The Osco-Umbrian, Sabellic or Sabellian languages are an extinct group of
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 ...
, the
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
that were spoken in Central and Southern
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 re ...
by the Osco-Umbrians before being replaced by
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the 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 the power of the ...
, as the power of
Ancient Rome
In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to 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 (753–509 B ...
expanded. Their written attestations developed from the middle of the 1st millennium BC to the early centuries of the 1st millennium AD. The languages are known almost exclusively from inscriptions, principally of
Oscan
Oscan is an extinct Indo-European language of southern Italy. The language is in the Osco-Umbrian or Sabellic branch of the Italic languages. Oscan is therefore a close relative of Umbrian.
Oscan was spoken by a number of tribes, including th ...
and
Umbrian
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 lan ...
, but there are also some Osco-Umbrian loanwords in Latin. Besides the two major branches of Oscan and Umbrian (and their dialects), South Picene may represent a third branch of Sabellic. The whole linguistic Sabellic area, however, might be considered a
dialect continuum
A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of Variety (linguistics), language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulat ...
. Paucity of evidence from most of the "minor dialects" contributes to the difficulty of making these determinations.
Relationship with the Italic languages
Following an original theory by
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 was ...
, the Osco-Umbrian languages were traditionally considered a branch 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 ...
, a language family that grouped
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the 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 the power of the ...
and
Faliscan together with several other related languages.
However, this unitary scheme was criticized by, among others,
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 st ...
, Vittore Pisani 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 ...
, who proposed a classification of the Italic languages into two distinct Indo-European branches. This view gained some acceptance in the second half of the 20th century, although the exact processes of formation and penetration into Italy remains the object of research.
[Villar, cit., pp. 447–482.] However, proponents such as Rix would later reject the idea, and the unitary theory (proposing the descent of all Italic languages from a unique common ancestor) remains dominant. In any case, it is plausible that the spread of all those languages took place through progressive inflows of Indo-European populations of eastern origin, with Osci and Umbri reaching the Italian peninsula after Latins and Falisci, but before Iapygians and Messapians.
Historical, social and cultural aspects
The two main branches of the Sabellic languages, spoken in the heart of the Italian peninsula, are
Oscan
Oscan is an extinct Indo-European language of southern Italy. The language is in the Osco-Umbrian or Sabellic branch of the Italic languages. Oscan is therefore a close relative of Umbrian.
Oscan was spoken by a number of tribes, including th ...
in the south and
Umbrian
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 lan ...
to the north of Oscan. Included among the Sabellic languages are:
Volscian
Volscian was a Sabellic Italic language, which was spoken by the Volsci and closely related to Oscan and Umbrian.
Overview
Volscian is attested in an inscription found in Velitrae (Velletri), dating probably from early in the 3rd century BC; it ...
,
Sabine
The Sabines (; lat, Sabini; it, Sabini, all exonyms) were an Italic people who lived in the central Apennine Mountains of the ancient Italian Peninsula, also inhabiting Latium north of the Anio before the founding of Rome.
The Sabines divide ...
,
South Picene
South Picene (also known as Paleo-Sabellic, Mid-Adriatic or Eastern Italic) is an extinct Italic language belonging to the Sabellic subfamily. It is apparently unrelated to the North Picene language, which is not understood and therefore unclas ...
,
Marsian,
Paeligni
The Paeligni or Peligni were an Italic tribe who lived in the Valle Peligna, in what is now Abruzzo, central Italy.
History
The Paeligni are first mentioned as a member of a confederacy that included the Marsi, Marrucini, and Vestini, with which ...
,
Hernican,
Marrucinian
and
Pre-Samnite.
Aequian and
Vestinian have traditionally been ascribed to either the Oscan group or the Umbrian group. However, they are all poorly attested, and such a division is not supported by evidence. It appears that they may have formed part of a
dialect continuum
A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of Variety (linguistics), language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulat ...
, with Umbrian in the north, Oscan in the south and the 'Sabellic' languages in between (see next section) having features of both.
However, there were also colonies that spoke Oscan, scattered throughout
Southern Italy
Southern Italy ( it, Sud Italia or ) also known as ''Meridione'' or ''Mezzogiorno'' (), is a macroregion of the Italian Republic consisting of its southern half.
The term ''Mezzogiorno'' today refers to regions that are associated with the peop ...
and
Sicily
(man) it, Siciliana (woman)
, population_note =
, population_blank1_title =
, population_blank1 =
, demographics_type1 = Ethnicity
, demographics1_footnotes =
, demographi ...
. Oscan was the language of the
Samnite tribes, powerful enemies of the Romans, who took years to subdue them (the
Samnite wars
The First, Second, and Third Samnite Wars (343–341 BC, 326–304 BC, and 298–290 BC) were fought between the Roman Republic and the Samnites, who lived on a stretch of the Apennine Mountains south of Rome and north of the Lucanian tribe.
...
took place from 370 BC to 290 BC).
These languages are known from a few hundred inscriptions dating from between 400 BC and the 1st century AD. In Pompeii there are numerous Oscan inscriptions, such as dedications in public buildings and signs.
Umbrian
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 lan ...
began a process of decline when the Umbrians were subdued by the Romans and the process of
Romanisation
Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...
led to its demise. Of all the Osco-Umbrian languages, it is the one that is the best known, mainly because of the
Iguvine Tablets
The Iguvine Tablets, also known as the Eugubian Tablets or Eugubine Tables, are a series of seven bronze tablets from ancient Iguvium (modern Gubbio), Italy, written in the ancient Italic language Umbrian. The earliest tablets, written in the nat ...
.
Distribution
These languages were spoken in
Samnium
Samnium ( it, Sannio) is a Latin exonym for a region of Southern Italy anciently inhabited by the Samnites. Their own endonyms were ''Safinim'' for the country (attested in one inscription and one coin legend) and ''Safineis'' for the The lan ...
and in
Campania
Campania (, also , , , ) is an administrative Regions of Italy, region of Italy; most of it is in the south-western portion of the Italian peninsula (with the Tyrrhenian Sea to its west), but it also includes the small Phlegraean Islands and the i ...
, partly in
Apulia
it, Pugliese
, population_note =
, population_blank1_title =
, population_blank1 =
, demographics_type1 =
, demographics1_footnotes =
, demographics1_title1 =
, demographics1_info1 =
, demographic ...
,
Lucania
Lucania was a historical region of Southern Italy. It was the land of the Lucani, an Oscan people. It extended from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Gulf of Taranto.
It bordered with Samnium and Campania in the north, Apulia in the east, and Brutti ...
and
Bruttium 01 or '01 may refer to:
* The year 2001, or any year ending with 01
* The month of January
* 1 (number)
Music
* 01'' (Richard Müller album), 2001
* ''01'' (Son of Dave album), 2000
* ''01'' (Urban Zakapa album), 2011
* ''O1'' (Hiroyuki Sawa ...
, as well as by the
Mamertines
The Mamertines ( la, Mamertini, "sons of Mars", el, Μαμερτῖνοι) were mercenaries of Italian origin who had been hired from their home in Campania by Agathocles (361–289 BC), Tyrant of Syracuse and self-proclaimed King of Sicily. ...
in the Sicilian colony of Messana (
Messina
Messina (, also , ) is a harbour city and the capital of the Italian Metropolitan City of Messina. It is the third largest city on the island of Sicily, and the 13th largest city in Italy, with a population of more than 219,000 inhabitants in ...
).
Past usage
''Sabellic'' was originally the collective
ethnonym
An ethnonym () is a name applied to a given ethnic group. Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms (whose name of the ethnic group has been created by another group of people) and autonyms, or endonyms (whose name is created and used ...
of the
Italic people
The Italic peoples were an ethnolinguistic group identified by their use of Italic languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
The Italic peoples are descended from the Indo-European speaking peoples who inhabited Italy from at leas ...
who inhabited central and southern Italy at the time of
Roman expansion
From its origin as a city-state on the peninsula of Italy in the 8th century BC, to its rise as an empire covering much of Southern Europe, Western Europe, Near East and North Africa to its fall in the 5th century AD, the political history of A ...
. The name was later used by
Theodor Mommsen
Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen (; 30 November 1817 – 1 November 1903) was a German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician and archaeologist. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest classicists of the 19th cent ...
in his ''Unteritalische Dialekte'' to describe the pre-Roman dialects of Central Italy that were neither Oscan nor Umbrian.
The term is currently used for the Osco-Umbrian languages as a whole. The word "Sabellic" was once applied to all such minor languages, Osco-Umbrian or not.
North Picene
North Picene, also known as North Picenian or Northern Picene, is a supposed ancient language, which may have been spoken in part of central-eastern Italy. The evidence for the language consists of four inscriptions dating from the 1st millennium ...
was included, even though it remains unclear whether it is related.
Classification
![Linguistic Landscape of Central Italy](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Linguistic_Landscape_of_Central_Italy.png)
The Osco-Umbrian languages or dialects of which testimony is preserved are:
*Oscan, with spoken languages in the southern central region of the Italian peninsula, which includes:
**
Oscan
Oscan is an extinct Indo-European language of southern Italy. The language is in the Osco-Umbrian or Sabellic branch of the Italic languages. Oscan is therefore a close relative of Umbrian.
Oscan was spoken by a number of tribes, including th ...
is the best documented language of the group, along with other varieties that are poorly known and considered related to Oscan:
***
Marrucinian
***
Paeligni
The Paeligni or Peligni were an Italic tribe who lived in the Valle Peligna, in what is now Abruzzo, central Italy.
History
The Paeligni are first mentioned as a member of a confederacy that included the Marsi, Marrucini, and Vestini, with which ...
*Umbrian, with languages spoken in the northern central region of the peninsula.
**
Umbrian
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 lan ...
**
Marsian
**
Sabine
The Sabines (; lat, Sabini; it, Sabini, all exonyms) were an Italic people who lived in the central Apennine Mountains of the ancient Italian Peninsula, also inhabiting Latium north of the Anio before the founding of Rome.
The Sabines divide ...
**
Volscian
Volscian was a Sabellic Italic language, which was spoken by the Volsci and closely related to Oscan and Umbrian.
Overview
Volscian is attested in an inscription found in Velitrae (Velletri), dating probably from early in the 3rd century BC; it ...
**
Hernican
*Picene-Pre-Samnite
**
South Picene
South Picene (also known as Paleo-Sabellic, Mid-Adriatic or Eastern Italic) is an extinct Italic language belonging to the Sabellic subfamily. It is apparently unrelated to the North Picene language, which is not understood and therefore unclas ...
**
Pre-Samnite, a language documented in the south, but which seems to contain characteristics closer to South Picene than to Oscan.
*Unknown
**
Aequian
**
Vestinian (Most likely Oscan, like their neighbors
Paeligni
The Paeligni or Peligni were an Italic tribe who lived in the Valle Peligna, in what is now Abruzzo, central Italy.
History
The Paeligni are first mentioned as a member of a confederacy that included the Marsi, Marrucini, and Vestini, with which ...
and
Marrucini
The Marrucini were an Italic tribe that occupied a small strip of territory around the ancient ''Teate'' (modern Chieti), on the east coast of Abruzzo, Italy, limited by the Aterno and Foro Rivers. Other Marrucinian centers included ''Ceio'' (Sa ...
, whom the Vestini were closely connected with.)
Little-documented variants collectively known as "Sabellic dialects" are ascribed without much evidence to the two main groups. Some authors doubt such traditional classification, placing, for example, Aequian and Vestinian in opposite branches, instead of grouping them together.
[Coleman, 1986]
Linguistic description
The Osco-Umbrian languages were
fusional inflected languages with about 5 different morphological cases in the singular, similar to those of
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the 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 the power of the ...
.
Differences from Latin
Although the Osco-Umbrian languages are far more poorly attested than Latin, a corpus of a few thousand words' worth of inscriptions has allowed linguists to deduce some cladistic innovations and retentions. For example, while
Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-E ...
aspirates appear as ''b'', ''d'' and ''h/g'' between vowels in Latin (''medius'' < ''*medʰyos''), the aspirates all appear in Sabellic as ''f'' (Oscan ''mefiai''<'' *medʰyos''). In addition, while Latin retained the Proto-Indo-European labiovelar series ("Q-Italic"), the Osco-Umbrian languages merged them with the labials ("P-Italic"): Latin ''quattuor'', Oscan ''petora''.
See also
*
Italic peoples
The Italic peoples were an ethnolinguistic group identified by their use of Italic languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
The Italic peoples are descended from the Indo-European speaking peoples who inhabited Italy from at leas ...
Notes
References
*
Further reading
*Adams, Douglas Q., and James P. Mallory. 1997. "Italic languages." In ''The encyclopedia of Indo-European culture.'' Edited by James P. Mallory and Douglas Q. Adams, 314–19. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn.
*
Baldi, Philip. 2002. ''The foundations of Latin.'' Berlin: de Gruyter.
*Beeler, Madison S. 1952. "The relation of Latin and Osco-Umbrian." ''Language'' 28: 435–43.
*————. 1966. "The interrelationships within Italic." In ''Ancient Indo-European dialects: Proceedings of the Conference on Indo-European Linguistics held at the University of California, Los Angeles, April 25–27, 1963.'' Edited by Henrik Birnbaum and Jaan Puhvel, 51–58. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
*Buck, Carl Darling. 1928. ''A grammar of Oscan and Umbrian, with a collection of inscriptions and a glossary.'' 2nd edition. Boston: Ginn.
*Clackson, James. 2015. "Subgrouping in the Sabellian Branch of Indo‐European." ''Transactions of the Philological Society'' 113 (1): 4–37. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-968X.12034
*Coleman, Robert. 1986. "The Central Italic languages in the period of the Roman expansion." ''Transactions of the Philological Society'' 84(1): 100–131.
*de Vaan, Michiel. 2008. ''Etymological dictionary of Latin and the other Italic languages.'' Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
*Dupraz, Emmanuel. 2012. ''Sabellian Demonstratives: Forms and Functions.'' Leiden: Brill.
*Mercado, Angelo. 2012. ''Italic Verse: A Study of the Poetic Remains of Old Latin, Faliscan, and Sabellic.'' Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen der Universität Innsbruck.
*Middei, Edoardo.
Gli antroponimi sabellici in *-ai̭os e le basi onomastiche con morfo-struttura aCCa-(Sabellian personal names with *-ai̭os and the onomastic bases with the morpho-structural pattern acca-). In: ''Graeco-Latina Brunensia''. 2015, vol. 20, iss. 2, pp. 105-121.
*Nishimura, Kanehiro. "Superlative Suffixes *-ismo- and *-isim̥mo in Sabellian Languages." Glotta 81 (2005): 160-83. www.jstor.org/stable/40267191.
*Poccetti, Paolo. "Lingue sabelliche". In: ''Palaeohispanica: revista sobre lenguas y culturas de la Hispania antigua'' n. 20 (2020): pp. 403-494. DOI: 10.36707/palaeohispanica.v0i20.399
*Poultney, James. 1951. "Volscians and Umbrians." ''American Journal of Philology'' 72: 113–27.
*Tikkanen, Karin. 2009. ''A comparative grammar of Latin and the Sabellian languages: The system of case syntax.'' PhD diss., Uppsala Univ.
*Weiss, Michael L. 2010. ''Language and Ritual In Sabellic Italy: The Ritual Complex of the Third and the Fourth Tabulae Iguvinae.'' Leiden: Brill.
*Woodard, Roger D. 2008. ''The Ancient Languages of Europe.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
External links
*
, Project fund by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (P.R.I.N. 2017)
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Osco-Umbrian languages