Piotr:
>There are also all those North and South Etruscan dialectal
>forms, like -s'a or -sa rather than -s, and "double
>genitives" like Vel-us-la 'of Vel's (son)'.
The Etruscan /s/ was subject to dialectal palatalisation, so there's nothing
mindboggling about /-s'a/ versus /-sa/. We see this palatalisation in the
nominative /-s/ ending too, if I recall. You may note that I reconstruct one
of the IndoTyrrhenian genitives as *-se (*e being schwa) and the honorific
nominative postclitic *se. This forces me to reconstruct nothing other than
ProtoTyrrhenian *-se for the genitive (with final _front_ vowel), identical
with the honorific nominative. The genitive forms in /-s/ might be the
result of strong initial stress or Etruscan vowel-economy. Either way, I
expect the vowel to be there for another reason. The final vowel is required
in order to explain the accentuation of the IE genitive ending.
As for /Vel-us-la/, you're refering to the complementary distribution of the
genitives again. You misunderstand. I don't resist that reasoning. In
Etruscan itself, it would appear that the endings were identical in meaning,
true. However, again, surely the two genitives were not from a single source
and always with the same meaning. This just can't be logically so.
- gLeN
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