hi shaina; i don't know much about etruscan, but look at the article "the
scripts of italy" by larissa bonfante, in *the world's writing systems",
ed. by peter t. daniels and william bright, pp. 197-309 (NY: oxford u.
press, 1996). the sample etruscan inscription on p. 300 seems to show word
division regularly indicated by a raised dot.

the person who knows everything about etruscan is prof larissa bonfante,
classics dept, new york university, <lb11@...>. that's
"ell-bee-one-one."

>Hi, I have a couple of questions concerning Etruscan. The first one is whether
>or not there was a consistent method of separating words. The second question
>is: what was the structure of the Etruscan language (subject/ verb/ object,
>subject/ object verb, or something else entirely? I know it is a weird
>language to ask about, and I am aware that it is far from being fully
>understood, but I really need to find out more about it, and, even though I've
>managed to find a few glossaries and histories on-line, I haven't found an
>answer to these two questions. So if anyone here can help me, it will be
>greatly apreciated (I need as much information on that language as I can get
>right now).
>
>Thanks
>
>Shaina
--
William Bright
Professor Emeritus of Linguistics & Anthropology, UCLA
Professor Adjoint of Linguistics, University of Colorado, Boulder
Editor, Written Language and Literacy
Editor, Native American Placenames of the United States
1625 Mariposa Avenue, Boulder, CO 80302
Tel. 303-444-4274
FAX 303-413-0017
Email william.bright@...

William Bright's website: http://www.ncidc.org/bright