>I agree, and the example was in fact meant to suport your claim that >the
>two genitives derive from different sources. I don't >"misunderstand"
>anything here;
Oops, I guess I'm talking about myself. I suppose I didn't get your jist
because I couldn't have imagined that you would support any of my loony
claims :)
>nor do I claim anywhere that the two endings are variants of the same
> >underlying morpheme.
I know. Just explicitly explaining how they could only have had distinct
functions sometime in the past. It wasn't an accusation.
>Their complementary distribution is interesting and should be >explained
>somehow, but surely not by phonological means. I'd rather >say that certain
>suffixes (-th, -is, -i, etc.) were combined with -al >for some historical
>reasons that had to do with the original function >of -al.
I agree with you, except that we might be dealing with more than just one
reason for the phenomenon. I don't recall seeing any examples of the _same_
case ending being used twice (*-sVs, *-lal) for the double genitive. So I
would say that Etruscan euphony plays a part in this, at least where double
genitives are involved (or perhaps also s-stems?).
As for the rest of the examples, the rule of which genitive to use is
obviously not dependant on any phonology as we know it. Now, let's take a
scenic tour through my hunch that there was an ancient internal and external
contrast of genitives, that is, a distinction between "from within" and
"from beside/next to/among".
The first thing to clarify is that the term "genitive" is a vague term that
varies in definition depending on which language you are speaking of. The
genitive might have an ablative meaning (that is, "from/of") or it might
serve to establish ownership ("belong to"). It's very vague. So, "from" and
"belong to" have to be seperated to understand things better here.
Okay, now imagine that there are three postclitics: *se, *la and *ta.
Imagine that *se is for the internal genito-ablative, *la is for the
external genito-ablative and *ta is the ablative. So we have three ablative
cases (internal *se, external *la and general *ta) together with two cases
denoting possession (internal *se, external *la). Thus:
*se has a meaning of:
"from within"
"belonging to"
*la has a meaning of:
"from beside/among/next to"
"belonging to"
We see two cases, both covering the meaning of "belonging to". Was there a
difference? If we compare the _ablative_ meanings of the postclitics, we
might arrive at a pattern for the _possessional_ meanings. The postclitic
*la because of its nature would be expected to be more used for collective
nouns, inanimates. The postclitic *se therefore would be used for everything
else and we might go so far as to say an _animate_ genitive (due also to the
identical *se being used as honorific nominative in Etruscan for gods
generally). So we have a theoretical animate/inanimate distinction between
-s and -l when it comes to possession at least.
Paolo Agostini's Etruscan website mentions that /-th/ is a "gentilicium"
marker (/Nula-th/ "those of the city of Nola") and alongside just below this
explanation is what appears to be a related marker *-n-th denoting "public
functions". This tells me that there's a definite "collective" nuance to
/-th/.
As for the -i in /ati/ "mother", I need more to go on. There is -iu being
used as a diminutive of course and we do see /atiu/ or /ativu/. Is -i short
for -iu? Is it a diminutive? A diminutive of */ata/ "father"? Is the
diminutive derived from a collective? The question is what the history of
-iu is and/or what is the history of /ati/? The act of using collective
markers for women is a feature seen in the big-bad patriarchal IndoEuropean
protolanguage. Is it a feature of Etruscan as well?
Just thoughts. Don't hang me.
- gLeN
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