Etruscan -na (was Re: [tied] Affects of ... etc.)

In a message dated 10/08/01 17:16:58 GMT Daylight Time,
glengordon01@... writes:

The genitive in Etruscan is not -(e)na. Instead,
we find /-sa/ and /-al/ (cf. /Larth/ and the genitive /Larth-al/),
similar to what is found in IndoEuropean.

You're being a bit hairsplitting, Glen. -na is the ending in Etruscan to form
adjectives expressing qualities *possessed by* or pertaining to their
headwords, while what you call the genitive has a wide range of functions, so
much so that some Etruscologists put "genitive" in inverted commas. It is
quite possible that -na derives from a genitive in Pre-Etruscan, while -s and
-l may have come from a previous ergative and dative respectively (as might
be expected in a language moving from ergative to accusative syntax). You
have no proof that the -s and -l endings have anything to do with anything in
IE.

Ed. Robertson