--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...>
wrote:
>
> Reig Vidal over at Substrate, explained that
> Lusitanian is linked archeologically to the Bell
> Beaker Culture.
> I'm not sure if he's on this list but I hope, so he
> can elaborate.
> Does anyone know that this link to be certain?
> As we know, Lusitanian resembles both Celtic and
> Italic but, unlike Celtic, maintained /p/. Until Reig
> posted, my guess was that it came from somewhere
> around the Alps, perhaps N. Italy before passing into
> Spain and that it was probably the same language that
> Coromines referred to as Sorotaptic and others
> (including Lapesa, I think --unless he was citing
> someone else) termed Ligurian or Illyrian.
> Reig explained that Bell Beaker culture was from N.
> Germany, Benelux, etc. and that's what I had seen but
> Wikipedia has it all over W Europe.
> The dates are about a 1,000 years earlier than what I
> would have expected for Lusitanian. Given its
> closeness to Celtic and Italic, I would have expected
> that it entered shortly before Celtiberian was
> established in Iberia. Maybe c. 1,000 BCE.
> I'll you all answer this
>
Bell-Beaker culture spread so rapidly across western Europe that the
starting point is hard to determine. If it started in the Low
Countries, and if we accept Kitson's deduction that the Beaker Folk
spoke "Alteuropäisch", the Indo-European language of Krahe's river-
name system, then we might expect Kuhn's "Nordwestblöckisch" to be
the language spoken by the descendents of those Bell-Beaker tribes
who stayed at home, the NWB enclave being overrun first by Celtic,
then by Germanic languages.
Bell-Beaker remains found in historically Lusitanian-speaking areas
do not necessarily mean that Lusitanian descends from Alteuropäisch.
In fact B.M. Prósper, "The Inscription of Cabeço das Fráguas
Revisited. Lusitanian and _Alteuropäisch_ Populations in the West of
the Iberian Peninsula", _Transactions of the Philological Society_
97:151-83 [1999] has argued that Lusitanian was not only distinct
from Alteuropäisch, but borrowed basic elements of vocabulary from an
Alteuropäisch dialect which, like most, converted PIE */o/ to /a/.
Here the devil is in the details. Prosper's argument that the
dedication of Talavan, MVNIDI EBEROBRIGAE TOVDOPALANDAIGAE, contains
the Alteuropäisch *palanta: is convincing, particularly since the
inscription was found near the brook now called Palanto. But I see
no reason to presume that Lusitanian borrowed *palanta: as an
appellative 'flowing water, watercourse, brook', leading to Prósper's
translation 'to the deity of Eberobriga, the brook of the village'.
I find it much more plausible that *Palanta: was taken over here as a
local proper hydronym, and that the community of Lusitanians who
settled here called themselves *Touta: Palanta:s 'People of the
Palanta' or the like. Their adjective for themselves,
*Toutopalanta:ikos, would be formed like Latin <Forojuliensis>, the
term for an inhabitant of Forum Julii. By Roman times, voicing
of /t/ and /k/ between resonants in the local dialect is indicated by
the inscription, which I think is better translated as 'to the deity
of Eberobriga of the people of the Palanta', distinguishing this
Eberobriga (apparently Celtiberian 'Yewhill' vel sim.) from other
places of the same name, and showing the stratification of Latin on
Celtiberian on Lusitanian on Alteuropäisch.
Similar considerations apply to the dedication of Perales del Puerto,
PALANTICO, which can be understood as 'to the god of (the brook)
Palanta'; there is no need to presume that Lusitanian borrowed
*palanta: as an appellative 'brook'. In her analysis of the Cabeço
das Fráguas text, Prósper goes even further and presumes that
Lusitanian borrowed Alteur. *pala: 'flowing water, stream' (from PIE
*pel- 'to flow') as an appellative and incorporated it into the
divine name Trebopala, which she interprets as 'pond/brook of the
village'. Now, we do have Alteur. *Pala: as a river-name (though
apparently not in the Iberian peninsula). Palà in Lithuania, Pola in
Russia, and Fala in Norway are cited (see e.g. H. Krahe, "Sprachliche
Aufgliederung und Sprachbewegungen in Alteuropa", Abh. Akad. Wiss.
Lit. in Mainz, Jg. 1959, pp. 1-24, esp. 11). However, if the penult
is long, Trebopa:la could refer instead to the goddess who feeds and
protects the village, the second element *pa:lo- being from PIE *peH2-
, *pa:- (cf. Sanskrit <-pa:la-> 'shepherd'); in fact, this sort of
objective compound 'Village-Feeder' is much more plausible as a
divine epithet than a possessive compound 'Village-Brook'. Thus
there is no good reason to conclude with Prósper that Trebopala is a
hybrid, or that Lusitanian was in sufficiently close synchronous
contact with Alteuropäisch to borrow everyday common nouns from it.
Despite its retention of inherited /o/ and final /m/, Lusitanian
shows some striking affinities to Illyro-Japygian. In the CdF text,
ICCONA appears to be the name of the goddess equivalent to the
Gaulish Epona, in the dative case. Thus Lusitanian has *ikko- from
PIE *H1ek^wo- 'horse', just as Messapic and Q-Illyrian had *(h)ikko-
(Tarentine and Epidaurian <íkkos>) and P-Illyrian had *(h)ippo-
(mainstream Greek and Macedonian <(h)íppos> is best taken as a P-Ill.
loanword; the inherited Greek root likely appears in <Epeiós>,
builder of the Trojan Horse, Il. 23:665, Od. 8:493, etc.). I have
argued elsewhere that PIE *H1e- was reflected in Illyro-Japygian as
*hi-, which allows the Messapic prefix <hipa-> to be equated with
Greek <epi-> in its first element. Loss of initial /h/ in
Lusitanian, if there was one, is trivial. Messapic also has /a:/-
stem datives in <-a> (presumably /-a:/ from */-a:i/), e.g. APRODITA
in several dedicatory inscriptions. Furthermore, Messapic regularly
produces a geminate when a consonant is followed by the palatal
approximant [y] plus a vowel; thus Mess. ORRA on coins, Lat. <Uria>,
and numerous personal names in -CCes from *-Cyos (see e.g. J.
Whatmough, _The Prae-Italic Dialects of Italy_ [1933], v. 2, p.
603). In the CdF text we have LOIMINNA following ICCONA, evidently
an adjective in the fem. dat. sg. agreeing with it, very plausibly
from *loiminya:i, and LABBO (the v.l. LAEBO is unlikely since the
following word is spelled COMAIAM) can be understood as a neut. dat.
sg. with instrumental force (see below) from *labyo:i.
In reading the CdF text, I agree with most of Prósper's analysis, but
disagree with her on several particulars. I think the conjunction
INDI should not be read simply as 'and', but as 'and then'
or 'thereupon', like Latin <inde>, which I take to be its direct
cognate, both reflecting *H1en-dhi. The ritual description is
divided into three stages by two INDI's, but the middle stage has two
parts, each specifying one victim presented to one deity, joined
asyndetically. That is, the weak conjunction 'and' is simply implied
(as also in Faliscan texts).
Prósper's equation of the fem. acc. sg. COMAIAM with the Umbrian fem.
acc. pl. <kumiaf>, <gomia> 'pregnant', and with Latin
<gumia> 'glutton, gourmand', is brilliant. Orthographic <c> for
both /k/ and /g/ is no problem, since no distinct <g> appears in this
text. Prósper does have a problem (pp. 177-8) with the apparent lack
of concord between PORCOM and COMAIAM, but this problem is illusory.
The archaizing Latin of epic poetry and old laws has "lupus femina"
and "agnum feminam", and in fact modern Italian uses the same device
with "ghiro femmina" and the like. Thus Lusit. <porkos> or
<porgos> 'pig' (the voiced acc. sg. PORGOM being cited from Lamas de
Moledo) can be understood as having common gender, as Lat. <lupus>
and <agnus> once did, and It. <ghiro> still does. Prósper suggests
that LABBO could be an inst. sg. cognate with Lat. <labor> 'burden'.
I suspect that Lusitanian, like classical Greek (and very likely
Messapic) had merged the inst. and dat. case-endings, and that LABBO
is a dat. sg. with instrumental function. The protoform *labyom can
hardly mean 'lip' as in Latin, but I am skeptical about a connection
with <labor> as well. Context demands the sense 'group of fetuses'
and it might be more plausible to relate this word to Greek <la(m)b-
> 'to take, hold, receive', of a woman, sometimes 'to conceive'.
On LOIMINNA, I regard Prósper's derivation from PIE *lei-m-, *loimo-
(English <loam>, Latin <li:mus>, etc.) as very likely correct, the
adj. *loiminyo- here meaning 'pertaining to the earth' or the like.
In apposition with ICCONA, this makes perfect sense, since the
sacrifice of a pregnant sow was known to the Romans as a propitiation
after an earthquake. Thus we may understand ICCONA LOIMINNA as 'to
Iccona the goddess of the earth' vel sim.
Prósper passes over IFADEM almost in silence, accepting Tovar's
explanation of a deverbative adjective from PIE *eibh-, *yebh-
'futuere' agreeing with TAVROM. I have a lot of trouble with that.
The morphology is inexplicable, and the <f> sticks out like a sore
thumb in the first place. If we correct the <f> to a <p> (the
inscription being on a mountainside and subject to weathering), the
resulting IPADEM is strikingly similar to HIPADES, a verb found in
several Messapic dedicatory inscriptions whose contexts demand a
third-person singular past tense. Whatmough (p. 609) regards this
and several similar forms as sigmatic aorists, evidently with the
3sg. inflection lost by apocope. I find it simpler to take this verb
as an athematic aorist. As explained above, I see Mess. <hipa-> as
equivalent to Greek <epi->, and here I take <-des> as equivalent to
Grk. <éthe:ke> 'placed'. The morphological correspondence is not
perfect, since Messapic has no augment and no kappatic extension in
this verb. The Mess. <-des> (I understand /de:s/) corresponds better
in form to Grk. <ébe:> 'went'. Greek has dropped the 3sg. secondary
ending -t which Sanskrit retains. To get -s, one possibility is that
the primary 3sg. ending -ti was substituted for the secondary -t at
some point in the history of Messapic, and then assibilated. (This
is no more outlandish than the substitution of primary -t (from *-ti)
for secondary -d (from *-t) in Latin, so that <sied> and <feced>
became <siet> and <fecit>.) In Messapic, we would expect the
corresponding first-person sg. to be *hipaden, since final /m/
regularly becomes /n/, as in Greek. But in Lusitanian final /m/ is
retained, and if my presumptions above are correct, initial /h/ is
regularly lost. Thus Lusit. IPADEM can be understood as the 1sg.
aorist corresponding to the 3sg. Mess. HIPADES, whose meaning is
etymologically 'placed' (something) 'upon' (someone), but in
practice 'dedicated' (something) 'to' (someone, specifically a
deity), as we see in the examples:
DAXTA MOROANA APRODITA HIPADES
'Dachta Moroana dedicated (this) to Aphrodite'
PLASTAS MOLDATÈEHIAIHI BILIA ETÈETA HIPADES APRODITA
'Plasta Moldatthehias' daughter Ettheta dedicated (this) to Aphrodite'
My translation of the CdF text follows. I have no problem with
Prósper's explanations of OILAM, VSSEAM, and REVE. Her attempt at
etymologizing TREBARVNE (a divine name, probably masc., in the dat.
sg.) is forced, but I have no better ideas, so I leave it alone. I
take IPADEM as the verb governing all four dedicated victims.
OILAM . TREBOPALA .
'A lamb to Trebopala,
INDI . PORCOM . LABBO . COMAIAM .
and then a sow, swollen with conceived (offspring),
ICCONA . LOIMINNA .
to Iccona, goddess of the earth,
OILAM . VSSEAM . TREBARVNE .
(and) a yearling lamb to Trebaro,
INDI . TAVROM . IPADEM [.] REVE . [RE ...]
and then a bull I dedicated to the River ...'
It is not clear to me whether this inscription records a single
event, or is intended to serve as an instruction for the performance
of an annual event. In the latter case, presumably the priest would
perform the sacrifices in the prescribed order, and would then read
the text aloud to complete the ceremony. But without the tail end of
the text, it is hard to say.
Douglas G. Kilday