John of oko:
>The result of my approach produced verifiable result, which is 180
>degrees out of phase with the accepted linguistic methodology.
What the hell is John saying here? He feels guilty and admits to linguistic
hodgepodgery and yet is at peace with his irrationality?
At any rate, for those that are more serious about Etruscan, I finally found
the reference that mentions the "archaic Etruscan genitive" in -n that
Miguel was fighting against.
"Etruscan Language - An Introduction" by Giuliano & Larissa Bonfante.
Examples include lautn "family" (gen. lautun) and puia "wife" (gen. puian).
It would appear to correlate best with Mid IE *-am (IE *-om).
I also suspect that the s- and l- genitives might have had an internal and
external meaning respectively in IndoTyrrhenian, if not in Etruscan itself.
The above book also mentions that the "active present" is either unmarked or
marked with /-a/. I've been wondering for a month now whether this is not a
preserved conjugational opposition between non-stative (unmarked) and
stative verbs (with /-a/). My suspicion is based on a projection of
IndoTyrrhenian grammar: non-stative 3ps in *-e and unmarked stative 3ps,
possibly with added a-grade. Eg: 3ps non-stative *kWere /cara/ versus 3ps
stative *kWar /car/. Just a thought anyways.
To boot, my IndoTyr. perfective ending *-k:e- (Etruscan /-ce/) would appear
to be better reconstructed as a full-fledged postclitic *k:e (deriving
perhaps from Steppe *k:i "to leave") together with the potential *ne. I
believe I mentioned before that both are present in Uralic as *-ka and *-ne
with the same functions. IE has *-n- for IndoTyrrhenian *ne and IE might
have *-g- fossilized to some verb stems (maybe?). The Bonfantes explain
Etruscan /-na/ as an "active future" but I'm not so sure that Etruscan was
truely tensual. Potentiality is related to futurity however so who knows.
I'll get John's post and Sumerian soon... as well as others. I have to
sleep.
- gLeN
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