In a message dated 07/01/04 01:39:03 GMT Standard Time,
etherman23@... writes:

> > At the very least you should find yourself a
> > copy of Pallottino's "Testimonia Linguae Etruscae"
> > ...
> I don't suppose there's an English version, is there?

As the book consists mostly of the inscriptions and
indexes in transliterated Etruscan, you won't need to
read much Latin, so you should be able to get by with a
dictionary. It isn't in print any more, so you will need to
find a copy in a library and photocopy it. Get the second
edition (1968). If you can find a copy of Massimo Pittau's
"Testi Etruschi" (Rome 1990), this lists most of the
inscriptions in the TLE together with translations and
discussions. (But you have to be able to read Italian).

> > There are more extensive
> > collections such as Fowler &Wolfe's "Materials for
> > the Study of Etruscan" (but beware of typos), or if
> > you want to spend 100 euros, Helmut Rix's
> > "Etruskische Texte" (Tübingen 1991). The best
> > Etruscan grammar is still by far, IMO, Joseph
> > Pfiffig's "Die etruskische Sprache" (Graz 1969).

> I might be able to slog my way through these if there
> are no English resources. My German, unfortunately,
> hasn't been used in 15 years and wasn't good to begin
> with. It's been tough finding info in English.

Yes, for any serious study of Etruscan you really need
to be comfortable with reading both Italian and German.
The best book available in English is Giuliano and
Larissa Bonfante "The Etruscan Language: An
Introduction" (Revised edition), Manchester 2002.

> Besides some lexical similarities there are other
> reasons to suspect a link between Etruscan and PIE.
>
> First person pronouns in m-
> Locatives in -i
> Genitives in -s (if this holds up)
> Enclitic "and" -c (<kwe)
> Ergative structure (early PIE was ergative)
> Demonstratives in -t-
> Anaphoric pronoun in i-
> Demonstrative in c- (from PIE relative pronoun in
> kw- ?)

These aren't as unique as you might think. Most of
these similarities, and a number besides, are shared
by Etruscan and NEC.

> Unfortunately, from a initial survey the verbal
> systems don't seem to have much in common.

No, the Etruscan verb isn't very reminiscent of IE.
However, the past tense (the thing we can be most
sure of in Etruscan grammar) looks for all the world
like the Hurro-Urartian postposition -kai ("before").
Just what you would expect people to do in situations
of intense language contact. And the noun declension
is agglutinative (like NEC), not flexional as in IE.

Best regards

Ed.