Italic languages

Italic
Geographic distribution:	Originally Italy, today mainly southern Europe, maximum extent world-wide intermittent
Genetic classification:	Indo-European  Italic
Subdivisions:	Latino-Faliscan Osco-Umbrian, formerly Sabellic Aequian Vestinian
ISO 639-5:	itc
Approximate distribution of languages in Iron Age Italy during the sixth century BC.

The Italic subfamily is a member of the Indo-European language family. It includes the Romance languages derived from Latin (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Romanian, etc.), and a number of extinct languages of the Italian Peninsula, including Umbrian, Oscan, Faliscan, and Latin itself.

In the past various definitions of "Italic" have prevailed. This article uses the classification presented by the Linguist List (see under External links below): Italic includes the Latin subgroup (Latin and the Romance languages) as well as the ancient Italic languages (Faliscan, Osco-Umbrian and two unclassified Italic languages, Aequian and Vestinian). Venetic (the language of ancient Venice), however, is regarded as unclassified Indo-European, despite its influence on the modern Italian of the region.

In the extreme view, Italic did not exist, but the different groups descended directly from Indo-European and converged because of geographic contiguity. This view stems in part from the difficulty in identifying a common Italic homeland in prehistory.

Phonetic changes

A partial list of regular phonetic changes from Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Italic:

• Palatovelars merged with plain velars
  • kʲ → k
  • ɡʲʱ → ɡʱ
  • ɡʲ → ɡ
• Voiced labiovelars unround or lenite
  • ɡʱʷ → ɡʱ
  • ɡʷ → ɡ or w
• Voiced aspirates become first unvoiced, then fricativize
  • bʱ → pʰ → ɸ → f
  • dʱ → tʰ → θ
  • ɡʱ → kʰ → x
• s → θ before r; unchanged elsewhere
• p → kʷ before kʷ in following syllable (e.g. Latin quinque 'five' from PIE *penkʷe); unchanged elsewhere
• Resonants and remaining stops (m n l r w b d ɡ p t k kʷ) unchanged

Further changes occurred during the evolution of the individual Italic languages, in Latin for example f, θ → b, d between vowels and θ → f at the beginning of a word.

Branches

The Italic family has two known branches and two unclassified languages:

• Latino-Faliscan, including:
  • Faliscan, which was spoken in the area around Falerii Veteres (modern Civita Castellana) north of the city of Rome and possibly Sardinia
  • Latin, which was spoken in west-central Italy. The Roman conquests eventually spread it throughout the peninsula and beyond in the Roman Empire.
    • Romance languages, the descendants of Latin (see List of Romance languages)
• Osco-Umbrian or Sabellic including:
  • Oscan, which was spoken in the south-central region of the Italian Peninsula
  • Umbrian group, including:
    • Umbrian (not to be confused with the modern Umbrian dialect of Italian), which was spoken in the north-central region
    • Volscian
    • Marsian, the language of the Marsi
  • South Picene, in east-central Italy
  • Sabine in Lazio and the central Appennines
• Aequian, a language spoken by the tribe of the Aequi just east of Rome
• Vestinian, a language spoken by the tribe of the Vestini in northeast Italy

The ancient Venetic language, as revealed by its inscriptions (including complete sentences), was also closely related to the Italic languages and is sometimes even classified as Italic. However, since it also shares similarities with other Western Indo-European branches (particularly Germanic), some linguists prefer to consider it an independent Indo-European language.

The Italic languages are first attested in writing from Umbrian and Faliscan inscriptions dating to the 7th century BC. The alphabets used are based on the Old Italic alphabet, which is itself based on the Greek alphabet. The Italic languages themselves show minor influence from the Etruscan and somewhat more from the Ancient Greek languages.

As Rome extended its political dominion over the whole of the Italian Peninsula, Latin became dominant over the other Italic languages, which ceased to be spoken perhaps sometime in the 1st century AD. From Vulgar Latin the Romance languages emerged.

References

• Pulgram, Ernst (1958). Tongues of Italy, Prehistory and History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 
• Rix, Helmut (2003), "Ausgliederung und Aufgliederung der italischen Sprachen", in Bammesburger, Alfred; Vennemann, Theo (in German), Languages in Prehistoric Europe, Indogermanische Bibliothek 3, Heidelberg: Winter, pp. 147-172, ISBN 3-8253-1449-9 

See also

• Language families and languages
• Italo-Celtic
• Vestinian, a poorly attested and unclassified Italic language

External links

• "Tree for Italic" (html). Linguist List, Eastern Michigan University. 2009. http://linguistlist.org/forms/langs/get-familyid.cfm?CFTREEITEMKEY=IEJ. Retrieved 16 September 2009. 
• "A Glossary of Indo-European Linguistic Terms" (in English). Institut für deutsche Sprache und Linguistik. 2009. http://korpling.german.hu-berlin.de/~amir/IE_Glossary.php. Retrieved 16 September 2009.