--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:
>
> Tell us more about North Picene.
>
> ________________________________
> From: dgkilday57 <dgkilday57@...>
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2012 9:19 PM
> Subject: Re: [tied] fortis , f- >>
>
> [...]
>
> I was thinking of <frast> from the oil-lamp. The word transcribed <frontac> is North Picene, as pointed out by Alessio, who recognized that the text of Pesaro is trilingual, not bilingual.
>
I was hoping to have something postable by today, but it will take another week or two, probably more if I cannot escape dealing with secondary aspiration in Balkan-Illyrian and Messapic as well as North Picene itself.
Wikipedia and similar sources regard N. Pic. as unclassified, with a corpus consisting of the Novilara stele and three short fragments from the Pesaro area. This view neglects <frontac> (or properly <brontag>) from the Cafatius epitaph of Pesaro, which I consider our one N. Pic. gloss. Taken with other evidence, this leads to a plausible classification of N. Pic. as Illyrioid, closely related to Messapic but more conservative on several points.
Whatmough drew a possible parallel between <frontac> and <tenag> from the Novilara stele, which amounts to suggesting that <frontac> is indeed N. Pic. not Etruscan, but he drew a similar parallel between <trutnvt> and words in -u't on the stele, which I believe must be rejected. Since <trutnuth> is attested in Tarquinii, we are best served by considering <trutnvt> a late form of a native Etr. compound. Pisani likewise took <trutnvt> as Picene, wrongly in my view. Alessio rightly saw <frontac> as the only N. Pic. word in the Cafatius text, and correctly (in my opinion) explained the vexed gloss <frontesia> 'ostenta' of Pseudo-Placidus, but his etymological fishing expeditions (as usual) obscured the useful results of his research; further he failed to consider how <frontac> should fit into N. Pic. phonology, which I believe forces us to read <brontag>.
I have yet to see a satisfactory published explanation of aspiration in Balkan-Illyrian and Messapic. Several years ago when I addressed Iccona, I proposed that PIE *h1e- became Illyro-Lusitanian *hi-, with the aspiration lost in Lusitanian. I think this idea can be extended to other aspirates, with Mess. <Theotor> reflecting *teh1u- (as in *te:uta: 'people'); one must postulate laryngeal metathesis, *teh1u- > *th1eu- > *tHeu- (*tHiu-?). Likewise B.-Ill. <Chaones>, Mess. <Cho:nes> probably reflect a metathesized laryngeal (but I have not identified a plausible IE root). Since theta appears alongside tau and delta in N. Pic., it seems likely that the aspiration there also came from this mechanism, but I have not worked out details applicable to the vocabulary.
I apologize for the sketchiness of the foregoing. My forthcoming longer post will have details and references.
DGK