The Osco-Umbrian, Sabellic or Sabellian languages are an extinct group of Italic languages, the Indo-European languages that were spoken in central and southern Italy by the Osco-Umbrians before being replaced by Latin, as the power of ancient Rome expanded. Their written attestations developed from the middle of the 1st millennium BC to the early centuries of the 1st millennium AD. There is one text of about 4,000 words in Umbrian, but otherwise the languages are known almost exclusively from inscriptions, principally of Oscan and Umbrian, 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. Paucity of evidence from most of the "minor dialects" contributes to the difficulty of making these determinations.
| Osco-Umbrian | |
|---|---|
| Sabellic, Sabellian | |
| Geographic distribution | Ancient south and central Italy |
| Extinct | 1st millennium BC-1st millennium AD |
| Linguistic classification | Indo-European
|
Early forms | |
| Subdivisions |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | sabe1249 |
 Ethnolinguistic map of Italy in the Iron Age, before the Roman expansion and conquest of Italy | |
Relationship with the Italic languages
Following an original theory by Antoine Meillet, the Osco-Umbrian languages were traditionally considered a branch of the Italic languages, a language family that grouped Latin and Faliscan together with several other related languages. This unitary scheme was criticized by, among others, Alois Walde, Vittore Pisani and Giacomo Devoto, 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. Proponents such as Rix later rejected 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 in the south and Umbrian to the north of Oscan. Included among the Sabellic languages are: Volscian, Sabine, South Picene, Marsian, Paeligni, 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, 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 and Sicily. Oscan was the language of the Samnite tribes, powerful enemies of the Romans, who took years to subdue them (the Samnite wars 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 began a process of decline when the Umbrians were subdued by the Romans and the process of Romanisation 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.
Distribution
These languages were spoken in Samnium and in Campania, partly in Apulia, Lucania and Bruttium, as well as by the Mamertines in the Sicilian colony of Messana (Messina).
Past usage
Sabellic was originally the collective ethnonym of the Italic people who inhabited central and southern Italy at the time of Roman expansion. The name was later used by Theodor Mommsen 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 was included, even though it remains unclear whether it is related.
Classification
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 is the best documented language of the group, along with other varieties that are poorly known and considered related to Oscan:
- Marrucinian
- Paeligni
- Oscan is the best documented language of the group, along with other varieties that are poorly known and considered related to Oscan:
- Umbrian, with languages spoken in the northern central region of the peninsula.
- Umbrian
- Marsian
- Sabine
- Volscian
- Hernican
- Picene-Pre-Samnite
- South Picene
- 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 and Marrucini, 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.
Linguistic description
The Osco-Umbrian languages were fusional inflected languages with about 5 different morphological cases in the singular, similar to those of Latin.
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 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
Notes
- Helmut Rix Sabellische Texte: Die Texte des Oskischen, Umbrischen und Südpikenischen. Heidelberg: Carl Winter University Press, 2002 pp4f
- Francisco Villar, Gli Indoeuropei e le origini dell'Europa, pp. 474-475.
- Villar, cit., pp. 447–482.
- Paolo Pocetti, "The Documentation of Italic", in Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics: An International Handbook, vol. 2, ed. Jared Klein, Brian Joseph, and Matthias Fritz (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017), 1-19. ISBN 311052175X, 9783110521757
- Philip Baldi (2018). The Foundations of Latin. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. p. 104. ISBN 9783110892604.
- Rex Wallace, 2008, "Sabellian Languages", in Woodard, ed., The Ancient Languages of Europe, CUP, p 98
- One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Sabellic". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 23 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 963.
- Vetter, 1953; Adiego-Lajara, 1992; Rix, 2000.
- Coleman, 1986
References
- Villar, Francisco [in Italian] (1997). Gli Indoeuropei e le origini dell'Europa [Indo-Europeans and the origins of Europe] (in Italian). Bologna, Il Mulino. ISBN 88-15-05708-0.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
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 (1904). A Grammar of Oscan and Umbrian: with a Collection of Inscriptions and a Glossary. Boston: Ginn & Company. OCLC 1045590290.
- 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.
- Conway, Robert Seymour 1897. The Italic Dialects: Edited with a Grammar and Glossary. 2 voll. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vol. 1; Vol. 2
- 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. ISSN 2336-4424
- Nishimura, Kanehiro. "Superlative Suffixes *-ismo- and *-isim̥mo in Sabellian Languages." Glotta 81 (2005): 160–83. www.jstor.org/stable/40267191.
- Planta, R. von 1892–1897. Grammatik der oskisch-umbrischen Dialekte. 2 voll. Strassburg: K. J. Trubner. Vol. 1; Vol. 2
- Poccetti, Paolo. "Lingue sabelliche". In: Palaeohispanica: revista sobre lenguas y culturas de la Hispania antigua n. 20 (2020): pp. 403–494. ISSN 1578-5386 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
- "Languages and Cultures of Ancient Italy. Historical Linguistics and Digital Models", Project fund by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (P.R.I.N. 2017)
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 23 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 965–966.
The Osco Umbrian Sabellic or Sabellian languages are an extinct group of Italic languages the Indo European languages that were spoken in central and southern Italy by the Osco Umbrians before being replaced by Latin as the power of ancient Rome expanded Their written attestations developed from the middle of the 1st millennium BC to the early centuries of the 1st millennium AD There is one text of about 4 000 words in Umbrian but otherwise the languages are known almost exclusively from inscriptions principally of Oscan and Umbrian 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 Paucity of evidence from most of the minor dialects contributes to the difficulty of making these determinations Osco UmbrianSabellic SabellianGeographic distributionAncient south and central ItalyExtinct1st millennium BC 1st millennium ADLinguistic classificationIndo EuropeanItalicOsco UmbrianEarly formsProto Indo European Proto ItalicSubdivisionsOscan Umbrian Volscian Sabine South Picene Marsian Paeligni Hernican Marrucinian Pre Samnite Language codesISO 639 3 Glottologsabe1249Ethnolinguistic map of Italy in the Iron Age before the Roman expansion and conquest of ItalyRelationship with the Italic languagesFollowing an original theory by Antoine Meillet the Osco Umbrian languages were traditionally considered a branch of the Italic languages a language family that grouped Latin and Faliscan together with several other related languages This unitary scheme was criticized by among others Alois Walde Vittore Pisani and Giacomo Devoto 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 Proponents such as Rix later rejected 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 aspectsThe two main branches of the Sabellic languages spoken in the heart of the Italian peninsula are Oscan in the south and Umbrian to the north of Oscan Included among the Sabellic languages are Volscian Sabine South Picene Marsian Paeligni 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 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 and Sicily Oscan was the language of the Samnite tribes powerful enemies of the Romans who took years to subdue them the Samnite wars 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 began a process of decline when the Umbrians were subdued by the Romans and the process of Romanisation 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 DistributionThese languages were spoken in Samnium and in Campania partly in Apulia Lucania and Bruttium as well as by the Mamertines in the Sicilian colony of Messana Messina Past usageSabellic was originally the collective ethnonym of the Italic people who inhabited central and southern Italy at the time of Roman expansion The name was later used by Theodor Mommsen 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 was included even though it remains unclear whether it is related ClassificationLinguistic landscape of Central Italy at the beginning of Roman expansion 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 is the best documented language of the group along with other varieties that are poorly known and considered related to Oscan Marrucinian Paeligni Umbrian with languages spoken in the northern central region of the peninsula Umbrian Marsian Sabine Volscian Hernican Picene Pre Samnite South Picene 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 and Marrucini 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 Linguistic descriptionThe Osco Umbrian languages were fusional inflected languages with about 5 different morphological cases in the singular similar to those of Latin 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 aspirates appear as b d and h g between vowels in Latin medius lt medʰyos the aspirates all appear in Sabellic as f Oscan mefiai lt 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 alsolanguages portalItalic peoplesNotesHelmut Rix Sabellische Texte Die Texte des Oskischen Umbrischen und Sudpikenischen Heidelberg Carl Winter University Press 2002 pp4f Francisco Villar Gli Indoeuropei e le origini dell Europa pp 474 475 Villar cit pp 447 482 Paolo Pocetti The Documentation of Italic in Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo European Linguistics An International Handbook vol 2 ed Jared Klein Brian Joseph and Matthias Fritz Berlin de Gruyter 2017 1 19 ISBN 311052175X 9783110521757 Philip Baldi 2018 The Foundations of Latin Walter de Gruyter GmbH amp Co KG p 104 ISBN 9783110892604 Rex Wallace 2008 Sabellian Languages in Woodard ed The Ancient Languages of Europe CUP p 98 One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain Chisholm Hugh ed 1911 Sabellic Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol 23 11th ed Cambridge University Press p 963 Vetter 1953 Adiego Lajara 1992 Rix 2000 Coleman 1986ReferencesVillar Francisco in Italian 1997 Gli Indoeuropei e le origini dell Europa Indo Europeans and the origins of Europe in Italian Bologna Il Mulino ISBN 88 15 05708 0 a href wiki Template Cite book title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint location missing publisher link Further readingAdams 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 1904 A Grammar of Oscan and Umbrian with a Collection of Inscriptions and a Glossary Boston Ginn amp Company OCLC 1045590290 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 Conway Robert Seymour 1897 The Italic Dialects Edited with a Grammar and Glossary 2 voll Cambridge Cambridge University Press Vol 1 Vol 2 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 fur Sprachen und Literaturen der Universitat Innsbruck Middei Edoardo Gli antroponimi sabellici in ai os e le basi onomastiche con morfo struttura aCCa Sabellian personal names with ai os and the onomastic bases with the morpho structural pattern acca In Graeco Latina Brunensia 2015 vol 20 iss 2 pp 105 121 ISSN 2336 4424 Nishimura Kanehiro Superlative Suffixes ismo and isim mo in Sabellian Languages Glotta 81 2005 160 83 www jstor org stable 40267191 Planta R von 1892 1897 Grammatik der oskisch umbrischen Dialekte 2 voll Strassburg K J Trubner Vol 1 Vol 2 Poccetti Paolo Lingue sabelliche In Palaeohispanica revista sobre lenguas y culturas de la Hispania antigua n 20 2020 pp 403 494 ISSN 1578 5386 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 Languages and Cultures of Ancient Italy Historical Linguistics and Digital Models Project fund by the Italian Ministry of University and Research P R I N 2017 Chisholm Hugh ed 1911 Sabini Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol 23 11th ed Cambridge University Press pp 965 966 Library resources about Osco Umbrian languages Online books Resources in your library Resources in other libraries
