The Latino-Faliscan or Latinian languages form a group of the

Italic languages The Italic languages form a branch of the Indo-European language family, whose earliest known members were spoken on the Italian Peninsula in the first millennium BC. The most important of the ancient languages was Latin, the official languag ...

within the Indo-European family. They were spoken by the Latino-Faliscan people of

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

who lived there from the early 1st millennium BCE.

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

and Faliscan belong to the group, as well as two others often considered

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that is ...

s of archaic Latin: Lanuvian and Praenestine. As the power of

Ancient Rome In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom ...

grew, Latin absorbed elements of the other languages and replaced Faliscan. The other variants went extinct as Latin became dominant. Latin in turn developed via

Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal registers of Latin spoken from the Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve into numerous Romance languages. Its literary counterpa ...

into the

Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language ...

, now spoken by more than 800 million people, largely as a result of the influence of the Spanish,

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

and

Portuguese Empire The Portuguese Empire ( pt, Império Português), also known as the Portuguese Overseas (''Ultramar Português'') or the Portuguese Colonial Empire (''Império Colonial Português''), was composed of the overseas colonies, factories, and the ...

Linguistic description

Latin and Faliscan have several features in common with other Italic languages: *The late Indo-European sequences /*ə, *eu/ have evolved into ''a, ou''. *The Indo-European syllabic liquids /*l̥, *r̥/ have developed an epenthetic vowel ''o'', giving Italic ''ol, or''. *The Indo-European syllabic nasals /*m̥, *n̥/ have developed an epenthetic vowel ''e'', giving Italic ''em, en''. *They fricativised word-initial aspirated stops from Indo-European: /*bʰ, *dʰ, *gʰ/ > ''f, f, h''. *They assimilated the sequence /*p...kʷ/ 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 accusative suffix ''-d'', seen in ''med'' ("me", accusative), which is absent in Osco-Umbrian. In addition, Latin displays evolution of ''ou'' into ''ū'' (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 The Praeneste fibula (the "brooch of Palestrina") is a golden ''fibula'' or brooch, today housed in the Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography in Rome. The fibula bears an inscription in Old Latin, claiming craftsmanship by o ...

are marked with an asterisk. : The /kʷ/ sound still existed in archaic Latin when the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...

was developed, since it gives rise to the minimum pair: ''quī'' /kʷī/ ("who", nominative) > ''cuī'' /ku.ī/ ("to whom", dative). Note that 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/.

Description

Indo-Europeanists Indo-European studies is a field of linguistics and an interdisciplinary field of study dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. The goal of those engaged in these studies is to amass information about the hypothetical pr ...

initially assumed that the various Indo-European languages of ancient Italy belonged to one unitary family, like the

Celtic Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to: Language and ethnicity *pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia **Celts (modern) *Celtic languages **Proto-Celtic language *Celtic music *Celtic nations Sports Foo ...

or Germanic languages. This view probably originated with

Antoine Meillet Paul Jules Antoine Meillet (; 11 November 1866 Moulins, France – 21 September 1936 Châteaumeillant, France) was one of the most important French linguists of the early 20th century. He began his studies at the Sorbonne University, where he wa ...

(1866–1936).Villar, '''Gli Indoeuropei e le origini dell'Europa'', pp. 474-475. This unitary model, however, has been strongly criticised, first by

Alois Walde Alois Walde (November 30, 1869 – October 3, 1924) was an Austrian linguist. Alois Walde studied classical philology and comparative linguistics at the University of Innsbruck where he was awarded a PhD in 1894. The year after, he became a sta ...

(1869–1924). Decisive counter-arguments were given by Vittore Pisani (1899–1990) and

Giacomo Devoto Giacomo Devoto (19 July 1897 – 25 December 1974) was an Italian historical linguist and one of the greatest exponents of the twentieth century of the discipline. He was born in Genoa and died in Florence. Career In 1939 he founded with Bruno Mig ...

(1897–1974). Both proposed that the Italic languages could be grouped into two distinct branches of Indo-European. This view, though reformulated in the years following the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

, has become dominant. Nonetheless, how exactly the languages are to be grouped, how they entered Italy, and how they became distinct, are open questions in

historical linguistics Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include: # to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages # ...

.Villar, cit., pp. 447-482.

References

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Notes

External links

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, Project fund by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (P.R.I.N. 2017) {{DEFAULTSORT:Latino-Faliscan languages