Rhaetic

The German linguist Helmut Rix proposed in 1998 that Rhaetic, along with Etruscan, was a member of a language family he called Tyrrhenian, and which was possibly influenced by neighboring Indo-European languages. Robert S. P. Beekes likewise does not consider it Indo-European. Howard Hayes Scullard (1967), on the contrary, suggested it to be an Indo-European language, with links to Illyrian and Celtic. Nevertheless, most scholars now think that Rhaetic is closely related to Etruscan within the Tyrrhenian grouping. Rix's Tyrsenian family is supported by a number of linguists such as Stefan Schumacher, Carlo De Simone, Norbert Oettinger, Simona Marchesini, and Rex E. Wallace. Common features between Etruscan, Rhaetic, and Lemnian have been observed in morphology, phonology, and syntax. On the other hand, few lexical correspondences are documented, at least partly due to the scanty number of Rhaetic and Lemnian texts and possibly to the early date at which the languages split. The Tyrsenian family (or Common Tyrrhenic) is often considered to be Paleo-European and to predate the arrival of Indo-European languages in southern Europe. ==History==

In 2004 L. Bouke van der Meer proposed that Rhaetic could have developed from Etruscan from around 900 BC or even earlier, and no later than 700 BC, since divergences are already present in the oldest Etruscan and Rhaetic inscriptions, such as in the grammatical voices of past tenses or in the endings of male gentilicia. Around 600 BC, the Rhaeti became isolated from the Etruscan area, probably by the Celts, thus limiting contacts between the two languages. Such a late datation has not enjoyed consensus, because the split would still be too recent, and in contrast with the archaeological data, the Rhaeti in the second Iron Age being characterized by the Fritzens-Sanzeno culture, in continuity with late Bronze Age culture and early Iron Age Laugen-Melaun culture. The Raeti are not believed, archeologically, to descend from the Etruscans, as well as it is not believed plausible that the Etruscans are descended from the Rhaeti. Helmut Rix dated the end of the Proto-Tyrsenian period to the last quarter of the 2nd millennium BC. Carlo De Simone and Simona Marchesini have proposed a much earlier date, placing the Tyrsenian language split before the Bronze Age. This would provide one explanation for the low number of lexical correspondences.* The language is documented in Northern Italy between the 5th and the 1st centuries BC by about 280 texts, in an area corresponding to the Fritzens-Sanzeno and Magrè cultures. It is clear that in the centuries leading up to Roman imperial times, the Rhaetians had at least come under Etruscan influence, as the Rhaetic inscriptions are written in what appears to be a northern variant of the Etruscan alphabet. The ancient Roman sources mention the Rhaetic people as being reputedly of Etruscan origin, so there may at least have been some ethnic Etruscans who had settled in the region by that time. == Writing ==

Rhaetic was written using two varieties of the Etruscan alphabet: the Sanzeno and Magrè alphabets. They were almost identical except for the writing of a few characters. Generally, in the Sanzeno alphabet, pi is written with two lines, lambda and upsilon are pointed down, and heta uses two horizontal lines. In the Magrè alphabet, pi uses three lines, lambda and upsilon are pointed up, and heta uses three horizontal lines. Additionally, alpha, phi, tau, and the letter for the dental affricate are written differently. Besides characters, the two alphabets also differ slightly in punctuation. Word separation is sometimes seen in Sanzeno texts, but never seen in Magrè texts. Magrè was more commonly used to write Rhaetic than Sanzeno. The vast majority of Sanzeno texts are from far northern Italy, and only from the 4th and 5th centuries BC. Magrè texts however have been found from northern Italy to southern Germany, and cover the entire known time Rhaetic was spoken. The origins of Rhaetic's alphabets are ultimately unknown, but they seem to have been adopted through Venetic. The punctuation and the direction certain letters face in Magrè, as well as Magrè's use in close vicinity to Venetic, suggest some sort of relationship between them. Sanzeno, however, retains many traditional Etruscan writing traditions. Both alphabets use a unique letter for the dental affricate however, something that Etruscan's zeta could have provided if Etruscan was the source of either of the Rhaetic alphabets. In Venetic however, zeta is rarely used, suggesting it as the more likely source of the Rhaetic alphabets. It is still unknown whether the two alphabets share a common origin or if they developed independently of each other, and to what degree if they did. As of April 2020, there are 389 total inscriptions listed in the Thesaurus Inscriptionum Raeticarum's corpus. Of these, only 112 have been positively identified as Rhaetic. 177 have only two characters or less, and many have not been transliterated. == Phonology ==

Our understanding of Rhaetic phonology is quite uncertain, and the working hypothesis is that it is very similar to Etruscan phonology. Vowels It appears that Rhaetic, like Etruscan, had a four-vowel system: /a/, /i/, /e/, /u/. Consonants Unlike Etruscan, Rhaetic does not seem to have the distinction between aspirated and non-aspirated stops. Consonant phonemes attested in Rhaetic include a dental (or palatal) affricate /ts/, dental sibilant /s/, palatal sibilant /ʃ/, nasals /n/, /m/ and liquids /r/, /l/. == Morphology ==

Nouns The following cases are attested in Rhaetic: • Nominative/Accusative: No ending • Genitive: Ending -s • Pertinentive (locative to the genitive): Endings -si and -(a-)le • Locative: Ending -i (uncertainly attested) • Ablative: Ending -s For plural, the ending -r(a) is attested. Verbs Two verbal suffixes have been identified, both known from Etruscan: • -ke is the 3rd person preterite ending • -u is the suffix that derives verbal nouns from preterite forms. == See also ==