Ligurian language (ancient)

Last updated
Ligurian (ancient)
Native to Liguria
RegionNorthern Mediterranean Coast straddling South-east French and North-west Italian coasts, including Northern Tuscany and Corsica.
Era300 BCE (?) – 100 CE [1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 xlg
xlg
Glottolog anci1248 [4]

The Ligurian language was spoken in pre-Roman times and into the Roman era by an ancient people of north-western Italy and current south-eastern France known as the Ligures.

Contents

Very little is known about ancient Ligurian; the lack of inscriptions and unknown origin of the Ligurian people prevents its certain linguistic classification into a Pre-Indo-European [5] or an Indo-European language. [6] The linguistic hypotheses are mainly based on toponyms and names of persons.

Ancient sources

Map of Italy and its languages. The Ligurian group is N4. The Ligurian is increasingly attested as a non-Indo-European language. Italic-map.svg
Map of Italy and its languages. The Ligurian group is N4. The Ligurian is increasingly attested as a non-Indo-European language.
Liguria in Roman Italy. Meyers b9 s0067b.jpg
Liguria in Roman Italy.
Iron Age Italy.png

Strabo indicates that the Ligurians were different from the Celts:

As for the Alps... Many tribes (éthnê) occupy these mountains, all Celtic (Keltikà) except the Ligurians; but while these Ligurians belong to a different people (hetero-ethneis), still they are similar to the Celts in their modes of life (bíois).

Because of the strong Celtic influences on the language and culture, the Ligurians were known in antiquity as Celto-Ligurians (in Greek ΚελτολίγυεςKeltolígues) in some other sources. [7]

Herodotus (5.9) wrote that sigunnai meant 'hucksters, peddlers' among the Ligurians who lived above Massilia.

Ligurian as a Pre-Indo-European language

Scholars, such as Ernst Gamillscheg, Pia Laviosa Zambotti and Yakov Malkiel, [8] [9] consider ancient Ligurian as a pre-Indo-European language, with later and significant Indo-European influences, especially Celtic (Gallic) and Italic (Latin), superimposed on the original language.

The thesis is that the Ligurians were survivors of the ancient pre-Indo-European populations that had occupied Europe, at least from the fifth millennium BC. [10] These populations would have had their own linguistic strain, which they would have preserved until the onset of waves of Indo-European migration. Later, the latter would conquer the territories, imposing their culture and language on the Ligurians.

Ligurian as an Indo-European language and its relationship with Celtic

Xavier Delamarre argues that Ligurian was a Celtic language, similar to, but not the same as Gaulish.[ citation needed ] His argument hinges on two points: firstly, the Ligurian place-name Genua (modern Genoa, located near a river mouth) is claimed by Delamarre to derive from PIE *ǵenu-, "chin(bone)". Many Indo-European languages use 'mouth' to mean the part of a river which meets the sea or a lake, but it is only in Celtic for which reflexes of PIE *ǵenu- mean 'mouth'. Besides Genua, which is considered Ligurian (Delamarre 2003, p. 177), this is found also in Genava (modern Geneva), which may be Gaulish. However, Genua and Genava may well derive from another PIE root with the form *ǵonu-, which means "knee" (so in Pokorny, IEW). [11]

Delamarre's second point is Plutarch's mention (Marius 10, 5-6) that during the Battle of Aquae Sextiae in 102 BC, the Ambrones (who were a Germanic tribe from Jutland) began to shout "Ambrones!" as their battle cry; the Ligurian troops fighting for the Romans, on hearing this cry, found that it was identical to an ancient name in their country which the Ligurians often used when speaking of their descent (outôs kata genos onomazousi Ligues), so they returned the shout, "Ambrones!".

A risk of circular logic has been pointed out – if it is believed that the Ligurians are non-Celtic, and if many place names and tribal names that classical authors state are Ligurian seem to be Celtic, it is incorrect to discard all the Celtic ones when collecting Ligurian words and to use this edited corpus to demonstrate that Ligurian is non-Celtic or non-Indo-European. [12]

The Ligurian-Celtic question is also discussed by Guy Barruol (fr) in his 1969 paper The Pre-Roman Peoples of South-East Gaul: Study of Historical Geography.

Ligurian as substrate

French historian and philologist Marie Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville held that Ligurian was the first Indo-European language spoken in Western Europe and was related to Sicel. In his work Premiers Habitants de l'Europe (2nd edition 1889–1894), Jubainville proposed an early Indo-European substrate language for Corsica, Sardinia, eastern Spain, southern France and western Italy, based on the occurrence there of place names ending in -asco, -asca, -usco, -osco, -osca as well as -inco, -inca. [13] For examples of the Corsican toponymy cited by Jubainville, see Prehistory of Corsica.

Other linguists expanded on the idea. Julius Pokorny adapted it as the basis for his Illyro-Venetic theory. Paul Kretschmer saw evidence for Ligurian in Lepontic inscriptions, now seen as Celtic. Hans Krahe, focusing on river names, converted the concept into his theory of the Old European hydronymy. [14]

See also

Related Research Articles

Celtic languages Language family

The Celtic languages are a group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They form a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, following Paul-Yves Pezron, who made the explicit link between the Celts described by classical writers and the Welsh and Breton languages.

Celts Ethnolinguistic group

The Celts are a collection of Indo-European peoples of Europe identified by their use of the Celtic languages and other cultural similarities. The history of pre-Celtic Europe and the exact relationship between ethnic, linguistic and cultural factors in the Celtic world remains uncertain and controversial. The exact geographic spread of the ancient Celts is disputed; in particular, the ways in which the Iron Age inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland should be regarded as Celts have become a subject of controversy. According to one theory, the common root of the Celtic languages, the Proto-Celtic language, arose in the Late Bronze Age Urnfield culture of Central Europe, which flourished from around 1200 BC.

Cisalpine Gaul Roman province

Cisalpine Gaul was the part of Italy inhabited by Celts (Gauls) during the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. After its conquest by the Roman Republic in the 220s BC it was considered geographically part of Roman Italy but remained administratively separated. It was a Roman province from c. 81 BC until 42 BC, when it was de jure merged into Roman Italy as indicated in Caesar's unpublished acts. Cisalpine means "on the hither side of the Alps", as opposed to Transalpine Gaul.

Ligures Ethnic group

The Ligures were an ancient population that gave the name to Liguria, a region of north-western Italy.

Lepontic language Ancient Celtic language

Lepontic is an ancient Alpine Celtic language that was spoken in parts of Rhaetia and Cisalpine Gaul between 550 and 100 BC. Lepontic is attested in inscriptions found in an area centered on Lugano, Switzerland, and including the Lake Como and Lake Maggiore areas of Italy.

The Volcae were a tribal confederation constituted before the raid of combined Gauls that invaded Macedonia c. 270 BC and fought the assembled Greeks at the Battle of Thermopylae in 279 BC. Tribes known by the name Volcae were found simultaneously in southern Gaul, Moravia, the Ebro valley of the Iberian Peninsula, and Galatia in Anatolia. The Volcae appear to have been part of the late La Tène material culture, and a Celtic identity has been attributed to the Volcae, based on mentions in Greek and Latin sources as well as onomastic evidence. Driven by highly mobile groups operating outside the tribal system and comprising diverse elements, the Volcae were one of the new ethnic entities formed during the Celtic military expansion at the beginning of the 3rd century BC. Collecting in the famous excursion into the Balkans, ostensibly, from the Hellene point of view, to raid Delphi, a branch of the Volcae split from the main group on the way into the Balkans and joined two other tribes, the Tolistobogii and the Trocmi, to settle in central Anatolia and establish a new identity as the Galatians.

Cynetes ancient people in Iberia

The Cynetes or Conii were one of the pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula, living in today's Algarve and Lower Alentejo regions of southern Portugal, and the southern part of Badajoz and the northwestern portions of Córdoba and Ciudad Real provinces in Spain before the 6th century BCE. According to Justin's epitome, the mythical Gargoris and Habis were the founding kings.

In historical linguistics, Italo-Celtic is a 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.

Cantabri ethnic group

The Cantabri or Ancient Cantabrians, were a pre-Roman people, probably Celtic or pre-Celtic European, and large tribal federation that lived in the northern coastal region of ancient Iberia in the second half of the first millennium BC. These peoples and their territories were incorporated into the Roman Province of Hispania Tarraconensis in the year 19 BC, following the Cantabrian Wars.

Golasecca culture Archaeological culture in Northern Italy

The Golasecca culture was a Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age culture in northern Italy, whose type-site was excavated at Golasecca in the province of Varese, Lombardy, where, in the area of Monsorino at the beginning of the 19th century, Abbot Giovanni Battista Giani made the first findings of about fifty graves with pottery and metal objects.

Petrocorii

The Petrocorii were a Gaulish tribe located in the present-day Dordogne region of France, between the Dordogne and Isle rivers. Their capital was Vesunna, which is today the town of Périgueux. Périgueux as well as the ancient province of Périgord take their names from this tribe.

The Celtic Cisalpine Gaulish inscriptions are frequently combined with the Lepontic inscriptions under the term Celtic language remains in northern Italy. While it is possible that the Lepontians were autochthonous to northern Italy since the end of the 2nd millennium BC, it is well-known that the Gauls invaded the regions north of the river Po in several waves since the 5th century BC. They apparently took over the art of writing from the Lepontians, including some of the orthographic peculiarities. There are 20 Cisalpine Gaulish inscriptions, five of which are longer than just one or two words. The inscriptions stem largely from the area south of the Lepontians.

The various names used since classical times for the people known today as the Celts are of disparate origins.

The Carni were a tribe of the Eastern Alps in classical antiquity, settling in the mountains separating Noricum and Venetia.

Prehistory of Corsica

The prehistory of Corsica is analogous to the prehistories of the other islands in the Mediterranean Sea, such as Sicily, Sardinia, Malta and Cyprus, which could only be accessed by boat and featured cultures that were to some degree insular; that is, modified from the traditional Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic and Chalcolithic of European prehistoric cultures. The islands of the Aegean Sea and Crete early developed Bronze Age civilizations and are accordingly usually treated under those categories. Stone Age Crete however shares some of the features of the prehistoric Mediterranean islands.

The Canegrate culture was a civilization of Prehistoric Italy who developed from the recent Bronze Age until the Iron Age, in the areas of what are now western Lombardy, eastern Piedmont, and Ticino. Canegrate represented a completely new cultural dynamic to the area expressed in pottery and bronzework making it a typical example of the western Hallstatt culture.

References

  1. ↑ Ligurian (ancient) at MultiTree on the Linguist List
  2. ↑ Kruta, Venceslas (1991). The Celts. Thames and Hudson. p. 54.
  3. ↑ Kruta, Venceslas (1991). The Celts. Thames and Hudson. p. 55.
  4. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Ancient Ligurian". Glottolog 3.0 . Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  5. ↑ "Liguri". Enciclopedie on line. Treccani.it (in Italian). Rome: Treccani -Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. 2011. Le documentazioni sulla lingua dei Liguri non ne permettono una classificazione linguistica certa (preindoeuropeo di tipo mediterraneo? Indoeuropeo di tipo celtico?).
  6. ↑ "Ligurian language". Britannica.com. 2014-12-16. Retrieved 2015-08-29.
  7. ↑ Baldi, Philip (2002). The Foundations of Latin. Walter de Gruyter. p. 112.
  8. ↑ Ernst Gamillscheg, Romanen und Basken. Mainz & Wiesbaden: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur in Mainz, 1950. (in German)
  9. ↑ Yakov Malkiel, Old and New Trends in Spanish Linguistics, published July 1952 (172) 1951-1952.
  10. ↑ Pia Laviosa Zambotti, La civiltà dei più antichi agricoltori liguri, in „ Rivista di Studi Liguri" (Anno IX, N. 2—3, Maggio-Dicembre 1943, pp. 96—108) (in Italian)
  11. ↑ Indogermanisches Etymologisches Woerterbuch
  12. ↑ Celtic Gods: The Gaulish and Ligurian god, Vasio at the Wayback Machine (archived 2013-05-18)
  13. ↑ Jubainville, H. D'Arbois de (1889). Les Premiers Habitants de l'Europe d'après les Écrivains de l'Antiquité et les Travaux des Linguistes: Seconde Édition (in French). Paris: Ernest Thorin. pp. V.II, Book II, Chapter 9, Sections 10, 11.
  14. ↑ Mees, Bernard (2003). "A genealogy of stratigraphy theories from the Indo-European west". In Anderson, Henning (ed.). Language Contacts in Prehistory: Studies in Stratigraphy. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamin Publishing Company. pp. 11–44. ISBN   1-58811-379-5.

Sources

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.