Proto-Italic

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.

History

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 cultures (1200–900 BC).

On the other hand, work in glottochronology has argued that Proto-Italic split off from the western Proto-Indo-European dialects some time before 2500 BC. It was originally spoken by Italic tribes north of the Alps before they moved south into the Italian Peninsula during the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. Linguistic evidence also points to early contacts with Celtic tribes and Proto-Germanic speakers.

Development

A list of regular phonetic changes from Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Italic follows. Because Latin is the only well-attested Italic language, it forms the main source for the reconstruction of Proto-Italic. It is therefore not always clear whether certain changes apply to all of Italic (a pre-PI change), or only to Latin (a post-PI change), because of lack of conclusive evidence.

Obstruents

* Palatovelars merged with plain velars, a change termed centumization.
** *ḱ > *k
** *ǵ > *g
** *ǵʰ > *gʰ
** Sequences of palatovelars and *w merged with labiovelars: *ḱw, *ǵw, *ǵʰw > *kʷ, *gʷ, *gʷʰ
* *p...kʷ > *kʷ...kʷ, a change also found in Celtic.
* Labiovelars lose their labialisation before a consonant: *kʷC, *gʷC, *gʷʰC > *kC, *gC, *gʰC.
* Obstruent consonants become (unaspirated) voiceless before another voiceless consonant (usually *s or *t).
* Voiced aspirates become fricatives. Word-initially, they become voiceless, while they are allophonically voiced word-medially. Judging from Oscan evidence, they apparently remained fricatives even after a nasal consonant. In most other Italic languages they developed into stops later in that position.
** *bʰ > *f (medially *β)
** *dʰ > *θ (medially *ð)
** *gʰ > *x (medially *ɣ)
** *gʷʰ > *xʷ (medially *ɣʷ)
* *s was also allophonically voiced to *z word-medially.
* *sr, *zr > *θr, *ðr.
* *θ, *xʷ > *f. Found in Venetic ''vhagsto''/''hvagsto'' (compare Latin ''faciō''). The voiced allophones *ð and *ɣʷ remained distinct from *β in Latin and Venetic, but also merged in Osco-Umbrian.
* *tl > *kl word-medially.
* Final *t became *d

Vowels and sonorants

* *l̥, *r̥ > *ol, *or
* *m̥, *n̥ > *əm, *ən (see below on "Vowels")
* *j is lost between vowels. The resulting vowels in hiatus contract into a long vowel if the two vowels are the same.
* *ew > *ow.
* *o > *a in open syllables after labials and *l.
* *-mj- > -*nj-

Laryngeals

The laryngeals are a class of hypothetical PIE sounds *''h₁'', *''h₂'', *''h₃'' that usually disappeared in late PIE, leaving coloring effects on adjacent vowels. Their disappearance left some distinctive sound combinations in Proto-Italic. In the changes below, the # follows standard practice in denoting a word boundary; that is, # at the beginning denotes word-initial. H denotes any of the three laryngeals.

The simpler Italic developments of laryngeals are shared by many other Indo-European branches:
* *h₁e > *e, *h₂e > *a, *h₃e > *o
* *eh₁ > *ē, *eh₂ > *ā, *eh₃ > *ō
* *H > *a between obstruents
* Laryngeals are lost word-initially before a consonant.

More characteristic of Italic are the interactions of laryngeals with sonorant consonants. Here, R represents a sonorant, and C a consonant.
* #HRC > #aRC and CHRC > CaRC, but #HRV > #RV
* CRHC > CRāC, but CRHV > CaRV
* CiHC and probably CHiC > CīC

Morphology

* General loss of the dual, with only a few relics remaining.
* Loss of the instrumental case.

Phonology

Consonants

* was an allophone of before a velar consonant.
* The voiced fricatives , , , and were in complementary distribution with word-initial voiceless fricatives , , , and , and were thus originally simply allophones of each other. However, at some point in the Proto-Italic period, the allophony was somewhat disrupted by the loss of the voiceless allophones and , which merged with . Scholars disagree on whether to reconstruct Proto-Italic with the phonemes and still present (hence assuming that the merger with was a later areal change that spread across all extant dialects, possibly occurring simultaneous with or after the loss of the corresponding voiced fricatives), or to reconstruct Proto-Italic with the phonemes' voiceless allophones merged into , and their voiced allophones becoming independent phonemes , . Both of these sounds are relatively uncommon cross-linguistically, and eventually they were eliminated in all later languages, but differently in each.

Vowels

* was perhaps not a true phoneme, but was inserted before consonants as a prop vowel. It can be reconstructed based on the outcome of the Proto-Indo-European syllabic nasals and , which appear in Latin as *em, *en or *im, *in, but also as *am, *an in Osco-Umbrian alongside *em, *en. Thus, it appears necessary to reconstruct as a distinct sound. However, Meiser reconstructs a nasal vowel as this prop vowel, citing how Old French evolved to modern French as a parallel.

Proto-Italic had the following diphthongs:
* Short: , , , ,
* Long: , ,

Osthoff's law remained productive in Proto-Italic. This caused long vowels to shorten when they were followed by a sonorant and another consonant in the same syllable: VːRC > VRC. As the long diphthongs were also VːR sequences, they could only occur word-finally, and were shortened elsewhere. Long vowels were also shortened before word-final . This is the cause of the many occurrences of short in, for example, the endings of the ā-stems or of ā-verbs.

Prosody

Proto-Italic words may have had a fixed stress on the first syllable, a stress pattern which probably existed in most descendants in at least some periods. In Latin, initial stress is posited for the Old Latin period, after which it gave way to the " Classical" stress pattern. However, fixed initial stress may alternatively be an areal feature postdating Proto-Italic, since the vowel reductions which it is posited
to explain are not found before the mid-first millennium BC.

Furthermore, the persistence of Proto-Indo-European mobile accent is required in early Proto-Italic for Brent Vine's (2006) reformulation of Thurneysen-Havet's law (where pre-tonic *ou > *au) to work.M. de Vaan, Etymological Dictionary of Latin, 2008, Brill, p. 9; B. Vine, 2006: “On ‘Thurneysen-Havet’s Law’ in Latin and Italic”; Historische
Sprachforschung 119, 211–249.

Grammar

Nouns

Nouns could have one of three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. They declined for seven of the eight Proto-Indo-European cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative and locative. The instrumental case had been lost. Nouns also declined for number in singular and plural. The dual number was no longer distinguished, although a few remnants (like Latin , ) still preserved some form of the inherited dual inflection.

o-stems

This class corresponds to the ''second declension'' of Latin, basically divided into masculine and neuter nouns. It descends from the Proto-Indo-European thematic declension. Most nouns in this class were masculine or neuter, but there may have been some feminine nouns as well (e.g., names of plants such as Latin "papyrus").

* The genitive singular in is of unknown origin, but is found in both Italic and Celtic. It mostly ousted the older inherited genitive in in Latin. The older form is found in a few inscriptions, such as on the Lapis Satricanus, likely rendered as ''Publii Valerii'' in classical Latin. It is also continued in some pronominal genitives, such as < < PIE , with added by analogy with the consonant stem genitive in . In Osco-Umbrian, neither ending survives, being replaced with , the i-stem ending.
* The nominative plural was originally for nouns and adjectives, and for pronominal forms. The distribution in Proto-Italic is unclear, but both endings certainly still existed. The ending was replaced altogether in Latin in favour of , whence the classical . In Osco-Umbrian, the reverse happened, where was replaced with , whence Oscan , Umbrian .
* In Old Latin, the genitive plural was still generally , later . It was then reformed based on the ā-stem form , giving the classical .
* Neuter o-stems also had a dual ending ''-oi'' (< ''*-oyh₁''), surviving in some Latin relics like ''caelum'' "sky", ''frēnum'' "bridle" and ''rāstrum'' "rake", whose plurals end in ''-ī'' instead of ''-a''.

ā-stems

This class corresponds to the ''first declension'' of Latin. It derives primarily from Proto-Indo-European nouns in , and contained mostly feminine nouns, and maybe a few masculines, such as names of jobs in Classical Latin, some of them being loanwords from Ancient Greek (e.g., incola, nauta, poeta).

* The accusative singular ending would have been ''*-am'' originally, due to shortening of long vowels before final ''*-m''. However, a long vowel is found in the attested forms. This long vowel most likely arose by analogy with the other endings that have a long vowel.
* The genitive plural ending was originally a pronominal form, PIE ''*-eh₂-soHom''.
* The genitive singular in -s, still used in Old Latin, went extinct in Classical Latin except in the fixed expression "Pater familias".

Consonant stems

This class contained nouns with stems ending in a variety of consonants. They included root nouns, n-stems, r-stems, s-stems and t-stems among others. It corresponds to the ''third declension'' of Latin, which also includes the i-stems, originally a distinct class.

Masculine and feminine nouns declined alike, while neuters had different forms in the nominative/accusative/vocative.

Nouns in this class often had a somewhat irregular nominative singular form. This created several subtypes, based on the final consonant of the stem.

* For most consonant stem nouns, the ending of the nominative/vocative singular was ''-s'' for masculine and feminine nouns. This ending would cause devoicing, delabialisation and/or hardening of the stem-final consonant, as seen in above. Neuter nouns had no ending.
* n-stems generally had the ending ''*-ō'', with the infix ''*-on-'' (or maybe ''*-en-'') in the other cases; e.g., PIt ''*sermō, sermōnes'', in which ''*-mō'' derives from PIE ''*-mō'' < ''**-mons''. On the other hand, neuters had ''*-ən'' in the nom/voc/acc singular, while the stem of the remaining forms is unclear. An example is ''*kreimən, *kreimənVs,'' from PIE ''*kréymn̥'', in which ''-mn̥'' is related to ''**-mons.''
* r-stems had ''*-ēr'', alternating with ''*-(e)r-''. The alternation in vowel length was lost in Latin, but is preserved in Oscan.
* s-stems had ''*-ōs'' (for masculines and feminines) or ''*-os'' (for neuters). This alternated with ''*-ez-'' (or maybe ''*-oz-'' in some masculine/feminine nouns) in the other forms.
* The r/n-stems were a small group of neuter nouns. These had ''*-or'' in the nominative/vocative/accusative singular, but ''*-(e)n-'' in the remaining forms.

Other notes:
* The genitive singular had two possible endings. Both are attested side by side in Old Latin, although the ending ''-es''/''-is'' may also be from the i-stems (see below). In Osco-Umbrian, only the i-stem ending ''-eis'' is found.
* The Latin masculine nominative plural ending ''-ēs'' (with a long vowel) was taken from the i-stems.
* The neuter nominative/vocative/accusative plural originally had short ''*-a'' as the ending, or lengthening of the vowel before the final consonant. Already in Italic, this was replaced with the o-stem ending ''*-ā''.
* The dative (and ablative/locative?) plural ending would have originally been added directly to the stem, with no intervening vowel. In Latin, there is an intervening ''-e-'' or ''-i-'', while in Osco-Umbrian the ending is replaced altogether. It's not clear what the Proto-Italic situation was.

i-stems

This class corresponds to the nouns of the Latin ''third declension'' that had the genitive plural ending ''-ium'' (rather than ''-um''). In Latin, the consonant stems gradually merged with this class. This process continued into the historical era; e.g. in Caesar's time (c. 50 BC) the i-stems still had a distinct accusative plural ending ''-īs'', but this was replaced with the consonant-stem ending ''-ēs'' by the time of Augustus (c. AD 1). In Proto-Italic, as in the other Italic languages, i-stems were still very much a distinct type and showed no clear signs of merging.

Masculine and feminine nouns declined alike, while neuters had different forms in the nominative/accusative/vocative.

* There were apparently two different forms for the genitive singular. The form ''-eis'' is found in Osco-Umbrian. However, ''-es'' appears in early Latin, while there is no sign of ''*-eis''. This could reflect the consonant-stem ending, but it could also come from ''*-jes''. Compare also ''*-wos'' of the u-stems, which ''is'' attested in Old Latin, and may represent a parallel formation.
* The original form of the neuter nominative/vocative/accusative plural was ''*-ī,'' from PIE ''*-ih₂''. Already in Italic, this was extended by adding the o-stem ending to it, thus culminating into either ''*-īā'' or ''*-jā.''

u-stems

This class corresponds to the ''fourth declension'' of Latin. They were historically parallel to the i-stems, and still showed many similar forms, with ''j/i'' being replaced with ''w/u''. However, sound changes had made them somewhat different over time.

* The neuter nominative/vocative/accusative singular must have originally been short ''*-u'', but in Latin only long ''-ū'' is found. It is unclear what the origin of this could be. It may be a remnant of a dual ending, considering that neuter u-stems were rare, and the few that survived tended to occur in pairs.
* Like the i-stems, the u-stems had two possible types of genitive singular ending, with an unclear distribution. ''*-ous'' is found in Oscan, and it is also the origin of the usual Latin ending ''-ūs''. However, the '' Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus'' inscription attests ''senatvos'', and the ending ''-uis'' (from ''*-wes'') is also found in a few sources.
* The masculine/feminine nominative/vocative plural is not securely reconstructable. Latin ''-ūs'' seems to reflect ''*-ous'', but from PIE ''*-ewes'' the form ''*-owes'' (Latin ''*-uis'') would be expected. The ending is not attested in Osco-Umbrian or Old Latin, which might have otherwise given conclusive evidence.
* The original form of the neuter nominative/vocative/accusative plural was ''*-ū''. Already in Italic, this was extended by adding the o-stem ending to it, like in the i-stems, thus culminating in either *''-wā'' or ''*-ūā''.

Adjectives

Adjectives inflected much the same as nouns. Unlike nouns, adjectives did not have inherent genders. Instead, they inflected for all three genders, taking on the same gender-form as the noun they referred to.

Adjectives followed the same inflectional classes of nouns. The largest were the o/ā-stem adjectives (which inflected as o-stems in the masculine and neuter, and as ā-stems in the feminine), and the i-stems. Present active participles of verbs (in ''*-nts'') and the comparative forms of adjectives (in ''*-jōs'') inflected as consonant stems. There were also u-stem adjectives originally, but they had been converted to i-stems by adding i-stem endings onto the existing u-stem, thus giving the nominative singular ''*-wis''.

Pronouns

Declension of Personal Pronouns:

Note: For the third person pronoun, Proto-Italic would have been used.

Declension of Relative Pronouns:

Declension of Interrogative Pronouns:

Declension of Demonstrative Pronouns:

"this, that"

Numbers

Verbs

Present formations

From Proto-Indo-European, the Proto-Italic present aspect changed in a couple of ways. Firstly, a new past indicative suffix of was created. This likely occurred due to the elision of word-final within the Indo-European primary verb endings (E.g. PIE Present Indicative > PIt , but also PIE Past Indicative ). Secondly, the desiderative suffix of became the future suffix in Proto-Italic. The subjunctive of this desiderative-future, with a suffix of both -s- and a lengthening of the following vowel, was used to represent a ''potentialis'' and ''irrealis'' mood. Finally, while the subjunctive and the optative of PIE were still in principle different moods, the moods became merged in Post-PIt developments (E.g. PIt subjunctive vs optative which became Latin present subjunctive ); this can be already seen in the Proto-Italic phase, where the subjunctive mood began to take secondary endings as opposed to the primary endings they exhibited in PIE (cf. the Sabellian reflex of the PIt 3rd person singular imperfect subjunctive being -d and not *-t).

The PIE dual person was also lost within PIt verbs just as it was in PIt nouns.

=First conjugation

=
This conjugation pattern was derived from the PIE suffix , and formed primarily denominative verbs (I.e. deriving from a noun or an adjective).

Example Conjugation: *dōnā- (to give)

=Second conjugation (causative)

=

This conjugation pattern was derived from PIE *-éyeti, and formed causative verbs (I.e. expressing a cause) from "basic" 3rd conjugation verbs.

Example Conjugation: *mone- (to warn)

=Second conjugation (stative)

=

This conjugation pattern was derived from PIE *-éh₁ti (or the extended form *-eh₁yéti), and formed stative verbs (I.e. indicating a state of being).

Example Conjugation: *walē- (to be strong)

=Third Conjugation

=

The bulk of Proto-Italic verbs were third-conjugation verbs, which were derived from Proto-Indo-European root thematic verbs. However, some are derived from other PIE verb classes, such as *linkʷō (PIE nasal-infix verbs) and *dikskō (PIE *sḱe-suffix verbs).

Example Conjugation: *ed-e/o- (to eat)

=Third conjugation (jō-variant)

=

This conjugation was derived from PIE *ye-suffix verbs, and went on to form most of Latin 3rd conjugation ''io''-variant verbs as well as some 4th conjugation verbs.

Example Conjugation: *gʷen-jo/je- (to come), from earlier *gʷəmjō

=Athematic verbs

=

Only a handful of verbs remained within this conjugation paradigm, derived from the original PIE Root Athematic verbs.

Example Conjugation: *ezom (copula, to be)

In addition to these conjugations, Proto-Italic also has some deponent verbs, such as *ōdai (Perfect-Present), as well as *gnāskōr (Passive-Active).

= Some examples of verb derivation from PIE in Proto-Italic

=

Perfective formations

According to Rix, if a verb stem is present in both the Latino-Faliscan and Osco-Umbrian (''Sabellian'') branches, the present stem is identical in 90% of cases, but the perfect in only 50% of cases. This is likely because the original PIE aorist merged with the perfective aspect after the Proto-Italic period. Thus, the discrepancy in the similarities of present versus perfect stems in the two groupings of the Italic clade is likely attributed to different preservations in each group. The new common perfect stem in Latino-Faliscan derives mostly from the PIE perfective, while the perfect stem in Osco-Umbrian derives mostly from the PIE aorist.

In the Proto-Italic period, the root aorist of PIE was no longer productive. However, other PIE perfect and aorist stems continued to be productive, such as the reduplicated perfect and lengthened-vowel perfect stems, as well as the sigmatic aorist stem (found in Latin ''dīcō, dīxī'').

Sometimes, multiple perfective forms for each stem are attested. For example, De Vaan gives the forms ''*fēk-, *fak-'' for the aorist stem of ''*fakiō'', and the reduplicated perfect form is also attested on the Praeneste fibula in Old Latin.

In addition, there were some new innovations within the perfective aspect, with the -v- perfect (in Latin ''amō, amāvī'') and the -u- perfect (''moneō, monuī'') being later innovations, for example.

=Conjugation of the aorist

=
The aorist in Proto-Italic is characterized by the PIE secondary endings connected to the aorist stem by the appropriate thematic vowel. These endings are best attested in Sabellic, where aorist endings generally ousted the perfect ones; Latin instead generalized the perfect endings to its aorist-derived perfects.

The following stem formations for the aorist are known:
* The simple root aorist, formed by simply attaching aorist endings to an unsuffixed root. If ablaut is available for a root, the root is in the e-grade in the singular and zero-grade in the plural.
* The s-aorist, where the root in the ''e''-grade is suffixed with ''-s-'' to make the aorist stem.

=Conjugation of the perfect

=
The other main type of perfective formation in Italic was the perfect, which was derived from the Proto-Indo-European stative and had its own set of endings.

Perfect stems are created by a reduplication process where a copy syllable consisting of the first consonant of the verb root followed by ''e'' is prefixed to the root. In Italic, Vine believes that the root either is in the zero grade or has the same vowel as the present stem, but De Vaan identified at least two perfects with ''o''-grade in the root syllable. Latin and Sabellic also both attest a tendency in which if a root has a semivowel in the middle, this semivowel replaces ''e'' in the copy syllable. If a verb root begins in ''*s'' followed by a stop consonant, both consonants appear in the copy syllable and the root syllable loses the ''*s''.

The perfect endings in Italic, which only survive in the Latino-Faliscan languages, are derived from the original PIE stative endings, but with an extra ''-i'' added after most of them.

An additional suffix ''-is-'' of difficult-to-trace origin was added in the evolution of Latin to the 2nd-person endings.

Post-Italic developments

Further changes occurred during the evolution of individual Italic languages. This section gives an overview of the most notable changes. For complete lists, see History of Latin and other articles relating to the individual languages.

* *x debuccalises to . *ɣ similarly becomes between vowels, but remains elsewhere. This change possibly took place within the Proto-Italic period. The result, whether or , was written ''h'' in all Italic languages. Initial *xl, *xr are reflected (in Latin at least) as ''gl'', ''gr''
* *θ(e)r, *ð(e)r > *f(e)r, *β(e)r in all but Venetic. Compare Venetic ''louder-obos'' to Latin ''līber'', Faliscan ''loifir-ta'', Oscan ''lúvfreis''.
* *β, *ð> Latin ''b'', ''d''. In Osco-Umbrian the result is ''f'' (probably voiced) for both. In Faliscan, *β remains a fricative.
* *ɣʷ > *gʷ in Latin, which then develops as below. > ''f'' in Osco-Umbrian.
* *dw > ''b'' in classical Latin, although still retained in the archaic (see Duenos inscription)
* *kʷ, *gʷ > ''p'', ''b'' in Osco-Umbrian. They are retained in Latino-Faliscan and Venetic. In Latin, *gʷ > ''v'' except after *n.
* *z > r in Classical Latin and Umbrian, but not in Old Latin or Oscan.
* Final -ā (fem. sg. nom., neut. pl. nom./acc.) > in Osco-Umbrian, but becomes short ''-a'' in Latin.
* Final *-ns (acc. pl. of various noun classes), *-nts (masc. nom. sg. of participles), and *-nt (neut. nom./acc. sg. of participles) developed in complex ways:

* Latin vowel reduction, during the Old Latin period. This merged many of the unstressed short vowels; most dramatically, all short vowels merged (usually to /i/) in open medial syllables. Furthermore, all diphthongs became pure vowels except for *ai and *au (and occasionally *oi) in initial syllables.

See also

* Italo-Celtic

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

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Further reading

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{{Italic languages

Italic languages
Italic
History of the Latin language