My current archnemesis Ed:
>Look, I keep telling you I never suggested /ais/ < /*as/!
>It was somebody else. I *agree* with you!
Yes, yes, I know. I'm just saying it's idiotic to do so. But
'nuff said, we're in agreement.
>As for the dative, in Etruscan we often get
>
>X (male)-s Y (female)-l
>[...]
>X (male)-of Y (female)-of
>[...]
>Despite some enlightened attitudes to women compared with some other
>cultures of the time, the Aristotelian theory of reproduction >prevailed,
>[...]
Well, it's an interesting idea but it can't be a correct one since
instances of /Larthal/ or /Larthial/ (Larth is a _guy_) burst
your theoretical bubble. In fact, where are there instances of
*/Larths/? Sorry.
>upiku pheluriesi phelvinuale
>paniun laSuanuale upiku perunies sxaispala
>
>These are offerings *from* X *to* Y, or *made by* X *for* Y. Either way,
>we've got a dative.
Unless you can supply *full* translation of the above Rhaetic
texts, I'm not impressed. We both are in accord that the ending
-ale is relatable to Etruscan and Lemnian but any translation is
tentative given the few inscriptions that exist. All we can say
is that Rhaetic is related to Etruscan based on morphology.
>Back to Etruscan. Here's another one, a bronze statuette TLE 625:
>
>mi velS ati alce
>
>which Vel is giving to his mother. The relationship of -al (dative >suffix)
>and al- (verb 'to give') is obvious. This isn't like the >grammar of a
>flexional IE language, this is like a creole.
Etruscan is certainly not a creole any more than English. Saying
that it's obvious that the ending relates to the verb /al-/ is a
titanic overstatement. With your methodology, we may casually
connect the genitive of IE to *es- "to be" and say that _it_ is
a creole. In fact, we can state this about *any* language and
call it a creole. This is fundamentally absurd, as you can see.
This is not how comparative linguistics is done.
This is an excellent site on the Etruscan language. A nice
summary of grammar, including all _inflections_ (although
the website background is hideous):
http://kuijpers.terrashare.com/caere/language.htm
It mentions the possibility of /-n/ as the ending of the first
person. I remain cautious, accepting the possibility that any
pronominal endings might no longer exist in Etruscan. However
that doesn't stop me from suspecting the following paradigm:
active
*-n *-ma
*-r *-tha
*-e *-e
stative
*-a *-va
*-th *-tha
*-a *-a
From the above site, I just found out I'm wrong about *eis-... A
form *ais- might be more appropriate as the more archaic ending since
Etruscan /ai/ > /ei/ at a later date. Whatever.
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gLeNny gEe
...wEbDeVEr gOne bEsErK!
home:
http://glen_gordon.tripod.com
email:
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