the Anatolian languages within Indo-European has been proposed,[a][37] but is not accepted for historical, archaeological, genetic, and linguistic reasons.[22][26][38][39][40][41][42][2] If these languages are an early Indo-European stratum rather than pre-Indo-European, they would be associated with Krahe's Old European hydronymy and would date back to a Kurganization during the early Bronze Age.

Northeast Caucasian languages

A number of mainly Soviet or post-Soviet linguists, including Sergei Starostin,[43] suggested a link between the Tyrrhenian languages and the Northeast Caucasian languages in an Alarodian language family, based on claimed sound correspondences between Etruscan, Hurrian, and Northeast Caucasian languages, numerals, grammatical structures and phonologies. Most linguists, however, either doubt that the language families are related, or believe that the evidence is far from conclusive.

Extinction

The language group seems to have died out around the 3rd century BC in the Aegean (by assimilation of the speakers to Greek), and as regards Etruscan around the 1st century AD in Italy (by assimilation to Latin).[44] The latest Raetic inscriptions are dated to the 1st century BC.[1]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Steinbauer tries to relate both Etruscan and Raetic to Anatolian.[36]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Marchesini, Simona. "Raetic". Mnamon.
  2. ^
    ISBN 978-88-430-9309-0
    .
  3. ^ a b c Mellaart, James (1975), "The Neolithic of the Near East" (Thames and Hudson)
  4. ^
    ISBN 9781444337341
    .
  5. ^
    ISBN 978-1-107-02379-6
    . Italy was home to a number of languages in the Iron Age, some of them clearly Indo-European (Latin being the most obvious, although this was merely the language spoken in the Roman heartland, that is, Latium, and other languages such as Italic, Venetic or Ligurian were also present), while the centre-west and northwest were occupied by the people we call Etruscans, who spoke a language which was non-Indo-European and presumed to represent an ethnic and linguistic stratum which goes far back in time, perhaps even to the occupants of Italy prior to the spread of farming.
  6. ^ a b c De Simone & Marchesini 2013.
  7. ^ Rix 1998.
  8. ^ Schumacher 1998.
  9. ^ Schumacher 2004.
  10. ^ De Simone 2011.
  11. ^ Oettinger 2010.
  12. ISBN 978-0-19-938113-5
  13. ^ a b Kluge, Sindy; Salomon, Corinna; Schumacher, Stefan (2013–2018). "Raetica". Thesaurus Inscriptionum Raeticarum. Department of Linguistics, University of Vienna. Retrieved 26 July 2018.
  14. ISBN 9780511486814
    .
  15. ISSN 0300-340X
    .
  16. S2CID 214398787
    . Retrieved 31 January 2020.
  17. ^ Van der Meer 2004.
  18. ^ a b Marzatico, Franco (2019). "I Reti e i popoli delle Alpi orientali" [The Networks and peoples of the Eastern Alps]. Preistoria Alpina [Alpine prehistory] (in Italian). Vol. 49bis. Trento: MUSE-Museo delle Scienze. pp. 73–82. Se resta il fatto che la documentazione archeologica smentisce in tutta evidenza un rapporto filogenetico fra Etruschi e Reti, visti anche fenomeni di continuità come nell'ambito della produzione vascolare di boccali di tradizione Luco/Laugen (fig. 8), non è escluso che la percezione di prossimità esistenti fra la lingua e la scrittura delle due entità etniche possano avere indotto eruditi del tempo a costruite "a tavolino" un rapporto di parentela.(...) [If the fact remains that the archaeological documentation clearly denies a phylogenetic relationship between the Etruscans and the Reti, also considering phenomena of continuity as in the sphere of the vascular production of traditional Luco / Laugen mugs (fig. 8), it is not excluded that the perception of proximity existing between the language and the writing of the two ethnic entities may have induced scholars of the time to build a kinship relationship "at the table". (...)]
  19. ISBN 978-960-9559-03-4
    .
  20. ^ [1], Word study tool of ancient languages
  21. S2CID 245265394
    .
  22. ^
    ISBN 9780195170726
    . 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 Kamania 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.
  23. ^ Carlo de Simone, La nuova Iscrizione ‘Tirsenica’ di Lemnos (Efestia, teatro): considerazioni generali, in Rasenna: Journal of the Center for Etruscan Studies, pp. 1–34.
  24. ISBN 978-0-691-04811-6
    .
  25. ^ De Ligt, Luuk. "An Eteocretan' inscription from Praisos and the homeland of the Sea Peoples" (PDF). talanta.nl. ALANTA XL-XLI (2008-2009), 151-172.
  26. ^
    PMID 34559560
    .
  27. ISBN 9780593229422
    . It's likely that Basque, Paleo-Sardinian, Minoan, and Etruscan developed on the continent in the course of the Neolithic Revolution. Sadly, the true diversity of the languages that once existed in Europe will never be known.
  28. Journal of Hellenic Studies
    , London: Council of the Society: 169–225, s. 16 (Pelasgians and Tyrrhenians)
  29. ^ Strabo, Lacus Curtius (public domain translation), translated by Jones, H.L., University of Chicago, And again, Anticleides says that they (the Pelasgians) were the first to settle the regions round about Lemnos and Imbros, and indeed that some of these sailed away to Italy with Tyrrhenus the son of Atys.
  30. ^ Herodotus, The Histories, Perseus, Tufts, 6, 137.
  31. ^ a b c d Marchesini 2009.
  32. ^ Raymond A. Brown, Evidence for pre-Greek speech on Crete from Greek alphabetic sources. Adolf M. Hakkert, Amsterdam 1985, p. 289
  33. ^ Facchetti 2001.
  34. ^ Facchetti 2002, p. 136.
  35. ^ Steinbauer 1999.
  36. ^ Palmer, Leonard R. (1965). Mycenaeans and Minoans (2nd ed.). New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
  37. ISBN 978-0-631-22038-1
    .
  38. ISBN 978-1-61451-520-3
    .
  39. ISBN 9781444337341
    .
  40. ISBN 9781780238623
    .
  41. ^ Penney, John H. W. (2009). "The Etruscan language and its Italic context". Etruscan by definition: the cultural, regional and personal identity of the Etruscans. Papers in honour of Sybille Haynes. London: British Museum Press. pp. 88–94. These further Anatolian connections are not very convincing, though the relationship between Etruscan and Lemnian remains secure. Before concluding that this still makes an eastern origin for Etruscan most likely, a further language with Etruscan affinities must be noted. This is Raetic, a language attested in some 200 very short inscriptions from the Alpine region to the north of Verona. Despite their brevity, a number of linguistic patterns can be recognised which point to a relationship with Etruscan."(....) The correspondences (of Etruscan) with Raetic seem entirely convincing, but it is important to note that there are differences between the languages too (for instance, the patronymic suffixes are similar but not identical), so that Raetic cannot just be seen as a form of Etruscan. As in the case of Lemnian, we have related languages belonging to the same family, so should we suppose that Proto-Tyrrhenian may have extended rather widely in prehistoric times? Certainly the introduction of Raetic into the argument, with the ensuing geographical complications, makes the notion of a straightforward migration of Etruscans from Asia Minor seem a little too simple. And it is not in the end clear that we can be sure that the Etruscans did come from outside Italy, at least in any period of which we can hope to give a historical account, whatever the romantic attractions of scenarios such as displacement in the wake of the Trojan War.
  42. ^ Starostin, Sergei; Orel, Vladimir (1989). "Etruscan and North Caucasian". In Shevoroshkin, Vitaliy (ed.). Explorations in Language Macrofamilies. Bochum Publications in Evolutionary Cultural Semiotics. Bochum.
  43. ^ Freeman, Philip. The Survival of Etruscan. p. 82

Sources
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