Ad infinitum a biography of latin
Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin
Too dry for a popular history, too lacking in rigor for an academic one. He also has a particular thesis, which makes the book rather awkward to read for anyone just looking for a historical narrative that isn't going out of its way to "prove" things.
The earlier chapters are perhaps the best, and the quality of the text just gradually decays once he moves pass the late antiquity.
E.
definately some peculiar views in places
He's got this conviction that English will just eventually wither and die, though he can't really formulate 'how' since the political or economic arguments lead to a dead end, but he grasps onto a highly optimistic view of machine translation.
And English, like Latin, won't be needed anymore, because we'll all have this flawless bablefish, even the airline pilots i suppose
or odd barbs that if the European Union, adopted latin, just think of the savings in translation costs
and being from the cult of Chomsky isn't exactly the most reassuring either.
it's a strange mix of cultural studies and language, and where opinions and facts merge, nobody knows
Not many reviewers have been bold enough to call this book out as 'mediocre pop-science' but i'm don't think it's all that far off the mark.
and I think there is some sloppy history going on within these pages.
It might be his 'pet theory' that hundreds/dozens of uncertain Latin words are from the Etruscian, but it doesn't make it true, or true to the extent he hints at sometimes
it is possible from the Etruscan/proto-Tuscans we have:
voltur - vulture
tuba - trumpet
vagina - sheath
populus - people
yet you have some words that seem to be Latin to Etruscan
nepos/nepotis (nephew) - nefts (also German neffe - Old Norse nefi)
And the Etruscan word for girl, talitha, comes from either Phoenecian or Greek
insightful is the thesis
STUDIES IN THE ETRUSCAN LOANWORDS IN LATIN
Margaret Mary Therese Watmough
ABSTRACT
In the political and cultural relations between archaic Rome and Etruria the Etruscans were not the speakers of a 'dominant language'.
Since Rome was not under Etruscan domination nor was there any prestige associated with the Etruscan language, the conditions under which large scale lexical borrowing takes place were absent.
A recent survey of the whole field is reviewed and its results are found to be uncertain or ill-supported; in it the constraints of space preclude the detailed treatment of individual words which is necessary if the nature of the influence of Etruscan on the Latin lexicon is to be fully understood.
This thesis deals with some specific problems in Etrusco-Latin interaction and in the Etruscan loanwords in Latin; a small number of words is treated in detail.
It is established that each word is on phonological and morphological grounds unlikely to be Indo-European.
Concrete reasons for suspecting Etruscan origin leads to an examination of morphological, phonological and semantic factors in the light of the Etruscan lexicon, word-formation and phonology.
Emphasis is placed on explaining the structure of the Etruscan source and the way in which it is naturalized in Latin.
In some cases the Etruscan source word is identified; in others it is shown that an Etruscan source is probable.
Data from the literary sources and archaeology are combined with linguistic and onomastic arguments,
The extent of Etrusco-Latin interaction in terms of the number of bilingual speakers was small; it is likely that the number of Etruscan loanwords in Latin is also small.
Hence a proposed Etruscan etymology for a Latin word of dubious origin must be examined critically.
The detailed analysis of individual words brings new results.
Problems and aims
Anyone researching Etruscan words in Latin must meet the same obstacles which faced Ernout, namely the lack of attention paid to Etruscan by the Roman grammarians
In the face of these difficulties and in view of the uncertain results obtained by Breyer, it is clear that the only way to make progress in the study of Etruscan loanwords in Latin is to research individual lexemes in the fullest detail; data from the fields of literature and archaeology and art must be combined with those of linguistics and onomastics.
The assumption of an Etruscan origin for a Latin word is worth little when it is not supported by strong evidence.
I intend, therefore, to concentrate on a small number of loanwords, which have the advantage not only of demonstrating various areas of contact between early Rome and Etruria, but also of exemplifying the existence of various types of Etruscan influence on the Latin lexicon.
Since the Etruscan lexicon is poorly known and semantic questions will rarely receive completely satisfactory answers, it is particularly important that a proposed Etruscan etymology for a Latin
word conforms to the known word-formation rules of Etruscan.
The proposed borrowing must also be culturally and historically plausible.
The goal of this work then is to show that detailed analysis of individual words can bring new results.
The identification of Latin/Sabel1ic loans in Etruscan is problematic, not least because our knowledge of the Etruscan vocabulary is limited.
There are two further difficulties.
Firstly, it is very difficult, and in many cases impossible, to demonstrate from which Italic language a loanword in Etruscan was borrowed.
Secondly, Latin/Sabel1ic origin must not be inferred for an Etruscan word on the basis of homophony; there should be clear semantic and phonological connections between the words in Etruscan and the donor language.
This difficulty has already been intimated in connection with Etr.
capra 'vessel name' beside Lat. capra 'she-goat'.
It is better exemplified by Etr. tular "Grenze, Gebiet" beside Umb. nom./acc. sg. tuder 'boundary' (discussed in detail by Meiser #70, cf. also Olzscha ).
Umb. tuder might go back to a form *tuler, which could have been the source of Etr. tular 'boundary'.
Etr.
tul 'stone'(?) is also attested, which could be
a) a native Etruscan word, to which the plural tular '(boundary) stones' > 'boundary' was formed, in which case there would be no connection with the Umbrian word, or
b) a back formation from Etr. tular (< Umb. sg. *tuler-, which was interpreted as a plural form).
The Etruscan origin of fenestra
Since the structure of fenestra is not understandable as IE, it can neither have been formed in Latin nor borrowed from another IE language.
The likelihood, therefore, is that Lat.
fenestra is a borrowing from a non-IE language.
An Etruscan etymology has recently been rejected both by Peruzzi <: "recourse to Etruscan is unwarranted"; he gives no account of the Etruscan evidence) and by Breyer ;
It is shown below that the root, the suffix and the structure of fenestra can in fact be explained as Etruscan.
One may begin by considering the evidence for fen(e)s- in Etruscan.
In Etruscan there is no attested form in *fen-/*fin-.
An Etruscan proper name in fnes-/ fni£- is attested thrice: Vs (rec.) dania: fnesci: ar; Cl
Gustav Herbig does not give a proper analysis of the Etruscan names.
He overstrains the evidence when on the basis of these Etruscan names in fnes-/fniS- he derives from Etruscan not only Lat.
fenestra < *fnes-tra, but also fenestella 'a small aperture in the wall of a building, vent, slit' and the cognomina Fenestella (name of a Roman historian of Augustan times; CIL XI , XII )
< *fnes-tla and Fenestellius
Herbig also considers it possible (but unlikely) that fenestella is a Latin derivative of fenestra (< *fenestt-la, cf.
agellus < *agf-los'>; this is certainly the case.
A connection need not be made with Etruscan in order to explain the origin of the Roman names; in Fenestella and the variant Fenestellius as in Fenesta (CIL X ) we see the cognominal use of fenestra and its derivative. fenestra may not seem appropriate as a personal name; we may compare, however, the cognomina Ianua, Murus (see Kajanto )
Laughable cognomina were not unknown among the Romans; another example is Sulla 'little calf'.
Hence in considering here the possibility of Etruscan influence on Latin we need concentrate only on the base noun fenestra.
It is, however, worth pausing over the term fenestella. records a story that Fortuna was wont to enter the house of Servius Tullius by a small window and hence a gate (location unknown) bears the name of 'little window': Fortuna nocte domum parva solita est intrare fenestra, unde Fenestellae noniina Porta tenet.
records the same story and the
alternative explanation that on the death of Tarquinius Priscus his wife Tanaquil, in addressing the people to persuade them to appoint Servius Tullius as king, put her head out of a window.
The importance of the story is twofold.
Firstly, it indicates the existence of Lat. fenestella and, therefore, fenestra in the regal period.
Secondly, as Herbig argues, since the Portae Capena and Ratumenna have Etruscan names, the name of the Porta Fenestella is likely to have an Etruscan origin too, cf. De Simone "La presenza a Roma ha lasciata anche tracce nella toponomastica. Sicuramente etrusco 6 il nome della porta Ratumena i-nna) (cfr. Ritumena, *Tarxumena, Tetumina ecc.>, che aveva per i Romani una connotazione culturale decisamente etrusca, in particolare veiente."
We must now return to the attested Etruscan names in fnes- /fniS-.
fnesci is, as the female praenomen Qania in Vs shows, a female gentilicium; the genitive form fnescial/ fniScial is a metronymic (see Rix a:##31, 55).
Our three inscriptions may be translated as follows: Vs 'Oania Fnesci (daughter of) Ar(n0)'; Cl '0ana Xeritnei (daughter of) Fnesci'; 'Au(le) VelOuri (son of) Fnesci'
Since Etruscan has other individual names (both praenomina and cognomina) in -ce such as thepraenomina rec.
lar-ce (< arc. lare-ce/lari-ce'), arc. feluske- (attested as a 'Vornamengenti 1icium' in Vn feluskeS), we may analyse *fnesce as *fnes + the suffix -ce.
Since praenomina are in origin appellatives, we may assume that *fnesce is in origin an appellative derived fromthe verbal(?)/ nominal (?) form #fnes.
The suggestion thenof Alessio that an Etruscan base form fnes- was amplified by two different suffixes to give on the one hand the personal name fnes-ci and on the other the substantive *fnes-tra requires a small qualification: fnesci is the feminine form of m.*fnes-ce\ the suffix -tra is discussed below.
Since the Etruscan (and Roman) letters were vocalized in /e/, the letter n could stand for /en/, the letter p for /pe/, the letter r for /er/ and so on; hence we find the abbreviated spellings hrcle for hercle, mnrva for menerva, ptrsa for petrsa, cf.
Lat. DCUMIUS for Decumius, PTRONIO for Petronio (see Bonfante )i*.
The possibility exists, therefore, that the n of fnes- stands for /en/, in which case we could reconstruct Etr. *fenes-
The possibility is slight because it requires that each of our three names is an abbreviated form.
The ending -estra of an Etr. *f(e)nestra finds parallels in the vase inscriptions uneStra (AH ; late VII) and mi ceidestra (Cr ; ); unestra and celdestra are hapaxes of unknown meaning (: vase names?).
Another parallel is probably *maiestra 'mirror' (> *malstra), which is reconstructed on the basis of attested malstria (AH ; ).
We must turn now to the Etruscan ending -tra.
It can no longer be maintained that "ganz gewohnlich ist die Erweiterung des -st- Formans mit dem etruskischen -r- Suffix" (Gustav Herbig ).
We will see that Breyer is incorrect in stating that "es gebe keine Beweise fur die Herkunft der Endung -(s)tra aus dem Etr.".
We can account easily for the ending -tra in two groups of Etruscan words:
1.
Greek names in -Spa, which are written in Etruscan with -tra, e.g. EtidvSpa (Evandra) (greek doesn't paste well) > evantra, (Kassandra) caantra, castra, Kkeon&xpa (Kleopatra) > clepatra (see De Simone );
2. Etruscan gentilicia in -ra formed from individual names in -t(V>, e.g. vetra-1 (gen.), dactra,
detra (see Rix #).
Otherwise Etr.
-tra is, as Rix a:#35 remarks, "ein ungelostes RatselFur eine Bedeutungsbestimmung reicht das Material nicht aus
Pfiffig # maintains that -tra is a collective suffix, which is added to the genitive of names, pronouns and substantives, e.g.
vipinal-tra "Gesamtheit derer von Vipinei = die Kinder der Vipinei".
Rix demonstrates, however, that -tra "kann nicht nur an verschiedene Kasusformen treten
*males-tra (cf. supra) has the same meaning as malena (Urn (V), nom.)/ malna <01 (), base form) 'mirror', malena is formed from a noun male- (base form) and
the possessive suffix -na, cf.
Sudi 'tomb1, (suthina) 'belonging to the tomb, tomb gift'. One may consider then whether the meanind of -tra, which is added to the genitive *males, is not similar to that of -na (: ?'pertaining to' or similar).
Helmut Rix (: personal communication) is now of the opinion that -tra is the plural of -ta, as -cla is the plural of -ca (on the demonstrative pronouns ta < ita and ca < ika see Rix a:i§) .
Hence (lots of german)
If this theory is correct, it is not able to explain all instances of -tra in Etruscan; one thinks, for instance, of *malestra, a singular form.
The precise function of -tra, which perhaps varies in accordance with the case of the base word, cannot be determined. Important for an Etruscan etymology of Lat.
fenestra is the fact that an ending -tra existed in Etruscan.
If we review the possibilities considered above (: 1. collective suffix, 2. possessive (or sim.) suffix, 3. plural of ta), then we may note as working hypotheses:
*f(e)nestra <? gen. *f(e)nes + -tra>= 1.
Ad infinitum a biography of latin english: Account Options Connexion. E pluribus unum. Its active use lasted three times as long as Rome's Empire and its use echoes on in the law codes of half the world, in terminologies of biology and medicine, and until forty years ago in the litany of the Catholic Church, the most populous form of Christianity. It is the unseen substance that makes us members of the Western world.
(unlikely) 'the totality of the +f(e)ne'-, 2. 'belonging/ pertaining/ relating to the *f(e)ne' ; 3. plural of *f(e)nesta 'das, das bei *f(e)ne ist'.
A propos hypothesis 3. it is interesting to note i) that Lat. genesta and lanista show the same final sequence e/ista and ii) the possibility that Lat. fenestella is a derivative of *f(e)nesta, while sg.
fenestrais from Etr. pi. *f(e)nestra.
Another possible interpretation of an Etr. *f(e)nestra is that it is a derivative in -ra to a nominal base *f(e)nest, cf. cap-ra, malehv-ra, neQo-ra-, *spur-ra\ *f(e)nestra would then be 'that which belongs to the *f(e)nest'.
This interpretation is less satisfactory because we do not have evidence for an Etruscan suffix or enlargement -t- and cannot, therefore, analyse *f(e) as **f(e)nes-t-ra; this means that we cannot easily connect *f(e)nest-ra with fnesci.
The advantage of an Etruscan etymology is thatit may provide an account not only of Lat.
f&nestra. but also of other attested forms.
As to the chronology of the forms, the presence of n in f&nestra/fenstra rules out the possibility that festra is the original Latin form: festra > f£nestra/ is not possible.
urther, a development *fSnestra > f&nstra (> fenstra) > festra cannot be assumed.
The second stage fenstra > festra is regular with the reduction of n in the sound group nst accompanied perhaps by lengthening of the preceding vowel, cf.
semenstris > semestris (see Sommer- Pfister #,2b).
The first stage *f&nestra > fenstra, however, is problematic since in Latin only short vowels in open syllables (i.e. before a single consonant) are syncopated (see Rix esp. ).
There is only one exception to this rule, namely syncope before s plus tenuis, e.g.
*semistertius > sestertius, *minuscellus > mlscellus, ministerium > misterium.
All the words so affected begin with semi- or mini/u- and it may be that abbreviation rather than syncope has taken place.
Certainly there is no syncope in cases such as *sc£lestos > scelestus. Hence there is no sound precedent in Latin for *f£nestra > fenstra.
If then f&nestra was the original Latin form, no satisfactory internal account can be given for fenstra or, therefore, festra.
In Etruscan the development *finestra > *f&nstra would be phonologica1ly possible, but not *f&nstra > *festra.
In Etruscan syncope takes place in medial and final syllables, both open and closed (see Rix a:#10), e.g.
arc. danaxvil > rec. danxvil, Gr. 'HpaxXffQ> Etr. hercle; hence arc. *f&nestra > rec. *f&nstra would be possible in Etruscan.
A further loss of n in the Etruscan word is also unproblematic
The possibility that Latin borrowed from Etruscan the one form *f&nstra, which gave rise to f&nestra by anaptyxis (cf.
saeclum > saeculum, rixvq >techina, Spcxxpff > drachuma (PI.), nv& > mina) is uncertain since anaptyxis is limited to the environment of particular consonants and no direct parallel can be given for fenstra > f&n-e-stra (see Leumann ,; Szemer6nyi ).
We must then start out from Etr.
*fenestra or *fnestra, which gave Lat. fenestra by anaptyxis (: Latin does not tolerate initial fn- ) and fenstra (> festra) by metathesis (cf. Alessio ).
one can hypothesize a development Etr. *fnestra > *frestra > Lat. frestra.
The Romans would then have known two forms of the Etruscan word: *fnestra and *frestra (> Lat.
frestra), the knowledge of the existence of which in the early language has somehow come down to Placidus. f&nestra will have been established in the Latin vocabulary before *fn&stra developed to *fr&stra in Etruscan.
Latin frestra could, therefore, lend support to the hypothesis of an Etr. *fnestra.
The possibility must also be mentioned that Lat.
festra may have developed from frestra by dissimi1ation.
The Latin and (hypothesized) Etruscan forms can be connected in a number of different ways, as the examples below illustrate.
The Latin forms, for which there is no IE etymology available, can be explained by recourse to
Etruscan.
It is possible that one, two or three Etruscan forms were borrowed into Latin:
In conclusion
[see below]