Umbrian language
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 languages, a term generally replaced by Sabellic in modern scholarship. Since that classification was first formulated, a number of other languages in ancient Italy were discovered to be more closely related to Umbrian. Therefore, a group, the Umbrian languages, was devised to contain them.
Corpus
Umbrian is known from about 30 inscriptions dated from the 7th through 1st centuries BC. The largest cache by far is the Iguvine Tablets, seven inscribed bronze tablets found in 1444 near the village of Scheggia or, according to another tradition, in an underground chamber at Gubbio. The seven tablets contain notes on the ceremonies and statutes for priests of the ancient religion in the region. Sometimes they are called the Eugubian tablets after the medieval name of Iguvium/Eugubium. The tablets contain 4000–5000 words.Other minor inscriptions are from Todi, Assisi and Spoleto.
Alphabet
The Iguvine tablets were written in two alphabets. The older, the Umbrian alphabet, like other Old Italic script, was derived from the Etruscan alphabet, and was written right-to-left, essentially equivalent to the Neo-Etruscan, but using a letter shaped like a 'P' from the Archaic Etruscan alphabet for the unique Umbrian sound discussed below. The newer was written in the Latin script. The texts are sometimes called Old Umbrian and New Umbrian. The differences are mainly orthographic. For example, rs in the Latin alphabet is represented by a single character in the native script. To clearly distinguish them, the native script is generally transcribed in bold, the Latin in italics.Phonological history
Shared changes
Umbrian shares some phonological changes with its sister language Oscan.Labialization of ''*kʷ'' to ''p''
This change is shared with Umbrian, and so is a common Sabellic change, reminiscent of the k/p split between Goidellic and Brythonic. piře, pirse "what"; Oscan pídum vs Latin ''quid.''Initial stress and syncope
At some point early in the history of all Indo-European Italic languages, the accent seems to have shifted to the initial syllable of words as a stress accent, since non-initial syllables are regularly lost or weakened. Since the same pattern occurs in the history of Etruscan, this must be assumed to be an areal feature. unless the last syllable was long, in which case it fell on the second to last syllable The degree to which these shifts can be connected to similar shifts to initial stress in Celtic and Germanic is unclear; for discussion see J. Salmons' Accentual Change and Language Contact.Examples:
Loss of unstressed short -e-: *onse "shoulder" < *omesei, compare Latin umerus; destre "on the right" < *deksiterer; ostendu "present" < *obs-tendetōd, compare Latin ostendito.
Innovations unique to Umbrian (or not shared with Oscan)
But compared to its highly conservative sister language Oscan, Umbrian exhibits a number of innovations, some of them shared by its neighbor to the west, Latin.Treatment of original diphthongs
All diphthongs are simplified into monophthongs, a process only partly seen in Latin, and only very rarely in Oscan. So Proto-Italic *ai and *ei become Umbrian low ē: kvestur : Oscan kvaísstur, Latin quaestor 'official in charge of public revenue and expenditure'; prever 'single' : Oscan preivatud, Latin prīvus; furthermore, Proto-Italic *oi, *ou and *au become ō in initial syllables: unu 'one' : Old Latin oinus; ute 'or' : Oscan auti, Latin aut; tuta 'city' : Oscan touto.Palatalization of velars
Velars are palatalized and spirantized before front vowels and the front glide /j/ to probably a palatalized sibilant, written ç, ś or simply s. For example: Umbrian śesna 'dinner' : Oscan kersnu, Latin cēna; Umbrian façiu 'I do, I make' : Latin faciō.Rhotacism
Like Latin, but unlike Oscan, intervocalic -s- rhotacized to -r- in Umbrian. In late forms of the language, final -s also becomes -r. For example, the genitive plural ending of -ā stems: Umbrian -arum, Latin -arum vs Oscan -asúm .Treatment of *''d''
While initial *d- is preserved, earlier intervocalic *-d- show up in the native alphabet as a character generally transliterated as ř, but as the sequence rs in Umbrian texts using the Latin alphabet. The exact pronunciation is unknown: piře, pirse "what" vs. Oscan pídum, Latin ''quid.''Vowels
Proto-Italic *ū became /i/, simPhonology
The exact phonetics of much of what follows are not completely clear.Consonants
The consonant inventory of Umbrian is as follows:Vowels
Pure: a, e, i, o, uLong: ā, ē, ī, ō, ū
Diphthongs: ai, ei, ou
Grammar
Nouns
Case functions
Accusative and dative
The accusative, just as in Latin, was used as the direct object of transitive verbs and with prepositions. There is also evidence of the cognate accusative, a function in Latin in which accusative nouns were often the object of related verbs. In Umbrian, this appears in the sentence "teio subocau suboco." The dative was used in both Latin and Umbrian to refer to the indirect object of transitive verbs, although it could also be the direct object of special verbs: the Umbrian verb "kuraia" is used with the dative in the sentence "ri esune kuraia" to express the meaning "to care for the divine thing," which in Latin would be expressed using the equivalent verb "curo" with the accusative. Certain compound verbs appear to have taken the dative, a linguistic peculiarity also present in Latin: In the sentence "prosesetir strusla fida arsueitu," the compound verb "arsueitu" takes the dative. Dative forms could also function as the indirect object of nouns with verbal meanings: "tikamne luvie," meaning "dedication for Jupiter." Like Latin, the Umbrian dative could be paired with adjectives: "futu fons pacer... pople," meaning "It must be propitious... for the people." The Umbrian dative could indicate the beneficiary or maleficiary of an action: this function, the dative of reference, appears in the sentence "aserio... anglaf esona mehe, tote Iioueine".Genitive
Like Latin, the genitive case was utilized to communicate both partitive and objective relationships between nouns. The partitive genitive, in which the genitive communicates that the noun is a smaller component of the genitive noun, appears in Umbrian sentences such as "mestru karu fratru," meaning "greater part of the brothers." However, unlike Latin, the partitive genitive in Umbrian may have also functioned as a subject in certain circumstances, a grammatical property that appears in Lithuanian, Avestan, and—rarely—Greek. This usage of the genitive is possibly attested in the sentence "," meaning " any of them are to be accepted." The genitive of possession, in which the genitive term is marked as the possessor, possibly appears in Umbrian sentences such as popluper totar Iiouinar, translating to "for the people of the city of Iguvium." However, within this sentence, the genitive could either be functioning in its capacity as a partitive or possessive genitive. Likewise, the genitive of characteristic may appear in the sentence "pisest totar Tarsinater," meaning "whoever is of the city of Tadinatus," although in this sentence the genitive may either be functioning as a genitive of characteristic or as a partitive genitive. The objective genitive, in which the genitive functions to communicate the object of nouns with verbal connotations, appears in Umbrian sentences such as "katle tiçel," meaning "dedication of the sacrificial animal," and "arsier frite," meaning "confidence in the holy one."Ablative and locative
In contrast to Latin, in which the locative was reduced to rare and limited functions, the Umbrian locative retained much broader and more widespread use. The Umbrian locative was used to signify the place something occurred; thus, Umbrian terms locatives such as Acersoniem, meaning "at Acedonia," and "tote Iouine," meaning "at Iguvium." Locative forms such as fratrecate and maronatei, both of which refer to the time frame in which a specific individual held a political office, attest to the existence of a locative of time, which would indicate the time something occurred. Ablative forms were also utilized to communicate locative meanings: Umbrian phrases such as "tremnu serse" utilize the ablative to indicate the location where something occurred. The ablative, typically when accompanied by a preposition such as "ehe" or a postpositive marker such as "-ta" or "-tu," could also indicate movement from a location: the terms term "akrutu" and the sentence"ehe esu poplu" both demonstrate this function of the ablative. Furthermore, the ablative in Umbrian could indicate the route through which movement had occurred: the sentence, "uia auiecla etuto", exemplifies this usage." Ablative forms could communicate the time something occurred, as demonstrated in the phrase "pesclu semu". Both the ablative and locative appeared to be able to communicate the means by which in action occurred: the phrase "mani tenitu" utilizes the ablative form "mani", while the sentence "manuve habitu" utilizes the locative form manuve to communicate a similar meaning.The ablative could also communicate the attendant circumstances surrounding an action, as demonstrated by sentences such as "eruhu tiçlu sestu luvepatre". More broadly, the Umbrian ablative could signify accompaniment; it could communicate that an action was occurring with or alongside something. Such a meaning appears in sentences such as "com prinuatir stahitu", which utilize the preposition "com". This preposition was dropped in scenarios where the notion of accompaniment could be substituted for the ablative of means or manner: "apretu tures et pure". The preposition "-co" or "-ku," when used as a postpositive marker of an ablative term, communicated a locative meaning: "asaku" and "termnuco". Another, more miscellaneous usage of the Umbrian ablative is the ablative of price, which marks the cost of something: "muneklu habia numer prever pusti kastruvuf". There is also limited attestation of an ablative absolute in Umbrian: "aves anzeriates". The linguist Gary B. Holland suggests that it is possible this form merely constitutes a locative, as the locative plural is identical to the ablative plural in Umbrian.