Italic languages

Italic languages
Indo-European languages spoken in the Apennine Peninsula (Italy) during the 1st millennium BC, after which only Latin survived.

Traditionally thought to be a subfamily of related languages, these languages include Latin, Faliscan, Osco-Umbrian, South Picene, and Venetic. Latin, the language of Latium and Rome, began to emerge as the predominant language as early as the 3rd century BC. By AD 100 it had replaced all dialects (except Greek) between Sicily and the Alps. Until then, Oscan dialects were most widely spoken; Umbrian, in central Italy, was closely related to Oscan. Venetic was spoken in the region of Venice. These languages were written in various alphabets, including the Greek and Latin alphabets and modified versions of the Etruscan.

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Introduction
 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 (Faliscan language), Osco-Umbrian (Osco-Umbrian languages), South Picene (South Picene language), and Venetic languages (Venetic language), which have in common a considerable number of features that separate them from the other languages of the same area—e.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 similarities—i.e., the unifying phenomena in the division—to 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.

Distribution and origins

Languages of the group
      Latin is the language of Latium and of Rome; its earliest known documents date to the 6th century BC. Rich epigraphic evidence and an extensive literature began at the end of the 3rd century BC, at the time when Roman Latin was emerging as the predominant language of Italy. By AD 100 at the latest, Latin had effaced all the other dialects between Sicily and the Alps, with the exception of Greek in the colonies of Magna Graecia. (For more information about Latin and about the languages that derive from it, see Romance languages.)

      The other Italic languages—Italic languages in the narrow sense—are known through local and personal names transmitted by Greek and Roman sources, and especially from inscriptions.

      Before Latin spread out, Oscan was the most widely spoken group of dialects of the Apennine Peninsula. It was used by the Samnites (Samnite) in Samnium and Campania; by the inhabitants of Lucania and Bruttium; and, with slight variations, by smaller tribes between Latium and the Adriatic coast: the Volsci, Marsi, Paeligni, Vestini, and Marrucini. (These distinct “minor dialects” within the Oscan language continuum are referred to as Volscian, Marsian, Paelignian, etc., and collectively as Sabellic (Sabellic dialects), or Sabellian, dialects; this term can also refer more generally to the Italic languages other than Latin and Venetic, roughly comparable to the narrow sense of the term Italic languages.) The legendary Sabines, who shared the earliest history of Rome, probably also spoke an Oscan dialect. The most important Oscan texts come from Campanian cities, as do the oldest ones (several so-called Paleo-Oscan, or “Pre-Samnite,” vessel inscriptions of the form “I belong to So-and-so,” dating to as early as the mid-6th century BC). The largest text, a treaty between Nola and Abella from the 2nd century BC, is carved on a stone slab, called the Cippus Abellanus. In Bantia, a nearly unknown town of Lucania, the Tabula Bantina is preserved, the most extensive Oscan inscription. It is a bronze tablet with penal laws concerning municipal administration, written in Latin letters during the first half of the 1st century BC. The oldest Oscan text of any length is the so-called Agnone Tablet of about 250 BC (a small bronze tablet found near Fonte Romito, between Agnone and Capracotta), detailing cultic instructions related to the worship of Ceres and other divinities. The remainder of the Oscan corpus includes diverse material, some of which is of considerable cultural interest (short cultic and sacrificial texts, curse tablets, and several types of municipal inscriptions).

      The Umbrian idiom, closely related to Oscan, is known from a few small inscriptions and from the Tabulae Iguvinae ( Iguvine Tables), which consist of seven bronze tablets found at Gubbio (the ancient Iguvium). Constituting one of the largest and most important epigraphic documents of antiquity, the tablets contain ritual regulations of a sacred brotherhood to which a considerable part of the public cults of Iguvium was delegated. The Tabulae Iguvinae were incised, partly in the Umbrian alphabet and partly in Latin letters, within the last three centuries BC, but portions of the text itself result from a far more remote oral tradition.

South Picene (South Picene language)
      Approximately two dozen short inscriptions from the southern part of ancient Picenum (most of them found near Ascoli Piceno and Teramo) preserve extremely early remains (6th and 5th centuries BC) of the Italic language now known as South Picene (see Figure 2). Formerly referred to as Old Sabellian or Central Adriatic, South Picene shows close affinities to Oscan and Umbrian. (North Picene, known mainly from a 12-line inscription of about 500 BC on a stele from Novilara, is not an Italic language and may not even be an Indo-European language.)

 Faliscan inscriptions appear only in the immediate surroundings of Falerii (the present Civita Castellana in central Italy), which, except for its dialect, seems to have been a completely Etruscan city. The Faliscan corpus consists mainly of short sepulchral inscriptions, most of which date to the 4th century BC and later. There are, however, several important Archaic Faliscan vessel inscriptions (see Figure 3—>), including some from as early as the 6th century BC that show evidence of poetic composition.

 The language represented by inscriptions from the territory of the Veneti—between the Po River, the Carnic Alps, and Istria—is called Venetic. The majority of discoveries come from sanctuaries at Este and Làgole di Calalzo. The Venetic inscriptions (of which there are about 300, ranging from the 5th to the 1st century BC) consist almost entirely of brief epitaphs and dedications (compare the votive text in Figure 4—>).

      Several very early texts cannot be ascribed with certainty to any of the individual languages listed above but show linguistic features of a broadly Osco-Umbrian/South Picene type. The most important of these is found on an inscribed flask from Poggio Sommavilla (in Sabine territory), dating from the end of the 7th century BC.

    The scripts used for writing these languages include the Greek alphabet in Bruttium and Lucania and the Latin alphabet and various derivations of the Etruscan alphabet in the other regions. Five “national” or “native” alphabets are distinguished: South Picene, Faliscan, Venetic, Oscan, and Umbrian (see Figure 2, Figure 3—>, Figure 4—>, Figure 5—>, andFigure 6—>).

Origins of the Italic languages
      The Italic languages must have been brought from the original area of the Indo-European languages, perhaps in eastern parts of central Europe, when their speakers crossed the Alps. This is attested to by a stratum of very old place-names of non-Indo-European origin—e.g., Tarracina, Capua—that covers not only the Apennine Peninsula but also Greece and Anatolia. This stratum is ascribed to a “Mediterranean” language believed to have dominated large parts of the ancient world before the arrival of the Indo-European peoples. Nothing is known about the date, the path, and the circumstances of the above-mentioned immigration, and none of the many attempts to combine archaeological evidence with linguistic prehistory has led to convincing results. Thus, the only resources available for studying the Italic languages are exclusively linguistic methods of comparative philology.

Linguistic characteristics

      Many of the phonetic processes that make the attested Italic languages differ from the reconstructed Indo-European language seem to have occurred relatively late in time. The only one that can confidently be placed outside of Italy—that is, before the immigration over the Alps—is the change to ss in combinations of d (dental occlusive, or dental stop) + t. This is a feature common to Celtic, Germanic, and the Italic languages. For example, Latin visus comes from the older, reconstructed form *wissos ‘seen'; this is cognate with High German gi-wiss ‘surely known' and Old Irish ro-fess ‘is known,' all of these forms deriving from an Indo-European term *wid-to-s, with d + t. (An asterisk before a word means that it is not attested but reconstructed.)

      The development of the Indo-European labiovelar stop kw is more complex. (A labiovelar stop is a sound pronounced with simultaneous articulation—movement—of the lips and the velum, the soft palate.) From this sound there has resulted a qu in Latin, p in Osco-Umbrian and South Picene, c in Irish, and p in Brythonic Celtic; e.g., Latin quis ‘who(ever)' is cognate with Oscan pis and Umbrian pis (similarly South Picene pim ‘whom[ever]' or ‘which[ever]'), these forms deriving from Indo-European *kwis; and Irish cia is related to Welsh pwy, ‘who,' derived from Indo-European *kwei. Some scholars have tried to trace this development back to an Italo-Celtic unity, but the change of Brythonic kw to p is surely later than the dropping of the p in Common Celtic. It is sounder, therefore, to assume independent processes in the different languages.

      Other features developed in Italy itself—e.g., the use of the voiceless dental spirant (fricative) f that is shared with Etruscan and is lacking in marginal districts of Venetic. In all Italic languages this f sound replaced the Indo-European voiced aspirated sounds (represented as bh, dh, gwh) in initial position. Examples of the use of f in Italic are as follows: Latin frater ‘brother' = Umbrian frater, from Indo-European *bhrātēr; Latin facio ‘I do, make' is related to Oscan fakiiad ‘he should do' and Venetic fagsto ‘he made,' based on an Indo-European stem *dhə-k-. A more recent common process in Latin and Osco-Umbrian is the use of the full system of five short vowels in initial syllables only; short vowels of noninitial syllables in Latin became less open—e.g., facio ‘I do, make,' but in-ficio, the compound of in + facio. In Osco-Umbrian these vowels tend to be lost completely—e.g., Umbrian benust ‘he will have come,' but Oscan cebnust ‘he will have come near.' Some differences between Latin and Osco-Umbrian/South Picene probably arose during the last centuries BC—e.g., Osco-Umbrian/South Picene ō changed to u (Oscan dúnúm, South Picene dúnoí, Latin dōnum ‘gift'), ē became i (Oscan ligud, Latin lēge ‘law' in the ablative singular; South Picene spolítiú, Latin Spolētium [name of a town in Umbria, modern Spoleto]), and final ā developed into o (viú [ú in the Oscan national alphabet = o], Latin via ‘way'). Indo-European voiced aspirated sounds (bh, dh, gwh) in internal position probably first became voiced spirants (e.g., sounds such as v) in all Italic languages and, later, voiced stops in Latin and Venetic and the voiceless spirant f in Osco-Umbrian, South Picene, and Faliscan. Examples of these changes (for Indo-European dh) are the voiced stop b in Latin liberi ‘(free) children' and Venetic louderobos ‘children' (in the dative plural) versus the voiceless spirant f in Oscan loufro- ‘free' and Faliscan loferta ‘freed woman.' Examples for Indo-European bh are Oscan tfei, Umbrian tefe, South Picene tefeí versus Latin tibi ‘to/for you.'

      In contrast to the phonology, which shows so many correlations among the Italic languages, there are few definite connections between these tongues in their grammars. A characteristic innovation is the extension of the ablative singular case from o-stems and pronouns, where it occurred originally, to other declension classes: Latin praidad ‘with the plunder,' later praeda, meretod ‘by merit,' Oscan toutad ‘by the people,' slaagid ‘of the border,' South Picene arítih (-h represents earlier -d) ‘with skill.' Many of the morphological features common to Osco-Umbrian, South Picene, and Latin are shared by other Indo-European languages; that is, they are not Italic in a specific sense. For example, the a-subjunctive—e.g., Latin faciat ‘may he do' and Oscan fakiiad—is also Celtic; passive endings in -re.g., Oscan vincter and Latin vincitur ‘he is conquered,' South Picene qolofítúr ‘he honours/supports' or ‘honour/support is shown to'—are found in Celtic, Hittite, and Tocharian as well. More important are the discrepancies. For example, the genitive singular of o-stems shows -ī in Latin, Faliscan, and Venetic and in the Celtic languages, but -eis in Osco-Umbrian and South Picene; the nominative plural of the same class is marked by -oi in early Latin, Celtic, and Greek but by -ōs in Osco-Umbrian, South Picene, Germanic, Sanskrit, and other languages. In addition, the perfect stems of secondary verbs (verbs derived from nouns or from other verbs) are formed by -u- or -v- in Latin, by -t(t)- in Oscan, by -s- in Venetic, and by a variety of formants in Umbrian—e.g., Latin donavit ‘he has given' = Oscan duunated = Venetic donasto, Umbrian combifiansiust ‘he will have announced' (with formant -nky-).

Vocabulary
      Lexical comparison leads to more specific data about the history of the Italic languages. There are linguistic boundaries called isoglosses that may date back to pre-Italic history: e.g., Oscan humuns, Latin homines, and Gothic gumans ‘human beings' derive from an Indo-European root that meant ‘earth'; and Oscan anamúm ‘mind' (accusative singular) is directly related to Latin animus ‘mind, soul' and Irish anam ‘soul,' these words deriving from an Indo-European root meaning ‘to breathe' (compare Greek anemos ‘wind'). There are many old differences between Latin on the one hand and Osco-Umbrian (and South Picene) on the other. Latin ignis ‘fire' = Sanskrit agni, but Umbrian pir ‘fire' = Greek pŷr = Old English fyr; Latin aqua ‘water' = Gothic ahwa, but Umbrian utur ‘water' = Greek hydōr = Old English wæter; Latin filius, filia ‘son, daughter,' but Oscan puklu and South Picene puqloh ‘son' = Sanskrit putra, and Oscan futír ‘daughter' = Greek thygatēr = Gothic dauhtar. Adjectives of totality in Latin are omnis, cunctus, totus, in Osco-Umbrian sollo-, sevo-, allo- (cognate to English all). ‘The people' or ‘the state' is expressed in Latin by populus or civitas (the latter literally ‘citizenship,' based on civis ‘citizen'), but by Oscan touto, Umbrian tuta, South Picene toúta = Irish túath = Gothic thiuda.

      Certain lexical fields that reflect the acquisition of the Mediterranean culture show an independent terminology. The following forms strongly suggest that Latin and Osco-Umbrian speakers were not in contact with each other when they began to build cities: Latin porta ‘gate,' Oscan veru ‘gate'; Latin arx ‘citadel,' Umbrian ocar ‘citadel, castle'; Latin moenia ‘walls, ramparts,' murus ‘wall,' Oscan feíhúss (accusative plural) ‘walls.' On the other hand, Latins and Osco-Umbrians adopted the same terms for ‘write' and ‘read'; Latin scribere ‘to write,' Oscan scriftas ‘written'; Latin legere ‘to read,' Paelignian lexe ‘you will read.' It is known that the Latin and Osco-Umbrian alphabets are derived from the Etruscan alphabet; (Etruscan alphabet) the spread of these terms can, therefore, be attributed to a period of Etruscan predominance. Etruscan features are obvious in archaic Italic religion; Osco-Umbrians and Veneti adopted even the Etruscan word for ‘god'—ais. Many other religious terms show a close community among Italic peoples; e.g., the Latin forms pius ‘pious, obedient' and piare ‘to honour with religious rites' are equivalent to Volscian pihom (neuter singular) and Umbrian pihatu (imperative); Latin feriae ‘religious days' is related to Oscan fiisiais (ablative plural); and Latin sacer ‘sacred,' sacrare ‘to consecrate, dedicate,' sanctus ‘consecrated' are cognates with Oscan sakrid (ablative singular), sakrafír (subjunctive passive), saahtúm (neuter singular). These correspondences in religious vocabulary extend to whole phrases, some inherited from Indo-European forms of expression and therefore of very great antiquity: e.g., the Umbrian prayer formula ueiro pequo . . . salua seritu ‘keep safe men (and) livestock' is directly comparable to Latin pastores pecuaque salva servassis ‘may you keep safe shepherds and livestock' (in an ancient Roman prayer), and both are cognate with similar expressions in Vedic Sanskrit and Avestan.

      The Etruscan supremacy ended with the foundation of local republics in Rome and in other cities of Italy in approximately 500 BC; when that occurred, the unifying force of Etruscan culture lost its influence. Early republican terminology developed independently; e.g., Latin consul ‘consul,' but Oscan meddíss designate the first magistrate; to Latin senatus ‘senate' corresponds Oscan kúmparakineís (genitive singular), and to Latin comitia ‘assembly,' the Oscan forms comono or kúmbennieís. The last period of Italic language history is characterized by an increasing influence of Roman models. For example, Oscan ceus ‘citizen' is a Latin loanword that stems from a form *ceuis, which existed about 200 BC and was intermediate between Old Latin ceivis and its later form civis; Oscan aídil and kvaísstur imitate Latin aedilis and quaestor, terms for offices in the Roman government; and the Veneti adopted the Roman word for ‘freed man,' libertus. In addition, the Oscan Tabula Bantina slavishly copied the juridical style and terminology of the Romans.

Poetics
      Beyond vocabulary, the Italic languages share features of expression that are prominent in formal modes of discourse, such as prayers, oaths and curses, and legal formulations. For many such compositions, the distinction between “prose” and “poetry” is an artificial one: prayers or juridical formulas that otherwise appear to be prose may show elaborate structures dependent on sequences of isosyllabic cola (i.e., phrases with equal numbers of syllables, like lines of verse) or other rhythmic patterns, marked effects arising from antithesis or synonymy, and a high degree of asyndeton (i.e., lack of connective words such as and). Perhaps most striking is the phonetic feature of alliteration, pervasive throughout early Latin poetry, as well as in formal documents composed in Oscan, Umbrian, and South Picene. For Latin and Umbrian, compare the parallel phrases alua eritu and alva ervassis in the prayer mentioned above, with the latter preceded by pastores pecuaque; an Oscan curse includes the sequence fakinss, fangvam, ḇiass, ḇiítam ‘(I hand over to the divinity [i.e., I curse] his) deeds, tongue, strength, life'; and note the concluding sequence iat epetí ‘he lies in the tomb' in the South Picene epitaph appearing in Figure 2 above.

Jürgen Untermann Brent Vine

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. 720–738; 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. 349–371. 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. (1892–97, 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 Jiménez Zamudio, Estudio del dialecto peligno y su entorno lingüístico (1986). The most complete edition of Osco-Umbrian and Faliscan texts is Emil Vetter, Handbuch der italischen Dialekte, vol. 1, Texte mit Erklärung, Glossen, Wörterverzeichnis (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 vénète (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 à l'heure de la romanisation (étude anthroponymique) (1978); and Jürgen 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 17–20.Jürgen Untermann Brent Vine

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