Neues zur Sprache der Stele von Lemnos (Zweiter Teil)

Heiner Eichner (University of Vienna, Institute of Linguistics, heiner.eichner@univie.ac.at)

Journal of Language Relationship, № 10, 2013 - p.1-42

Abstract: This is the second installment of the author’s investigation of the Tyrsenian language family. After treating the preliminary issues in a first article in JLR 7, the present article is dedicated to the decipherment of the two texts on the Kaminia stele (but also takes other issues into account). A short gloss is offered for each individual word. For all but a few forms an Etruscan etymology is also proposed. Eight different personal names are identified, which can be assigned to the genealogies of three persons, which span at least three generations. Two of the people identified are the tomb-owners Aker and [X]r, the third one Phokia is an eponymic functionary. Aker’s genealogy extends in fact over a fourth generation, as it extends back to his great grandfather Vanal. For both tomb-owners a cursus honorum is revealed, which resembles political careers known from Ancient Italy. An exhaustive commentary on the relation between the monument and the inscription and on the first three items of text A is given. The genetic relation of Lemnian to Etruscan and Raetic is worked out according to standards of comparative grammar. The linguistic affiliation of Lemnian can now at long last be considered proven. Surprisingly, however, there are several words and personal names in Lemnian, which seem to have been borrowed from Indo-European languages spoken in Italy. The terminology and practice of administration may also point in this direction. As a result, Michel Gras’s and Carlo de Simone’s proposed western origin of the Lemnian language is no longer an isolated idiosyncracy, whatever the further origin of the language may be. But since archeological evidence is contradicting, this question must remain for the time being open

Keywords: Lemnian language, Etruscan language, Raetic language, Tyrsenian language family, origin of the Etruscans, methods of decipherment, comparative grammar

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