Umbrian language

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.

Corpus Umbrian is known from about 30 inscriptions dated from the 7th through 1st centuries BC. The largest cache by far is the Iguvine Tablets, sevenThe tradition born in the 17th century that the tablets were originally nine, and that two, sent to Venice, never came back, must be considered spurious. Paolucci (1966), p. 44 inscribed bronze tablets found in 1444 near the village of Scheggia or, according to another tradition, in an underground chamber at Gubbio (ancient Iguvium).AA. VV. (2004), p. 243 The seven tablets contain notes on the ceremonies and statutes for priests of the ancient religion in the region. Sometimes they are called the Eugubian tablets after the medieval name of Iguvium/Eugubium. The tablets contain 4000–5000 words.

Other minor inscriptions are from Todi, Assisi and Spoleto.

Phonological history Shared changes Umbrian shares some phonological changes with its sister language Oscan.

Labialization of *kʷ to p This change is shared with Umbrian, and so is a common Sabellic change, reminiscent of the k/p split between Goidellic (Irish, etc) and Brythonic (Welsh, etc). piře, pirse "what"; Oscan pídum vs Latin quid.

Initial stress and syncope At some point early in the history of all Indo-European Italic languages, the accent seems to have shifted to the initial syllable of words as a stress accent, since non-initial syllables are regularly lost or weakened. Since the same pattern occurs in the history of Etruscan, this must be assumed to be an areal feature. (By the time of classical Latin, the accent had shifted in that language to more of an Ancient Greek pattern – on the third syllable from the end (antepenult) unless the last syllable was long, in which case it fell on the second to last syllable (the penult).) The degree to which these shifts can be connected to similar shifts to initial stress in Celtic and Germanic is unclear; for discussion see J. Salmons' Accentual Change and Language Contact.Salmons, Joseph (1992), Accentual Change and Language Contact, Stanford University Press

Examples: Loss of unstressed short -e-: *onse "shoulder" < *omesei, compare Latin umerus; destre "on the right" < *deksiterer; ostendu "present" (imperative) < *obs-tendetōd, compare Latin ostendito.

Innovations unique to Umbrian (or not shared with Oscan) But compared to its highly conservative sister language Oscan, Umbrian exhibits a number of innovations, some of them shared by its neighbor to the west, Latin. (Below, following convention, bold text for Umbrian and Oscan indicates words written in the native, Etruscan derived script, while italics represents words written in Latin-derived script.)

Treatment of original diphthongs All diphthongs are simplified into monophthongs, a process only partly seen in Latin, and only very rarely in Oscan. So Proto-Italic *ai and *ei become Umbrian low ē: kvestur : Oscan kvaísstur, Latin quaestor 'official in charge of public revenue and expenditure'; prever 'single' : Oscan preivatud, Latin prīvus; furthermore, Proto-Italic *oi, *ou and *au become ō (written u in the native script) in initial syllables: unu 'one' : Old Latin oinus; ute 'or' : Oscan auti, Latin aut; tuta 'city' : Oscan touto.

Palatalization of velars Velars are palatalized and spirantized before front vowels and the front glide /j/ to probably a palatalized sibilant (perhaps the postalveolar /ʃ/), written ç, ś or simply s. (A similar change happened later in the Romance languages.) For example: Umbrian śesna 'dinner' : Oscan kersnu, Latin cēna; Umbrian façiu 'I do, I make' : Latin faciō.

Rhotacism Like Latin, but unlike Oscan, intervocalic -s- rhotacized to -r- in Umbrian. In late forms of the language, final -s also becomes -r (a change not seen in Latin). For example, the genitive plural ending of -ā stems: Umbrian -arum, Latin -arum vs Oscan -asúm (compare Sanskrit -āsām).

Treatment of *d

While initial *d- is preserved (spelled t in the native alphabet), earlier intervocalic *-d- (and sometimes *-l-) show up in the native alphabet as a character generally transliterated as ř, but as the sequence rs in Umbrian texts using the Latin alphabet. The exact pronunciation is unknown: piře, pirse "what" vs. Oscan pídum, Latin quid. Vowels Proto-Italic *ū became /i/, sim (accusative singular) <PI *sūm "pig"

Phonology The exact phonetics of much of what follows are not completely clear.

Consonants The consonant inventory of Umbrian is as follows:

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;" ! colspan="2"| !Labial !Dental !Alveolar !Palatal !Velar !Glottal

! colspan="2"| Liquid

| colspan="2" style="font-size:larger;"|

! colspan="2"| Rhotic

| colspan="2" style="font-size:larger;"|

! colspan="2"| Semivowel

| style="font-size:larger;" | | style="font-size:larger;" |

Vowels

Pure: a, e, i, o, u

Long: ā, ē, ī, ō, ū

Diphthongs: ai, ei, ou

Alphabet The Iguvine tablets were written in two alphabets. The older, the Umbrian alphabet, like other Old Italic scripts, was derived from the Etruscan alphabet, and was written right-to-left, essentially equivalent to the Neo-Etruscan, but using a letter shaped like a 'P' from the Archaic Etruscan alphabet for the unique Umbrian sound discussed above. The newer was written in the Latin script. The texts are sometimes called Old Umbrian and New Umbrian. The differences are mainly orthographic. For example, rs in the Latin alphabet is represented by a single character in the native script (generally transcribed as ř; this represents an unknown sound that developed regularly from intervocalic *-d- in most cases). To clearly distinguish them, the native script is generally transcribed in bold, the Latin in italics.

Grammar Nouns

Case functions

Accusative and dative The accusative, just as in Latin, was used as the direct object of transitive verbs and with prepositions. There is also evidence of the cognate accusative, a function in Latin in which accusative nouns were often the object of related verbs. In Umbrian, this appears in the sentence "." The dative was used in both Latin and Umbrian to refer to the indirect object of transitive verbs, although it could also be the direct object of special verbs: the Umbrian verb "" ("to care for") is used with the dative in the sentence "" to express the meaning "to care for the divine thing," which in Latin would be expressed using the equivalent verb "" with the accusative. Certain compound verbs appear to have taken the dative, a linguistic peculiarity also present in Latin: In the sentence "," the compound verb "" takes the dative. Dative forms could also function as the indirect object of nouns with verbal meanings: "," meaning "dedication for Jupiter." Like Latin, the Umbrian dative could be paired with adjectives: "," meaning "It must be propitious ... for the people." The Umbrian dative could indicate the beneficiary or maleficiary of an action: this function, the dative of reference, appears in the sentence "" ("observe... divine omens for me, for the city of Iguvinum").

Genitive Like Latin, the genitive case was utilized to communicate both partitive and objective relationships between nouns. The partitive genitive, in which the genitive communicates that the noun is a smaller component of the genitive noun, appears in Umbrian sentences such as "," meaning "greater part of the [Arvales] brothers." However, unlike Latin, the partitive genitive in Umbrian may have also functioned as a subject in certain circumstances, a grammatical property that appears in Lithuanian, Avestan, and—rarely—Greek. This usage of the genitive is possibly attested in the sentence "," meaning "[whether] any of them are to be accepted." The genitive of possession, in which the genitive term is marked as the possessor, possibly appears in Umbrian sentences such as , translating to "for the people of the city of Iguvium." However, within this sentence, the genitive could either be functioning in its capacity as a partitive or possessive genitive. Likewise, the genitive of characteristic may appear in the sentence "," meaning "whoever is of the city of Tadinatus," although in this sentence the genitive may either be functioning as a genitive of characteristic or as a partitive genitive. The objective genitive, in which the genitive functions to communicate the object of nouns with verbal connotations, appears in Umbrian sentences such as "," meaning "dedication of the sacrificial animal," and "," meaning "confidence in the holy one."

Ablative and locative In contrast to Latin, in which the locative was reduced to rare and limited functions, the Umbrian locative retained much broader and more widespread use. The Umbrian locative was used to signify the place something occurred; thus, Umbrian terms locatives such as , meaning "at Acedonia," and "," meaning "at [city of] Iguvium." Locative forms such as and , both of which refer to the time frame in which a specific individual held a political office, attest to the existence of a locative of time, which would indicate the time something occurred. Ablative forms were also utilized to communicate locative meanings: Umbrian phrases such as "" ("sitting in the tent") utilize the ablative to indicate the location where something occurred. The ablative, typically when accompanied by a preposition such as "" (";" "out of," "from") or a postpositive marker such as "" or "," could also indicate movement from a location: the terms term "" ("from the field") and the sentence"" ("from this people") both demonstrate this function of the ablative. Furthermore, the ablative in Umbrian could indicate the route through which movement had occurred: the sentence, "" ("go by the augural way"), exemplifies this usage." Ablative forms could communicate the time something occurred, as demonstrated in the phrase "" ("in the middle of the prayer"). Both the ablative and locative appeared to be able to communicate the means by which in action occurred: the phrase "" ("to hold in the hand") utilizes the ablative form "" ("in the hand"), while the sentence "" ("to hold in the hand") utilizes the locative form to communicate a similar meaning.

Umbrian language

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