Re: [tied] etruscan

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 5266
Date: 2001-01-02

Rhaetic texts have been interpreted only fragmentarily (the corpus is lamentably small and consists mostly of brief votive inscriptions), but what has been found out so far about Rhaetic word-formation and inflections suggests a probable relationship with Etruscan. A number of words with apparent Etruscan cognates have also been identified (though some of them may be loans). Lemnian is certainly related to Etruscan, and so probably to Rhaetic as well.
 
As for the question (raised by Mark, I think) whether "Lemnian" was actually used by the natives of Lemnos, the answer seems to be positive. The Lemnos Stele is not the only local monument of Lemnian. In 1928 inscribed pottery fragments with Lemnian words on them were discovered by Italian archaeologists working on the island. The current majority opinion is therefore that the language recorded on the stele was indeed the native language of Lemnos before the island was conquered by the Athenians (in the 6th c. BC).
 
As for the reason why the Etruscans called themselves the Rasna, one popular (but highly speculative) theory is that Rasna is a late developments of *trus-ena-/*turs-ena- (cf. Turseno-, Tyrrheno-) from *trusia (Latin E:tru:ria, E:truscus < *trus-(i)ko-, with a prothetic vowel, beside Tu(r)sci:, Thusci:, Tuscia, Tusca:nus [hence Toscany], tusce: 'in the Etruscan language'). For all I know, Rasna may be an alternative name, not necessarily related to *turs-ena-, though presumably containing the same ethnonymic suffix.
 
Piotr
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Max Dashu
To: cybalist@egroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 02, 2001 3:14 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] etruscan

What's the basis for linking Rhaetic and Lemnian?