>HOw is to explain the
> "italic-character" for a language or a group of languages?
This debate arose in scholarly circles, when the status of Oscan and Umbrian
was being considered. Were they Italic langauges, or a different IE family?
It has been suggested that the similarities between the Latin-Faliscan group
and the Oscan-Umbrian group were late innovations due to "linguistic and
cultural interchange" (Baldi). So the jury is still out on whether there is
a "proto-Italic" from which all four languages come, or not.
Either way, those similarities include:
The spread of the ablative in -d to all nouns.
The organization of the noun system into five declensions.
The organization of the verb system into four conjugations.
The formation of an imperfect in -*bha- (possibly! It is not certain that
it occurs in O-U)
The fusion of the aorist and perfect tenses.
Fusion of the optative and subjunctive moods
Relative pronoun derived from teh interrogative
The formation of an imperfect subjunctive in -se
The merger of *bh, *dh as f in initial position.
But do remember that this is not a diagnostic list!
Peter