Wiktionary:About Proto-Italic/sandbox

This is a Wiktionary policy, guideline or common practices page. Specifically it is a policy think tank, working to develop a formal policy. Policies – Entries: CFI - EL - NORM - NPOV - QUOTE - REDIR - DELETE. Languages: LT - AXX. Others: BLOCK - BOTS - VOTES.

Warrior of Capestrano, 6th c. BC

Definition

Proto-Italic (itc-pro, onward PIt) refers to the hypothetical common ancestor of all the Italic languages, a proposed branch of Indo-European languages. Although the family's very existence has been challenged, there are many shared phonetical changes and shared lexicon that have made a good number of modern sources, whence Wiktionary, endorse the family and reconstruct proto-forms.

Wiktionary for the moment does not recognise different stages of the language (i.e., no "early PIt" vs. "late PIt", no "earlier form" vs. "later form") and defines it as the latest possible lect before its split into the Italic languages.

Venetic and Sicel here are not considered part of the family due to scarcity of evidence to link them to PIt, hence they are best handled and labeled more generally as simply "Indo-European languages".

When to reconstruct

Reconstructions in PIt, intended as both full-fledged entries and unlinked reconstructions from other entries (e.g., in etymology or descendants sections), should be based on the comparison of internal data, i.e., the Italic languages, as that is the only condition for which the concept of PIt has value in the first place. Even if there is certainty in the existence and shape of a term in PIt (e.g., if the term exists in PIE and Old or Classical Latin with no phonetical irregularities), reconstructed forms based on only one descendant such as Old/Classical Latin are to be strongly avoided.

Discussions by scholars of some particularities of pre-Latin phonology for irregular or unusual changes in the eymology section of any page in the Wiktionary are not a justification to go back all the way to the phonology of PIt existing lemmas. Moreover, those discussions are not the justification to reconstruct PIt as stated before.

Any pre-Proto-Italic (pre-PIt) reconstruction for regular shound changes should not be attempted.

How to reconstruct

The phonetical inventory employed by Wiktionary in PIt reconstructions, as well as the official orthography, is the following:

Vowels (short vs. long)

	front	back
high	i, ī	u, ū
mid	e, ē	o, ō
low	a, ā

The closed diphthongs are:

• *ay (L ae, ✝ai, Oscan aí, Umbrian ę̄),
• *ey (L ī, ✝ei, O eí, U ę̄),
• *oy (L ū, -ī, ✝oe, ✝oi, O úí, U ǭ, -ẹ̄),
• *aw (L au, O av, U ǭ),
• *ow (L ū, O úv, U ǭ).

Long closed diphthongs *āy, *ōy can be reconstructed in case endings.

Nasals *m, *n can also be syllabic; here, the two sonorants are spelled as *m̥, *n̥ (L eN, iN, O-U aN).

Consonants

	labial	dental	palatal	velar	labiovelar
voiceless plosives	p	t		k	kʷ
voiced plosives	b	d		g	gʷ
fricatives	f	θ, s		h	hʷ
nasals	m	n
liquids		l, r
glides			y		w

Considerations

The following is a non-exhaustive list of shifts that are found in all Italic languages, and are hence customarily to be considered dating back to PIt and reflected in reconstructions:

1. *bʰ, *dʰ, *gʰ, *gʷʰ > *b, *d, *g, *gʷ after nasals and *s; *f, *θ, *h, *hʷ elsewhere
2. initial *θ-, *hʷ-, *fw- > *f-
3. *θ, *hʷ, *s > *f before *l, *r
4. *θ > *f more generally whenever adjacent to *l *r *ū̆
5. *l̥, *r̥ > *ol, *or
6. *dy, *gy > *yy
7. loss of *y between vowels

Also note:

1. Medial *nss (L ns, U f), originating from *nTT is differentiated from original *ns (L ns, U nz).
2. The phoneme *hʷ can only be reconstructed intervocalically, as it turns into *f word-initially and before liquids in all Italic languages. Becomes *w in Latin, while in Umbrian, albeit with limited evidence, it becomes *f.

Orthography

PIt reconstructions on Wiktionary should follow these guidelines:

1. Whether fricatives were voiced between vowels and before liquids, as they are reflected in Latin, is still a matter of debate among liguists. The system used here however does not use the symbols *β, *ð, *ɣ, *z, since even if the fricatives were indeed voiced in these contexts they would be in positional complementary distribution with their unvoiced counterparts, and hence allophonic and redundant for the orthography.
2. The symbols *m̥, *n̥ are used, no *ə or *ẽ.
3. The symbol *y is used, not *j or *i̯, following the same choice taken for Proto-Indo-European. Similarly, *w is used, not *u̯.
4. The symbol *h is used, not *x or *χ, following how the sound is spelled/transliterated in the daughter languages. There is evidence of the fricative being glottal back to the PIt stage anyways.
5. The symbol *f is used, not *ɸ, whatever was its actual phonetic realisation.
6. The symbol *θ is used, not *þ.

Further reading

• Sihler, Andrew L. (1995) New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, →ISBN
• Buck, Carl Darling (1904) A Grammar of Oscan and Umbrian: With a Collection of Inscriptions and a Glossary
• De Vaan, Michiel (2008) Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7)‎^[1], Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN
• Stuart-Smith, Jane (2004) Phonetics and Philology: Sound Change in Italic, Oxford, →DOI
• Poultney, James Wilson (1959) The Bronze Tables of Iguvium‎^[2], Baltimore: American Philological Association
• Klein, Jared S., Joseph, Brian D., Fritz, Matthias, editors ((Can we date this quote?)), Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics: An International Handbook (Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft [Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science]; 41.2), Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, →ISBN