Re: PIE voiced aspirates (?)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...>
wrote:

>
> --- dgkilday57 <dgkilday57@...> 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?
> >
> > <balteus> is a bad example because the ancients
> > oscillated between
> > Etruscan and Sabine in assigning it. In my opinion
> > <barginna> and
> > <balatro> are probably of Etruscan origin,
> > <batillum> possibly. But
> > the initial Etruscan sound here was /w/, which we
> > transcribe <v>. In
> > some dialects of Late Etruscan and Tuscan Latin, the
> > approximant closed
> > down to the voiced fricative [B] in initial
> > position, represented as
> > Latin <b>, while ordinary Latin still had [w]. Thus
> > while Volaterrae
> > (Etr. Velathri) is still Volterra, Volsinii Novi
> > (Etr. Velznal) has
> > become Bolsena, Vettona Bettona, and Visens
> > Bisenzio. A stream in the
> > Arno valley is called Biesina, from Etr. *Vlesina
> > 'Vlesi's creek'. And
> > a Latin inscription from Etruria, of the 1st cent.
> > BCE, has Baleria for
> > Valeria.
>
> That's interesting. So could /w/ > /v/ in Latin have
> originated under Etruscan influence?

I would be very reluctant to propose that. As others have pointed
out, this particular change is quite common in languages. In
Vespasian's reign, some Greek inscriptions render the emperor's name
with Besp- as opposed to the usual Ouesp-, so it appears that some
Greeks already heard Latin /w/ (presumably as uttered by legionaries)
as closer to a voiced approximant (or even a stop) than to a
semivowel. But I know of no evidence that the Tuscan Latin spelling
of Baleria, Baro, Barnaeus, etc. (some 100-150 years before
Vespasian) spread beyond its little enclave to the wider world of
Latin. It might be labeled a "precocious" example of [w] > [B]/[v]
but it is very likely detached from the general fricativization of
Latin /w/ which we observe later.

Douglas G. Kilday