--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...>
wrote:
>
> --- etherman23 <etherman23@...> wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister
> > <gabaroo6958@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Although Etruscan had no voiced stops, or at least
> > its
> > > alphabet did not, there are Latin words with
> > voiced
> > > stops that purportedly came from Etruscan. Off the
> > top
> > > of my head, I can think of balteus, the source of
> > > English belt. Would these words have been more
> > likely
> > > to have originally been aspirated or non-aspirated
> > > stops in Etruscan or would it have been impossible
> > to tell?
> >
> > It's difficult to say. Etruscan often interchanged
> > aspirates and
> > non-aspirates. I haven't been able to spot any
> > patterns to it. I
> > wonder if aspiration was even phonemic.
> >
> Perhaps if someone has the wherewithal to do a thesis
> linking aspiration (and lack thereof) to specific
> times and places, they might find a pattern. Perhaps
> in the early stages, people did not master writing
> well enough and in the later stages, the language was
> so moribund they mangled the spelling. Sound facile
> but it could be true.
Aspiration was indeed phonemic in Etruscan. The word <thui> 'here'
is always written with theta, never like <tui> 'Tovius'. The word
<ci> 'three' is never written with chi, and its genitive <cis> is
minimally opposed to <chis>, a genitive with disputed meaning. The
principal question here is to what extent phonemic neutralization may
have taken place in non-initial position in Late Etruscan. In the
Liber Linteus, which appears to be a set of excerpts somewhat hastily
copied from an actual sacred text, probably for the use of a calator
rather than a priest, there are very few examples of intervocalic
aspirates. Indeed <sutanas'> seems to be the participle of a
postfixed verb whose simple imperative is <suth>, and <trutanas'a>
(with -a retained before h- in the next word) seems to have a similar
relation to <truth>. (The meanings can be reasonably inferred as
<suth> 'place!', <sutanas'> 'having placed out, having arranged' vel
sim., <truth> 'pour!', <trutanas'a> 'having poured out'.)
This matter is complicated by the passage of aspirates to fricatives
in some, most, or all late dialects, as shown by Latin RAMSA for the
Etr. fem. praenomen Ramtha. We know that intervocalic /f/ was
already voiced in the late-archaic Caeritan of ca. 500 BCE, as shown
by the Punic transcription TBRY?, not TPRY?, of Etr. Thefarie. If
later fricatives resulting from earlier aspirates were similarly
voiced in intervocalic position, then Lat. Geganius for Etr. Cechane
cannot be cited as evidence of phonemic neutralization. All it shows
is that Latin could not distinguish [g] from [G] and realized both
as /g/.
The closest thing to a thesis on this matter which I have seen is
A.M. Devine's paper in _Studi Etruschi_ ca. 1970. (My copy of the
paper is currently misplaced, as is a paper by M. Durante in AION-L
which I needed for my Messapic etymology of <catta>. Organization is
not one of my strong points.) If you have access to a library with
_Studi Etruschi_, Devine's paper is probably the place to start.
Douglas G. Kilday