Miguel:
> Perhaps. But what's the pattern?
I already said it but let's say something explicitly:
Tyrrhenian *x > EtruscoLemnian *kH, or *w intervocalically or when
following a resonant. The accompanying /v/ after /cH/ in the plural
might be explained as the reflex of the following *o in Tyr *-xo.
Thus *s'ayalxo-ise 'of sixty' > EtrLem *s'ayalxu-ise > Lemnian
/s'ialcHveis'/.
> Patronymics (larisalis'vla, larthialis've, etc.), i.e.
> (human) animates.
Oh right. I thought I saw that somewhere before. That actually
makes sense. As much sense as animate collectives in IE. This
would be one lingering vestige of an earlier use of the 'inanimate
plural' as a collectivizer as is evident from the IE data. The
same use of this collective ending exists in IE to denote animate
collectives as well as inanimate ones. Didn't I just finish saying
that the IE feminine in *-ax is a result of this animate collective?
In other words, I'm saying that this ending was originally a
collectivizer, not exactly a plural ending. The plural was marked by
*-es in IndoTyrrhenian but only on _animate_ nouns. Inanimate nouns
were left unmarked for plurality. We're seeing Tyrrhenian innovating
here by using *-xo as an inanimate counterpart in parallel fashion with
its neighbouring sister IE which also used *-x primarily for inanimates.
This may in fact be an areal feature dating to the time IE was still
developping and when Tyrrhenian was just to its west.
So... We'd originally have a collective in *-xo that came to be
used as an inanimate plural in Etruscan to fill in the blank. At what
point this would have happened is speculation but perhaps this is
specifically an EtruscoLemnian innovation. It seems Minoan only uses
a plural in -r(o) from the texts I see and if Etr /un-cHva/ relates
to /una-r(o)/ and both meaning "libations" then it shows that Minoan
was using the same plural for both genders (presumably because it had
lost the gender contrast altogether).
= gLeN