The Etruscan Grammar ©B

Quoted from [Bibl. 6 pp. 19-22].

Etruscan is an inflected language. There are different endings, or inflections, for nouns, pronouns and verbs. Though the limited amount of materials at our disposal precludes the systematic setting out of an Etruscan 'grammar', and even the use of conventional grammatical terms is anything but certain, there are certain forms we can recognise.
Note: For Etruscan personal names and other words cited in the text, see the Appendices.

Nouns

Here is an example of a declension:

	Singular	Plural
Nominative and Accusative Genitive, 'of' Dative, 'to' Locative, 'in'	clan, 'son' clens, 'of the son' clensi, 'to the son' *clenthi, 'in the son'	clenar, 'the sons' clenaraši, 'to the sons' cliniiaras, 'to the sons'

(* this form is not attested, only hypothetical)

Common nouns (in nominative singular) have no special endings for masculine, feminine or neuter.
Only personal names have gender in Etruscan. Many masculine names end in -e (Greek and Latin equivalents are given where known):

Hercle (Gk Herakles; Lat. Hercules), Menle (Gk Menelaos), Achle (Gk Achilles), Zimite (Gk Diomedes), Tite Cale (Lat. Titus Calus), Aule (Lat. Aulus), Taitle (Gk Daidalos; Lat. Daedalus), Sime, Artile.

Others end in a consonant:

Evas (Gk Aias; Lat. Ajax), Arnth (Lat. Arruns), Larth (Lat. Lars), Velthur, Laran.

Femimine names end in -i or -a:

Uni (Lat. Juno), Menrva (Lat. Minerva), Clutmsta (Gk Klytemnestra, Klytaimestra), Ati, Seianti, Lasa

and sometimes in -u:

Zipu, Thanchvilu.

Names of gods often have the nominative in -s:

Fufluns (no precise equivalent; Gk Dionysos; Lat. Bacchus), Sethlans (no precise equivalent; Gk Hephaistos), Tins (no precise equivalent; Gk Zeus), Selvans (Lat. Silvanus).

Otherwise male and female gods' names may have the same endings, whether consonant:

Turan (no precise equivalent; Gk Aphrodite), Thanr (f), Malavisch (f), Laran (m)

or vowel:

Pacha (Lat. Bacchus), Aplu (Gk Apollo).

The genitive is formed by adding -s or -l to the stem, often inserting a vowel between the stem and the ending. After a liquid consonant (l, r), -us is used:

Velthur>Velthurus, Vel>Velus, Thanchvil>Tanchvilus.

The genitive ending in -al is added to feminine names ending in -i:

Uni>Unial, Ati>Atial

and to masculine names ending in -s:

Laris>Larisal

or ending in a dental:

Arnth>Arnthal.

Sometimes a special ending in -sa or -isa designates the patronymic, 'son of '.

aule velimna larthal clan= aule velimna larthalisa, 'Aules Velimna, son of Larth'.

Thus the genitive expresses possession (arnthal clan, 'son of Arnth'). It also expresses dedication (as does the dative in Latin):

ecn turce... selvansl, 'this [she] gave to Selvans'.

There is also a dative form in -si:

mi titasi cver menache, 'I was offered to Tita as a gift'.

The plural is formed by adding -r (-ar, -er, -ur). An uncommon shift of the stem vowel in the plural occurs in

clan>clenar, 'son'>'sons'.

The locative ending is -thi.

Pronouns

1. Personal pronouns
   First person: Nom. mi, 'I'
   
   Acc. mini, 'me'
   No other case forms are known.

   Third person: (animate, male and female) an, 'he', 'she'
   

   (inanimate, neuter) in, 'it'
   No other case forms are known.
    

   Demonstrative pronouns
   Nom. ita, eta, ta, 'this'; or ika, eca, ca, 'this'
   Acc. etan, tn, 'this'; or can, cn, ecn, 'this'
   Loc. calti, 'in this'; or eclthi, clthi, 'in this'

Adjectives
A variety of forms denote adjectives:

1. Of quality
   aisiu, 'divine' (from ais, 'god')
   hinthiu, 'infernal' (from hintha, 'underworld')
    
2. Possession or reference
   aisna, eisna, 'pertaining to god', 'divine'
   pachana, 'of or pertaining to Bacchus' (from Pacha, 'Bacchus')
   šuthina, 'of or pertaining to the tomb' (from šuthi, 'tomb').

   Family names in -na belong to this type. But in southern Etruscan cities the family name (equivalent to our last name) ends in -s: aule vipiiennas. This may derive from a genitive form (-s), 'of the Vipiienna', etc., a formation similar to della Robbia, di Giovanni, etc. in Italian, and names with de in French, von in German and van in Dutch. (In fact, when an inscription gives a name in the genitive we often cannot tell whether the nominative ends in -s or not: Atnas, Pulenas, Vipinnas, etc.)
    

3. Collective
   math, mathcva, 'full of drink' (from math 'honeyed wine')
   srencva, 'full of ornament' (from sren, 'picture' or 'figure')
   flerchva, 'group of sacred statues, offerings' (from fler, 'offering, sacrifice').

Adverbs and Conjunctions
The conjunction -c is equivalent to Latin -que, meaning 'and'. Um, enclitic -m, also means 'and'.

Alpan or alpnu is an adverb, 'gladly', 'willingly'; it can also mean 'as a gift', 'offering'.

Verbs
The present active form consists of the root, ar, zich, tur. Another form ends in -a:

ara, tva, as in eca sren tva, 'this picture shows'.

The best-known form is the third person singular past (aorist). In the active form the ending is -ce:

turce, 'he/she gave'

svalce, 'he/she lived'

lupuce, 'he/she died'

muluvanice, 'he/she made/built'.

This can be distinguished from the passive form, -che, for the first person singular:

mi... zichuche, 'I was written'

mi titasi cver menache, 'I was offered to Tita as a gift'.

The text of the Zagreb mummy gives examples of imperatives. One type of imperative consists of the simple verbal root (as in the Indo-European languages):

vacl ar, 'make (ar) the libation (vacl).

Another imperative, ending in -ti, -th or -thi, is used for the second person singular:

racth tura, 'prepare the incense'.

Another form seems to be a passive participle of obligation, ending in -ri or -eri:

huthiš zathrumiš flerchva nathunsl... thezeri-c, 'and on the 26th the sacrifices for Neptune are to be made'.

Numerals

Etruscan numerals are known from funerary inscriptions recording the age of the deceased and from the 'Tuscania dice', on which the first six numbers are written out in words rather than shown by dots, as usual. We therefore know the first six numbers:

thu, zal, ci, ša, mach, huth

Their order was recognized because in antiquity the sum of each of the two opposite sides of the die added up to seven: mach+zal=seven; thu+huth=seven; ci+ša=seven. Other clues led to the identification of each particular number, so that the order given above is generally accepted today.

What these numerals show, beyond any shadow of a doubt, is the non-Indo-European nature of the Etruscan language. Basic words like numbers and names of relationships are often similar in the Indo-European languages, for they derive from the same root.

Another peculiarity of the Etruscan is the formation of numbers by subtraction, a system found also in Latin. Given the cultural influence of the Etruscan in Rome, Latin may have derived it from Etruscan. In Etruscan, 17=20-3, 18=20-2, 19=20-1. In Latin we have duodeviginti, undeviginti. Multiples of 10 are formed with the addition of -alc or -alch. (An asterisk indicates forms not attested in inscriptions.)

1 thu 2 zal, es(a)l 3 ci 4 ša 5 mach 6 huth 7 semph(?) 8 cezp(?) 9 nurph(?)

10 šar 16 huth-zar 17 ci-em zathrum 18 esl-em zathrum 19 thun-em zathrum 20 zathrum 27 ci-em-ce-alch 28 esl-em-ce-alch 29 thun-em-ce-alch

30 ci-alch (ce-alch) 40 še-alch 50 muv-alch (*mach-alch) 60 *huth-alch 70 semph-alch(?) 80 cezp-alch(?) 90 *nurph-alch(?) 100 ? 1000 ?

Etruscan numerals

Etruscan

Roman I V X L C C or M? M or ?

Arabic 1 5 10 50 100 100 or 1000? 1000 or 10,000?

 Bibliography: [6] Larissa Bonfante: Reading the Past: Etruscan, Trustees of the British Museum Published by the British Museum Publications Ltd, 46 Bloomsbury Street, London WC1B 3QQ ©1990 (ISBN 0-7141-8071-8).

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