ITALIC LANGUAGES

Figure 1: Supposed language areas of the Italic and neighbouring languages about 250 BC. certain Indo-European languages that were once spoken in the Apennine Peninsula (modern Italy) and in the eastern part of the Po valley. These include the Latin, Faliscan, Osco-Umbrian, South Picene, and Venetic languages, which have in common a considerable number of features that separate them from the other languages of the same areae.g., from Greek and Etruscan. (In a more narrow sense, the term Italic languages excludes Latin and denotes only Osco-Umbrian, South Picene, Faliscan, and Venetic.) For a long time the Italic languages have been considered to be an Indo-European subfamily like Celtic, Germanic, or Slavic. Today some scholars are inclined to distinguish within the so-called Italic branch at least three independent members of the Indo-European family: Latin (with Faliscan), Osco-Umbrian (with South Picene), and Venetic (if indeed this is an Italic language, as will be assumed in this article). They attribute the similaritiesi.e., the unifying phenomena in the divisionto a convergence that took place when the speakers of these different idioms were integrated into the Italic civilization of the early first millennium BC. The culture that resulted is known as the Etruscan koine. Figure 1 shows the assumed distribution of languages in ancient Italy. Indo-European languages spoken in the Apennine Peninsula (Italy) in the 1st millennium BC. The only survivor after that period was Latin, the language of the Roman Empire and, later, western Christendom. Although traditionally thought to be a subfamily of Indo-European like Celtic, Germanic, or Slavic, the Italic languages may represent three independent members of the Indo-European family: Latin (with Faliscan), Osco-Umbrian (with South Picene), and (according to some scholars) Venetic. Data on them comes from Greek and Roman sources, especially from inscriptions. Latin is the language of Latium and of Rome; its earliest known documents date from the 6th century BC. From the 3rd century BC, Latin began to emerge as the predominant language of Italy, and by AD 100 it had effaced all dialects between Sicily and the Alps, with the exception of Greek in the colonies of Magna Graecia. Before the spread of Latin, Oscan was the most widely spoken group of dialects of the Apennine Peninsula. It was used by the Samnites, by the inhabitants of Lucania and Bruttium, and by smaller tribes between Latium and the Adriatic Coast. The most important Oscan texts come from Campanian cities; the most extensive Oscan inscription, the Tabula Bantina, is preserved in Lucania. The Umbrian idiom, closely related to Oscan, is known principally from the Tabulae Iguvinae (Iguvine Tables), which constitute one of the largest and most important epigraphical documents of antiquity. The South Picene inscriptions, which are from the region around present-day Teramo, show a language closely related to Oscan and Umbrian, and they antedate the Oscan and Umbrian texts by several centuries. Faliscan inscriptions appear around Falerii, in the Etruscan area of central Italy. Venetic, once used in the region surrounding present-day Venice, is known principally by inscriptions from sanctuaries at Este and Lagole di Calalzo. The alphabets used for writing these languages included Greek, Latin, and derivations of the Etruscan alphabet. Five national scripts included Oscan, Umbrian, South Picene, Faliscan, and Venetic. The Italic languages must have been brought from the original area of the Indo-European languages, probably east-central Europe. A stratum of very old place-names of non-Indo-European origin, a stratum ascribed to a Mediterranean language, attests to this immigration. Most phonetic differences between the reconstructed Indo-European parent language and the attested Italic languages seem to have arisen relatively late in time. Only one can confidently be placed before the migration over the Alps: the change to ss in combinations of dental occlusive (stop) plus t. This feature is common to Celtic, Germanic, and Latinfor example, Latin visus, seen,' High German gi-wiss, surely known,' from an Indo-European term with d + t, *wid-to-s (an asterisk means a word is reconstructed). Features that developed in Italy itself include the voiceless dental spirant f, which replaced the Indo-European voiced aspirates bh, dh, gwh, in initial positionfor example, Latin frater, brother' equals Umbrian frater, equals Indo-European *bhrater. In contrast to the many phonological correlations among the Italic languages, there are few definite connections between these languages in their grammars. Many of the morphological features common to Osco-Umbrian/South Picene and Latin are shared by other Indo-European languagesfor instance, the passive ending in -r in the Oscan vincter and Latin vincitur, He is conquered,' are found in Celtic, Hittite, and Tocharian as well. More important are the discrepancies. For example, the genitive singular of o-stems shows -i in Latin, Faliscan, and Venetic and in the Celtic languages but -eis in Osco-Umbrian and South Picene. Lexical comparison leads to more specific data about the history of the Italic languages. An old difference between Latin and Osco-Umbrian is found in Latin ignis, fire,' which equals Sanskrit agni; but Umbrian pir fire' equals Greek pur and Old English fyr. Certain forms, reflecting the acquisition of Mediterranean culture, suggest that Latin and Osco-Umbrian speakers were not in contact with each other when they began to build cities. On the other hand, they adopted the same terms for write' and read.' Both the Latin and Osco-Umbrian alphabets are derived from the Etruscan alphabet, and Etruscan features are obvious in archaic Italic religion. Osco-Umbrians and Veneti adopted even the Etruscan word for god'ais. Etruscan supremacy ended about 500 BC with the founding of local republics in Rome and in other cities of Italy. Early republican terminology developed independently in each of the Italic languages. The last period of Italic language history shows an increasing influence of Roman models. Additional reading Detailed surveys of the Italic languages are found in J.H.W. Penney, The Languages of Italy, in John Boardman et al. (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 4, 2nd ed. (1988), pp. 720738; Vittore Pisani, Le lingue dell'Italia antica oltre il Latino, 2nd ed., rev. and enlarged (1964); Giacomo Devoto, Gli antichi Italici, 4th ed. (1969), and The Languages of Italy (1978; originally published in Italian, 1974); Aldo L. Prosdocimi (ed.), Lingue e dialetti dell'Italia antica (1978), with additions and indices published separately with the same title, ed. by Anna Marinetti (1982); and D. Silvestri, Le lingue italiche, in Anna Giacalone Ramat and Paolo Ramat (eds.), Le lingue indoeuropee (1993), pp. 349371. The historical background to the Italic languages is treated by Massimo Pallottino, A History of Earliest Italy (1991; originally published in Italian, 1984).Fundamental works on Osco-Umbrian, most with selected texts, include Robert von Planta, Grammatik der oskisch-umbrischen Dialekte, 2 vol. (189297, reissued 1973); Carl Darling Buck, A Grammar of Oscan and Umbrian, new ed. (1928, reprinted 1995); Gino Bottiglioni, Manuale dei dialetti italici: Osco, Umbro, e dialetti minori (1954); A. Ernout, Le dialecte ombrien: lexique du vocabulaire des Tables Eugubines et des inscriptions (1961); and Gerhard Meiser, Lautgeschichte der umbrischen Sprache (1986). A detailed treatment of Paelignian, one of the central Oscan minor dialects, is Rafael Jimnez Zamudio, Estudio del dialecto peligno y su entorno lingstico (1986). The most complete edition of Osco-Umbrian and Faliscan texts is Emil Vetter, Handbuch der italischen Dialekte, vol. 1, Texte mit Erklrung, Glossen, Wrterverzeichnis (1953); it is supplemented by Paolo Poccetti, Nuovi documenti italici (1979). Special studies of some of the more important Oscan texts include Annalisa Franchi De Bellis, Le iovile capuane (1981), and Il cippo abellano (1988). The most accurate text of the Iguvine Tables is found in Aldo L. Prosdocimi, Le tavole iguvine, vol. 1 (1984), with introduction and notes in Italian. Special studies of the Iguvine Tables include James Wilson Poultney, The Bronze Tables of Iguvium (1959); and Giacomo Devoto (ed.), Tabulae Iguvinae, rev. ed. (1940), in Latin. The authoritative edition of the South Picene texts is Anna Marinetti, Le iscrizioni sudpicene (1985 ); Ignacio-Javier Adiego Lajara, Protosabelio, osco-umbro, sudpiceno (1992), in Spanish, is also useful. A grammatical description of Faliscan with many of the texts is provided by Gabriella Giacomelli, La lingua falisca (1963). Similar treatment is given to Venetic in G.B. Pellegrini and Aldo L. Prosdocimi, La lingua venetica, 2 vol. (1967); Michel Lejeune, Manuel de la langue vnte (1974); and Giulia Fogolari et al., I Veneti antichi: lingua e cultura (1988). Important studies of onomastic material (so prominent in the Italic language texts) include, for Oscan, Michel Lejeune, L'anthroponymie osque (1976); and for Venetic, Michel Lejeune, Ateste l'heure de la romanisation (tude anthroponymique) (1978); and Jrgen Untermann, Die venetischen Personennamen, 2 vol. (1961). Questions of ancient Italic poetics are treated in Calvert Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics (1995), especially chapters 10 and 1720. Jrgen Untermann Brent Vine