From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 3490
Date: 2000-08-30
----- Original Message -----From: ARKURGAL@...Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2000 4:34 AMSubject: [tied] Re: Lusitanians
One more information: it seems that Lusitanic exchanges the IE D for R. So, the greatest Deity in Lusitanian Pantheon would be REVA, form the IE DYEUS-. Now, according to an eastern oriental author, that characteristic is also found in the Umbrian language, which is Italiot.This doesn't look plausible. The Umbrian change of *d into a consonant spelt "rs" (some kind of d-rhotacism and/or spirantisation) took place only intervocalically and, by analogy, in *d-final prefixes even before a consonant (*idem > erse[m], *ad-fertur > arsfertur). I can't recall any Umbrian inscription containing a form of *djeu-, but in Oscan texts we have e.g. diuvei and deivai = Latin Iovi, divae (Dat.sg.). Confusingly, in the Oscan alphabet the letter R had the phonetic value [d] and the delta-like letter D had the value [r], so that these words were spelt RIV.FEI. and REI.FAI. (actually right to left). Lusitanians, however, used the normal Roman script, not Oscan.All I said was what I've read once about the subject, regarding the closeness between Thracian, Illyrian and Hellenic. Don't they belong to a given group, within the indo-european family?They don't seem to cluster together as a genetic grouping, but since they were all spoken in the Balkan Peninsula and the adjoining regions, some linguistic features and numerous loanwords were certainly traded back and forth between Hellenic and Illyrian or Thracian.Piotr