The Etruscan World (Routledge Worlds)

• Luciano Agostiniani –

Phonology

Our current knowledge of Etruscan is anything but meager, when one considers the
substantial poverty of written documentation on which the reconstruction of the language
has ultimately been based. Almost paradoxically, since it is a dead language, its best
known aspect i s phonology. It is possible to reconstruct the series of functional sounds
(phonemes) of Etruscan, the natural classes both of vowels and of the consonants, through
a series of indications provided mainly by the values of the Greek alphabetic signs in
the model alphabet upon which Etruscan script was based, and also by the phonetic
treatment of lexical loans in Etruscan, the evolution of the script, the general criteria of
phonological typology, and a few explicit testimonies of ancient authors.^12
The vowel system of Etruscan, at least for the Archaic period, is a system of four
vowels, marked by iota, alpha, epsilon and ypsilon: thus it is formed by the three basic
vowels / i a u / plus / e /. Such systems are widely attested in the languages of the world.
We believe^13 that for the Archaic period, the / a / was a back vowel (as in French pâte), and
that in the recent phase of the language it became centralized (the / a / is a central vowel
in Italian, Spanish and many other languages). This is shown by the different treatment,
in both the Archaic and Late phases of the language, of the diphthong / ou / in the Italic
loanwords in Etruscan, by which the Italic personal name Loucios is rendered in archaic
Etruscan as Laucie or Lavcie, in Late Etruscan as Luvcie; or even by the different output of
the genitive of stems in a dental consonant, like the personal names Larθ and Laris, that
in Archaic Etruscan are not Larθial and Larisal (as will instead occur in the Late period,
and as required by the “pertinentive” form – see more below), but Larθia and Larisal
with the absorption of the fi nal / l / (which was velarized in Etruscan) into the back
(velar) / a /: a form of absorption which is no longer possible in Late Etruscan, when the
/ a / will have lost its velar character. The Archaic Etruscan vowel system has therefore a
quadrangular symmetry and in the Late period, a triangular asymmetry. In outline:

Archaic Etruscan

i u

e a

Late Etruscan

i u

e

a

The discovery of the Tabula Cortonensis has shown, however, that things are even more
complex – certainly owing to the variety of language of Cortona, and perhaps also to
other varieties, if not all.^14 In the Cortona text there are two different / e /, one marked
with an epsilon that follows the direction of the writing (from right to left), the other with
the same sign but retrograde (the opposite direction). The regularity of their distribution
shows that we must be dealing with different sounds, distinguished phonetically by the
different length and/or by different height. Under these conditions, the vowel system of
Late Etruscan increases its asymmetry: no longer two, but three palatal vowels in contrast
to one velar vowel.
Before analyzing the consonant system, we must note two developments that
distinguished the vowel system of Late Etruscan from that of the Archaic period. The
fi rst is the presence of / e / as a substitute for / i / in a stressed syllable: to Archaic itan,
“this,” corresponds etan; and cipen, “priest” (or more likely “all”),^15 in the Tabula Capuana
corresponds to cepen in the Liber Linteus, and so on. This lowering of / i / into / e / appears