Etruscan Grammar: Summary

http://www.etruskisch.de/pgs/gr.htm[07/02/2012 00:03:11]

Etruscan Grammar: Summary

1. The Inflexion of Nouns and Adjectives

Etruscan is an inflecting language; which means that there can be morethan one marker (= ending) to design a case, and that the same marker canoccur for more than one case. There are four cases in Etruscan, answering

the questions who? (a), whom? (b), whose? (c), where? (d) (=nominative, accusative, genitive, locative); with nouns, however, only

three are differently expressed. The accusative occurs with own ending inpronominal forms and their compounds. That there is a difference madebetween pronominal and nominal inflections (the nouns and adjectives,

which will be treated here), is a further typical feature of inflectinglanguages: the nominative and accusative forms of the Etruscan words

"mother" and "father" are ati and apa, whereas "I" is called mi and "me"mini. The genitive markers are atial "mother's" and apas "father's" (c). These genitive forms arealso used -- for instance with verbs that denote giving -- to substitute for the dative, which, inthe Etruscan language, has no expression of its own. The locative, being very multiform and

therefore highly complicated, will be treated only in essentials here. Its construction frequentlyrequires the use of postpositions (for instance -th(i) "in"). Additional cases, like 'ablative', 'dative'

or 'pertinentive', which have been postulated every now and then, are misread locatives (d).

The Etruscan language doesn't possess an article -- in translations, it will therefore be added inbrackets. Matching the prepositions of other languages, only postpositions are found in Etruscan(d). Even conjunctive words are added (additions will be made clear in citations by a =) at the

end of a given word: apa=c ati=c "father as well as mother; father and mother".

(a-b) Nominative / Accusative

ca shuthi "this grave" is opposite to cn shuthi cerichunce "(he) built this grave"; if the verb is inthe passive voice, the noun, in Etruscan, too, will of course be a nominative: ich ca cecha

zichuche "(this is) why this treaty was written". These examples show, moreover, that adjective

Etruscan Grammar: Summary

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pronouns will precede the noun and open sentences (ca cecha "this treaty"), mini muluvanicelaris lethaies "me gave/offered/dedicated Laris Lethaies".

(c) Genitive

This case expresses possession, affiliation and interest. mi suntheruza spurias mlakas "I (am the)casket of (the) beautiful Spuria/for (the) beautiful Sp.". The attributive adjective (mlakas

"beautiful, good") follows the noun.Sometimes groups of nouns are split up by another part of the sentence (= 'distraction',

'Hyperbaton'). mi spurias thina mlach mlakas "I (am the) beautiful Spurias's beautiful ewer (thinamlach)", mi velelias thina mlach mlakas "... (the) beautiful Velelia's (= Velelias ... mlakas)". itun

turuce venel atelinas tin(i)as cliniaras "this (itun accusative) gave/donated Venel Atelinas toTinia's (= Zeus/Juppiter) sons". This sentence includes three genitive endings with a different

function for each of them. In the South of Etruria the family names of men (Lethaie-s,Atelina-s) are mentioned in the genitive form, even when appearing as a sentence's subject.

They are to be understood as referring to the first name (here Venel nominative). The indirectobject (which, in English, is a dative) cliniara-s "to the sons" is ruled by a verb expressing theact of giving (= turuce). Depending from cliniaras "sons", on the other hand, is the attributivegenitive tinias "Zeus": consequently, the expression is to be interpreted as "sons of Zeus" (=

Dioscurs, e.g. Castor and Pollux).

There also exists a genitive marker -l (which had been deleted in old Etruscan after -a): in recentEtruscan the genitive "(the) mother's" is called atial. Distribution of the endings -l and -s followsthe claims of the respective words. As can be inferred from the cited examples, these differentmarkers do not distinguish masculine from feminine gender: laives sukisnas "Laive Sukisnas'" :

thanakvilus sucisnaia "Thanakvil Sucisnai's".

(d) Locative

Isolated or followed by a postposition, the lovative expresses someone's or something's situationand/or proximity in space or time. Its ending -i is occasionally hard to discern.

Aritimi means "in Aritim (= Arretium, Arezzo)", thii "at, near, in (the) water", tinsi tiuri=m "on(the) day and in (the) month (= tiur)", shuthithi "in (the) grave", clth shuthith "in this g." (e.g.

shuthi + -i + thi), capue "in, near Capua", pershie "in, near Perusia (Perugia)" (-a merges with -iinto an -e!).

With the exception of tinsi all cited examples constitute so called 'simple/primary' locativesending on -i; there exists, however, also the 'extended/secondary ' locative ending on -le (for

words with a genitive ending on -l) or -si (where the genitive marker is -s). The meaning can bethe same, as, for instance, in the case of tinsi "on (the) day"; but more often -- in particular with

predicates in the passive voice -- it is used to point out the doer (= Agens): mi mulu larisalevelchainasi "I (am/was) donated by Laris Velchaina-s". The following sentence is very

instructive, as it is indicating the difference between the genitive in its dative function ("for")and the locative case in its agentive function ("from"): mi mulu arathiale thanachvilus prasanaia

"I (am a) present from Ara(n)th for Thanachvil Prasanai" (NHE, 175, note 3).Aranth, Laris, genitive Aranthia, Larisa (in recent Etruscan Arnth(i)al, Larisal) are first names of

men, whereas Prasanaia is the genitive form of a woman's gentile (= family name); all are

Etruscan Grammar: Summary

http://www.etruskisch.de/pgs/gr.htm[07/02/2012 00:03:11]

inflected alike, without consideration of gender differences.

2. Verb

In inscriptions, mainly forms of the 3rd person are found (cesu "(is/are)interred"). Other materials are questionable (turis mi une ame "I shall(serve) Turi for pouring out (une locative)" (NHE, 306, note 2). Theconstructions of verbs (transitive/intransitive; active/passive) may be

disclosed, as has been demonstrated above, by analysing the case forms ofthe accompanying nouns. The texts show predominantly forms of the pasttense. Intransitive forms of the past tense (lupu "(has) died") and forms inthe passive voice (mulu "presented/present") are actually verbal nouns and

will occasionally appear treated like nouns: mi mulu lari(sa)le zili mlach(NHE, 227, D27) "I (am the) beautiful present (mulu...mlach) of/from zil-

(adjective) Laris"

This, however, is no sufficient reason to classify Etruscan as an ergative language.

[Origins] [Vocabulary] [Place Names]

More linguistic research into Etruscan and Lemnian can be found in: Dieter H.Steinbauer, Neues Handbuch des Etruskischen, Scripta Mercatur Verlag, St.

Katharinen 1999, ISBN 3-89590-080-X, on pages 357-366, as well as strewn inthe following text. This book, unfortunately, is so far only available in German.

Simple questions to the author will be speedily answered, complicated ones willtake more time according to the problem. Make suggestions on the contents of the

developping website, please!

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