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Italic | |
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Latino-Sabine, Italic–Venetic | |
Geographic distribution | Originally the Italian Peninsula and parts of modern-day Austria and Switzerland, today Southern Europe, Latin America, France, Romania, Moldova, Canada, and the official languages of half the countries of Africa. |
Ethnicity | Originally the Italic peoples |
Linguistic classification | Indo-European
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Proto-language | Proto-Italic |
Subdivisions |
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Language codes | |
ISO 639-5 | itc |
Glottolog | ital1284 |
The Italic languages form a branch of the Indo-European language family, whose earliest known members were spoken on the Italian Peninsula in the first millennium BC. The most important of the ancient Italic languages was Latin, the official language of ancient Rome, which conquered the other Italic peoples before the common era. [1] The other Italic languages became extinct in the first centuries AD as their speakers were assimilated into the Roman Empire and shifted to some form of Latin. Between the third and eighth centuries AD, Vulgar Latin (perhaps influenced by substrata from the other Italic languages) diversified into the Romance languages, which are the only Italic languages natively spoken today, while Literary Latin also survived. [2]
Besides Latin, the known ancient Italic languages are Faliscan (the closest to Latin), Umbrian and Oscan (or Osco-Umbrian), and South Picene. Other Indo-European languages once spoken in the peninsula whose inclusion in the Italic branch is disputed are Venetic and Siculian. These long-extinct languages are known only from inscriptions in archaeological finds. [3] [4]
In the first millennium BC, several (other) non-Italic languages were spoken in the peninsula, including members of other branches of Indo-European (such as Celtic and Greek) as well as at least one non-Indo-European one, Etruscan.
It is generally believed that those 1st millennium Italic languages descend from Indo-European languages brought by migrants to the peninsula sometime in the 2nd millennium BC through Bell Beaker and Urnfield culture groups north and east of the Alps. [5] [6] [7] [6] However, the source of those migrations and the history of the languages in the peninsula are still a matter of debate among historians. In particular, it is debated whether the ancient Italic languages all descended from a single Proto-Italic language after its arrival in the region, or whether the migrants brought two or more Indo-European languages that were only distantly related.
With over 800 million native speakers, the Romance languages make Italic the second-most-widely spoken branch of the Indo-European family, after Indo-Iranian. However, in academia the ancient Italic languages form a separate field of study from the medieval and modern Romance languages. This article focuses on the ancient languages. For information on the academic study of the Romance languages, see Romance studies. [8]
Most Italic languages (including Romance) are generally written in Old Italic scripts (or the descendant Latin alphabet and its adaptations), which descend from the alphabet used to write the non-Italic Etruscan language, and ultimately from the Greek alphabet. The notable exceptions are Judaeo-Spanish (also known as Ladino), which is sometimes written in the Hebrew, Greek, or Cyrillic script, and some forms of Romanian, which are written in the Cyrillic script.
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Historical linguists have generally concluded that the ancient Indo-European languages of the Italian peninsula that were not identifiable as belonging to other branches of Indo-European, such as Greek, belonged to a single branch of the family, parallel for example to Celtic and Germanic. The founder of this theory is Antoine Meillet (1866–1936). [9]
This unitary theory has been criticized by, among others, Alois Walde, Vittore Pisani and Giacomo Devoto, who proposed that the Latino-Faliscan and Osco-Umbrian languages constituted two distinct branches of Indo-European. This view gained acceptance in the second half of the 20th century, [10] though proponents such as Rix later rejected the idea, and the unitary theory remains dominant in contemporary scholarship. [11]
The following classification, proposed by Michiel de Vaan (2008), is generally agreed on, [12] although some scholars have recently rejected the inclusion of Venetic in the Italic branch. [13]
Proto-Italic was probably originally spoken by Italic tribes north of the Alps. In particular, early contacts with Celtic and Germanic speakers are suggested by linguistic evidence. [6]
Bakkum defines Proto-Italic as a "chronological stage" without an independent development of its own, but extending over late Proto-Indo-European and the initial stages of Proto-Latin and Proto-Sabellic. Meiser's dates of 4000 BC to 1800 BC, well before Mycenaean Greek, are described by him as being "as good a guess as anyone's". [30] Schrijver argues for a Proto-Italo-Celtic stage, which he suggests was spoken in "approximately the first half or the middle of the 2nd millennium BC", [31] from which Celtic split off first, then Venetic, before the remainder, Italic, split into Latino-Faliscan and Sabellian. [32]
Italic peoples probably moved towards the Italian Peninsula during the second half of the 2nd millennium BC, gradually reaching the southern regions. [6] [7] Although an equation between archeological and linguistic evidence cannot be established with certainty, the Proto-Italic language is generally associated with the Terramare (1700–1150 BC) and Proto-Villanovan culture (1200–900 BC). [6]
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At the start of the Iron Age, around 700 BC, Ionian Greek settlers from Euboea established colonies along the coast of southern Italy. [33] They brought with them the alphabet, which they had learned from the Phoenicians; specifically, what we now call Western Greek alphabet. The invention quickly spread through the whole peninsula, across language and political barriers. Local adaptations (mainly minor letter shape changes and the dropping or addition of a few letters) yielded several Old Italic alphabets.
The inscriptions show that, by 700 BC, many languages were spoken in the region, including members of several branches of Indo-European and several non-Indo-European languages. The most important of the latter was Etruscan, attested by evidence from more than 10,000 inscriptions and some short texts. No relation has been found between Etruscan and any other known language, and there is still no clue about its possible origin (except for inscriptions on the island of Lemnos in the eastern Mediterranean). Other possibly non-Indo-European languages present at the time were Rhaetian in the Alpine region, Ligurian around present-day Genoa, and some unidentified languages in Sardinia. Those languages have left some detectable imprint in Latin.
The largest language in southern Italy, except Ionic Greek spoken in the Greek colonies, was Messapian, known from some 260 inscriptions dating from the 6th and 5th centuries BC. There is a historical connection of Messapian with the Illyrian tribes, added to the archaeological connection in ceramics and metals existing between both peoples, which motivated the hypothesis of linguistic connection. But the evidence of Illyrian inscriptions is reduced to personal names and places, which makes it difficult to support such a hypothesis.
It has also been proposed by some scholars, although not confirmed, that the Lusitanian language may have belonged to the Italic family. [29] [34]
In the history of Latin of ancient times, there are several periods:
As the Roman Republic extended its political dominion over the whole of the Italian peninsula, Latin became dominant over the other Italic languages, which ceased to be spoken perhaps sometime in the 1st century AD. From Vulgar Latin, the Romance languages emerged.
The Latin language gradually spread beyond Rome, along with the growth of the power of this state, displacing, beginning in the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, the languages of other Italic tribes, as well as Illyrian, Messapian and Venetic, etc. The Romanisation of the Italian Peninsula was basically complete by the 1st century BC; except for the south of Italy and Sicily, where the dominance of Greek was preserved. The attribution of Ligurian is controversial.
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The main debate concerning the origin of the Italic languages mirrors that on the origins of the Greek ones, [36] except that there is no record of any "early Italic" to play the role of Mycenaean Greek.
All that is known about the linguistic landscape of Italy is from inscriptions made after the introduction of the alphabet in the peninsula, around 700 BC onwards, and from Greek and Roman writers several centuries later. The oldest known samples come from Umbrian and Faliscan inscriptions from the 7th century BC. Their alphabets were clearly derived from the Etruscan alphabet, which was derived from the Western Greek alphabet not much earlier than that. There is no reliable information about the languages spoken before that time. Some conjectures can be made based on toponyms, but they cannot be verified.
There is no guarantee that the intermediate phases between those old Italic languages and Indo-European will be found. The question of whether Italic originated outside Italy or developed by assimilation of Indo-European and other elements within Italy, approximately on or within its current range there, remains. [37]
An extreme view of some linguists and historians is that there never was a unique "Proto-Italic" whose diversification resulted in an "Italic branch" of Indo-European. Some linguists, like Silvestri [38] and Rix, [39] further argue that no common Proto-Italic can be reconstructed such that its phonological system may have developed into those of Latin and Osco-Umbrian through consistent phonetic changes and that its phonology and morphology can be consistently derived from those of Proto-Indo-European. However, Rix later changed his mind and became an outspoken supporter of Italic as a family.
Those linguists propose instead that the ancestors of the 1st millennium Indo-European languages of Italy were two or more different languages that separately descended from Indo-European in a more remote past and separately entered Europe, possibly by different routes or at different times. That view stems in part from the difficulty in identifying a common Italic homeland in prehistory, [40] or reconstructing an ancestral "Common Italic" or "Proto-Italic" language from which those languages could have descended. Some common features that seem to connect the languages may be just a sprachbund phenomenon – a linguistic convergence due to contact over a long period, [41] as in the most widely accepted version of the Italo-Celtic hypothesis.[ undue weight? – discuss ]
General and specific characteristics of the pre-Roman Italic languages:
The most distinctive feature of the Italic languages is the development of the PIE voiced aspirated stops. [42] In initial position, *bʰ-, *dʰ- and *gʷʰ- merged to /f-/, while *gʰ- became /h-/, although Latin also has *gʰ- > /w-/ and /g-/ in special environments. [43]
In medial position, all voiced aspirated stops have a distinct reflex in Latin, with different outcome for -*gʰ- and *gʷʰ- if preceded by a nasal. In Osco-Umbrian, they generally have the same reflexes as in initial position, although Umbrian shows a special development if preceded by a nasal, just as in Latin. Most probably, the voiced aspirated stops went through an intermediate stage *-β-, *-ð-, *-ɣ- and *-ɣʷ- in Proto-Italic. [44]
initial position | medial position | |||||||
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*bʰ- | *dʰ- | *gʰ- | *gʷʰ- | *-(m)bʰ- | *-(n)dʰ- | *-(n)gʰ- | *-(n)gʷʰ- | |
Latin [43] | f- | f- | h- | f- | -b- -mb- | -d- [a] -nd- | -h- -ng- | -v- -ngu- |
Faliscan [45] | f- | f- | h- | ? | -f- | -f- | -g- | ? |
Umbrian [46] | f- | f- | h- | ? | -f- -mb- | -f- -nd- | -h- -ng- | -f- ? |
Oscan [47] | f- | f- | h- | ? | -f- | -f- | -h- | ? |
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The voiceless and plain voiced stops (*p, *t, *k, *kʷ; *b, *d, *g, *gʷ) remained unchanged in Latin, except for the minor shift of *gʷ > /w/. In Osco-Umbrian, the labiovelars *kʷ and *gʷ became the labial stops /p/ and /b/, e.g. Oscan pis 'who?' (cf. Latin quis) and bivus 'alive (nom.pl.)' (cf. Latin vivus). [48]
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In grammar there are basically three innovations shared by the Osco-Umbrian and the Latino-Faliscan languages:
In turn, these shared innovations are one of the main arguments in favour of an Italic group, questioned by other authors.[ who? ]
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Among the Indo-European languages, the Italic languages share a higher percentage of lexicon with the Celtic and the Germanic ones, three of the four traditional "centum" branches of Indo-European (together with Greek).
The following table shows a lexical comparison of several Italic languages:
Gloss | Latino-Faliscan | Osco-Umbrian | Proto- Italic | Proto- Celtic | Proto- Germanic | |||
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Faliscan | Old Latin | Classical Latin | Oscan | Umbrian | ||||
'1' | *ounos | ūnus | *𐌖𐌉𐌍𐌖𐌔 *uinus | 𐌖𐌍𐌔 uns | *oinos | *oinos | *ainaz | |
'2' | du | *duō | duō | 𐌃𐌖𐌔 dus | -𐌃𐌖𐌚 -duf | *duō | *dwāu | *twai |
'3' | tris | trēs (m.f.) tria (n.) | 𐌕𐌓𐌝𐌔 trís | 𐌕𐌓𐌉𐌚 (m.f.) 𐌕𐌓𐌉𐌉𐌀 (n.) trif (m.f.) triia (n.) | *trēs (m.f.) *triā (n.) | *trīs | *þrīz | |
'4' | quattuor | 𐌐𐌄𐌕𐌖𐌓𐌀 𐌐𐌄𐌕𐌕𐌉𐌖𐌓 petora pettiur | 𐌐𐌄𐌕𐌖𐌓 petur | *kʷettwōr | *kʷetwares | *fedwōr | ||
'5' | *quique | quinque | 𐌐𐌏𐌌𐌐𐌄- pompe- | *𐌐𐌖𐌌𐌐𐌄 *pumpe | *kʷenkʷe | *kʷenkʷe | *fimf | |
'6' | śex | *sex | sex | *𐌔𐌄𐌇𐌔 *sehs | 𐌔𐌄𐌇𐌔 sehs | *seks | *swexs | *sehs |
'7' | *śepten | septem | 𐌔𐌄𐌚𐌕𐌄𐌍 seften | *septem | *sextam | *sebun | ||
'8' | oktu | octō | *𐌖𐌇𐌕𐌏 *uhto | *oktō | *oxtū | *ahtōu | ||
'9' | *neven | novem | *𐌍𐌖𐌖𐌄𐌍 *nuven | *𐌍𐌖𐌖𐌉𐌌 *nuvim | *nowen | *nawan | *newun | |
'10' | decem | 𐌃𐌄𐌊𐌄𐌍 deken | *𐌃𐌄𐌔𐌄𐌌 *desem | *dekem | *dekam | *tehun |
The asterisk indicates reconstructed forms based on indirect linguistic evidence and not forms directly attested in any inscription.
From the point of view of Proto-Indo-European, the Italic languages are fairly conservative. In phonology, the Italic languages are centum languages by merging the palatals with the velars (Latin centum has a /k/) but keeping the combined group separate from the labio-velars. In morphology, the Italic languages preserve six cases in the noun and the adjective (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, vocative) with traces of a seventh (locative), but the dual of both the noun and the verb has completely disappeared. From the position of both morphological innovations and uniquely shared lexical items, Italic shows the greatest similarities with Celtic and Germanic, with some of the shared lexical correspondences also being found in Baltic and Slavic. [52]
Similar to Celtic languages, the Italic languages are also divided into P- and Q-branches, depending on the reflex of Proto-Indo-European *kʷ. In the languages of the Osco-Umbrian branch, *kʷ gave p, whereas the languages of the Latino-Faliscan branch preserved it (Latin qu[kʷ]). [53]
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the languages of the northern Indian subcontinent, the overwhelming majority of Europe, and the Iranian plateau. Some European languages of this family—English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, and Spanish—have expanded through colonialism in the modern period and are now spoken across several continents. The Indo-European family is divided into several branches or sub-families, of which there are eight groups with languages still alive today: Albanian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Indo-Iranian, and Italic; another nine subdivisions are now extinct.
The Old Italic scripts are a family of ancient writing systems used in the Italian Peninsula between about 700 and 100 BC, for various languages spoken in that time and place. The most notable member is the Etruscan alphabet, which was the immediate ancestor of the Latin alphabet used by more than 100 languages today, including English. The runic alphabets used in Northern Europe are believed to have been separately derived from one of these alphabets by the 2nd century AD.
Oscan is an extinct Indo-European language of southern Italy. The language is in the Osco-Umbrian or Sabellic branch of the Italic languages. Oscan is therefore a close relative of Umbrian and South Picene.
Umbrian is an extinct Italic language formerly spoken by the Umbri in the ancient Italian region of Umbria. Within the Italic languages it is closely related to the Oscan group and is therefore associated with it in the group of Osco-Umbrian languages, a term generally replaced by Sabellic in modern scholarship. Since that classification was first formulated, a number of other languages in ancient Italy were discovered to be more closely related to Umbrian. Therefore, a group, the Umbrian languages, was devised to contain them.
Samnium is a Latin exonym for a region of Southern Italy anciently inhabited by the Samnites. Their own endonyms were Safinim for the country and Safineis for the people. The language of these endonyms and of the population was the Oscan language. However, not all the Samnites spoke Oscan, and not all the Oscan-speakers lived in Samnium.
Old Latin, also known as Early, Archaic or Priscan Latin, was the Latin language in the period roughly before 75 BC, i.e. before the age of Classical Latin. A member of the Italic languages, it descends from a common Proto-Italic language; Latino-Faliscan is likely a separate branch from Osco-Umbrian. All these languages may be relatively closely related to Venetic and possibly further to Celtic; compare the Italo-Celtic hypothesis.
Messapic is an extinct Indo-European Paleo-Balkanic language of the southeastern Italian Peninsula, once spoken in Salento by the Iapygian peoples of the region: the Calabri and Salentini, the Peucetians and the Daunians. Messapic was the pre-Roman, non-Italic language of Apulia. It has been preserved in about 600 inscriptions written in an alphabet derived from a Western Greek model and dating from the mid-6th to at least the 2nd century BC, when it went extinct following the Roman conquest of the region.
Venetic is an extinct Indo-European language, most commonly classified into the Italic subgroup, that was spoken by the Veneti people in ancient times in northeast Italy and part of modern Slovenia, between the Po Delta and the southern fringe of the Alps, associated with the Este culture.
The Faliscan language is the extinct Italic language of the ancient Falisci, who lived in southern Etruria at Tiber Valley. Together with Latin, it formed the Latino-Faliscan languages group of the Italic languages. It seems probable that the language persisted, being gradually permeated with Latin, until at least 150 BC.
The Etruscan alphabet was used by the Etruscans, an ancient civilization of central and northern Italy, to write their language, from about 700 BC to sometime around 100 AD.
The Osco-Umbrian, Sabellic or Sabellian languages are an extinct group of Italic languages, the Indo-European languages that were spoken in Central and Southern Italy by the Osco-Umbrians before being replaced by Latin, as the power of Ancient Rome expanded. Their written attestations developed from the middle of the 1st millennium BC to the early centuries of the 1st millennium AD. The languages are known almost exclusively from inscriptions, principally of Oscan and Umbrian, but there are also some Osco-Umbrian loanwords in Latin. Besides the two major branches of Oscan and Umbrian, South Picene may represent a third branch of Sabellic. The whole linguistic Sabellic area, however, might be considered a dialect continuum. Paucity of evidence from most of the "minor dialects" contributes to the difficulty of making these determinations.
The Latino-Faliscan or Latinian languages form a group of the Italic languages within the Indo-European family. They were spoken by the Latino-Faliscan people of Italy who lived there from the early 1st millennium BCE.
In historical linguistics, Italo-Celtic is a hypothetical grouping of the Italic and Celtic branches of the Indo-European language family on the basis of features shared by these two branches and no others. There is controversy about the causes of these similarities. They are usually considered to be innovations, likely to have developed after the breakup of the Proto-Indo-European language. It is also possible that some of these are not innovations, but shared conservative features, i.e. original Indo-European language features which have disappeared in all other language groups. What is commonly accepted is that the shared features may usefully be thought of as Italo-Celtic forms, as they are certainly shared by the two families and are almost certainly not coincidental. The archaeological horizon with which a hypothetical Italo-Celtic language family is often associated, before the split between Italic and Celtic languages, is that of the Bell Beaker culture.
The concept of Italic peoples is widely used in linguistics and historiography of ancient Italy. In a strict sense, commonly used in linguistics, it refers to the Osco-Umbrians and Latino-Faliscans, speakers of the Italic languages, a subgroup of the Indo-European language family. In a broader sense, commonly used in historiography, all the ancient peoples of Italy are referred to as Italic peoples, including those who did not speak Indo-European languages such the Rhaetians, Ligures and Etruscans. As the Latins achieved a dominant position among these tribes, by virtue of the expansion of the Roman civilization, the other Italic tribes adopted Latin language and culture as part of the process of Romanization.
Latin is a member of the broad family of Italic languages. Its alphabet, the Latin alphabet, emerged from the Old Italic alphabets, which in turn were derived from the Etruscan, Greek and Phoenician scripts. Historical Latin came from the prehistoric language of the Latium region, specifically around the River Tiber, where Roman civilization first developed. How and when Latin came to be spoken has long been debated.
South Picene is an extinct Italic language belonging to the Sabellic subfamily. It is apparently unrelated to the North Picene language, which is not understood and therefore unclassified. South Picene texts were at first relatively inscrutable even though some words were clearly Indo-European. The discovery in 1983 that two of the apparently redundant punctuation marks were in reality simplified letters led to an incremental improvement in their understanding and a first translation in 1985. Difficulties remain. It may represent a third branch of Sabellic, along with Oscan and Umbrian, or the whole Sabellic linguistic area may be best regarded as a linguistic continuum. The paucity of evidence from most of the 'minor dialects' contributes to these difficulties.
The Latins, sometimes known as the Latials or Latians, were an Italic tribe that included the early inhabitants of the city of Rome. From about 1000 BC, the Latins inhabited the small region known to the Romans as Old Latium, the area in the Italian Peninsula between the river Tiber and the promontory of Mount Circeo 100 km (62 mi) southeast of Rome. Following the Roman expansion, the Latins spread into the Latium adiectum, inhabited by Osco-Umbrian peoples.
The Proto-Italic language is the ancestor of the Italic languages, most notably Latin and its descendants, the Romance languages. It is not directly attested in writing, but has been reconstructed to some degree through the comparative method. Proto-Italic descended from the earlier Proto-Indo-European language.
de Vaan, Michiel (2008). Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-16797-1.