Latino-Faliscan languages
| Latino-Faliscan | |
|---|---|
| Latinian | |
| Geographic distribution | Originally Latium in Italy, then throughout the Roman Empire, especially in the western regions; now also throughout Latin America, Eastern Canada, and many countries in Africa |
| Linguistic classification | Indo-European
|
| Proto-language | Proto-Latino-Faliscan |
| Subdivisions |
|
| Language codes | |
| Glottolog | lati1262 |
 Latino-Faliscan languages and dialects in different shades of blue. | |
Latino-Faliscan or Latinian languages were a branch 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 BC.
Latin and Faliscan belong to the group, as well as Lanuvian and Praenestine, which are sometimes considered dialects of Latin.
Linguistic description
Latin and Faliscan have several features in common with other Italic languages:
- The late Indo-European diphthong /*eu/ evolved into ou.
- The late Indo-European /*ə/ from vocalic laryngeals evolved into a.
- The Indo-European syllabic liquids /*l̥, *r̥/ developed an epenthetic vowel o, giving Italic ol, or.
- The Indo-European syllabic nasals /*m̥, *n̥/ developed an epenthetic vowel e, giving Italic em, en.
- Word-initial aspirated stops from Indo-European were fricativised: /*bʰ, *dʰ, *gʰ, gʷʰ/ > f, f, h, f.
- The sequence /*p...kʷ/ was assimilated into kʷ...kʷ (Proto-Indo-European *penkʷe 'five' > Latin quinque).
Latin and Faliscan also have characteristics not shared by other branches of Italic. They retain the Indo-European labiovelars /*kʷ, *gʷ/ as qu-, gu- (later becoming velar and semivocal), whereas in Osco-Umbrian they become labial p, b. Latin and Faliscan use the ablative suffix -d, seen in med ("me", ablative), which is absent in Osco-Umbrian. In addition, Latin displays evolution of ou into ū, though this happens later than the Latino-Faliscan era, occurring around the 2nd century BCE (Latin lūna < Proto-Italic *louksnā < PIE *lówksneh₂ "moon").
Phonology
It is likely that the consonant inventory of Proto-Latino-Faliscan was basically identical to that of archaic Latin. Consonants not found in the Praeneste fibula are marked with an asterisk.
Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar Labio-
velarGlottal Plosive voiceless *p *t k *kʷ voiced *b d *g *gʷ Fricative f s *h Sonorants *r, *l j *w Nasal m n
The /kʷ/ sound still existed in archaic Latin when the Latin alphabet was developed, since it gives rise to the minimal pair quī /kʷiː/ ("who", nominative) > cuī /ku.iː/ ("to whom", dative). In other positions there is no distinction between diphthongs and hiatuses: for example, persuādere ("to persuade") is a diphthong but sua ("his"/"her") is a hiatus. For reasons of symmetry, it is quite possible that many sequences of gu in archaic Latin in fact represent a voiced labiovelar /gʷ/.[citation needed]
Lanuvian
Lanuvian was an archaic Latino-Faliscan language spoken by Latins who lived close to Rome. It may have been a dialect of Latin.
Praenestine
Praenestine or Praenestinian was an archaic form of Latino-Faliscan spoken in eastern Old Latium (modern day Lazio), Italy.
See also
References
- 1 2 Sturtevant 1920, p. 66.
- ↑ Bakkum 2008, pp. 61–3.
- ↑ Bakkum 2008, p. 58, 59.
- ↑ Bakkum 2008, p. 64.
- ↑ Bakkum 2008, p. 70.
- ↑ Bakkum 2008, p. 65.
- ↑ Bakkum 2008, p. 69.
- ↑ "Lanuvian". LINGUIST List. Archived from the original on 5 June 2019. Retrieved 2024-12-24.
- ↑ Pei, Mario; Gaynor, Frank (1954). Dictionary of Linguistics. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 173. ISBN 9781442234055.
{{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
Sources
- Villar, Francisco [in Italian] (1997). Gli Indoeuropei e le origini dell'Europa [Indo-Europeans and the origins of Europe] (in Italian). Bologna, Il Mulino: Il mulino. ISBN 88-15-05708-0.
- Vineis, Edoardo (1995). "X. Latin". In Giacolone Ramat, Anna; Ramat, Paolo (eds.). Las lenguas indoeuropeas [The Indo-European languages] (in Spanish). Madrid: Cátedra. pp. 349–421. ISBN 84-376-1348-5.
- Bakkum, Gabriël C.L.M. (2008). The Latin Dialect of the Ager Faliscus : 150 Years of Scholarship. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. doi:10.5117/9789056295622 (inactive 1 July 2025). ISBN 978-90-5629-562-2.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of July 2025 (link) - Sturtevant, E. H. (1920). "The Italic Languages". The Classical Weekly. 14 (9): 66–69. doi:10.2307/4388079. ISSN 1940-641X. JSTOR 4388079.
Further reading
- Baldi, Philip (1999). The Foundations of Latin. Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-016294-3.
- Clackson, James; Horrocks, Geoffrey (2007). The Blackwell history of the Latin language. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4051-6209-8. OCLC 473646442.
- Giacomelli, Roberto. 1979. "Written and spoken language in latin-faliscan and greek-messapic." Journal of Indo-European Studies 7 no. 3–4: 149–75.
- Mercado, Angelo (2012). Italic Verse. Innsbruck: Inst. für Sprachen und Literaturen der Univ. Innsbruck, Bereich Sprachwissenschaft. ISBN 978-3-85124-731-2.
- Palmer, Leonard R. 1961. The Latin language. London: Faber and Faber.
- Joseph, Brian D.; Wallace, Rex E. (1991-01-01). "Is Faliscan a Local Latin Patois?" (PDF). Diachronica. 8 (2): 159–186. doi:10.1075/dia.8.2.02jos. ISSN 0176-4225. Retrieved 2025-11-16.
- Rigobianco, Luca (2019). Faliscan. ISBN 978-84-17873-32-5.
- Rigobianco, Luca (2020-05-01). "Falisco". Palaeohispanica. Revista sobre lenguas y culturas de la Hispania Antigua (in Italian) (20). ISSN 1578-5386. Retrieved 2025-11-16.
External links
- "Languages and Cultures of Ancient Italy. Historical Linguistics and Digital Models", Project fund by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (P.R.I.N. 2017)