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A list of regular phonetic changes from Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Italic follows. Because Latin is the only well-attested Italic language, it forms the main source for the reconstruction of Proto-Italic. It is therefore not always clear whether certain changes apply to all of Italic (a pre-PI change), or only to Latin (a post-PI change), because of lack of conclusive evidence.
The laryngeals are a class of hypothetical PIE sounds *h₁, *h₂, *h₃ that usually disappeared in late PIE, leaving coloring effects on adjacent vowels. Their disappearance left some distinctive sound combinations in Proto-Italic. In the changes below, the # follows standard practice in denoting a word boundary; that is, # at the beginning denotes word-initial.[10] H denotes any of the three laryngeals.
The simpler Italic developments of laryngeals are shared by many other Indo-European branches:
More characteristic of Italic are the interactions of laryngeals with sonorant consonants. Here, R represents a sonorant, and C a consonant.
Oscan and umbrian are closely related languages, and thus share some changes.
Proto italic gʷ, gʷ became b, p in Osco-Umbrian, reminiscent of the k/p split between Goidellic (Irish, etc) and Cymric (Welsh, etc). piře, pirse "what"; Oscan pídum vs Latin quid.[16][17]
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. (By the time of classical Latin, the accent had shifted in that language to more of an Ancient Greek pattern--on the third syllable from the end (antepenult) unless the last syllable was long, in which case it fell on the second to last syllable (the penult).) [18] 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. [19]
Examples: Loss of unstressed short -e-: *onse "shoulder" < *omesei, compare Latin umerus; destre "on the right" < *deksiterer; ostendu "present" (imperative) < *obs-tendetōd, compare Latin ostendito.[20]
/ɣʷ/, /ð/, and /β/ all became /f/ (probably [v].[21]
Vowels are regularly lengthened before ns and nct (in the latter of which the n is lost) and possibly before nf and nx as well[22] Anaptyxis, the development of a vowel between a liquid or nasal and another consonant, preceding or following, occurs frequently in Oscan; if the other (non-liquid/nasal) consonant precedes, the new vowel is the same as the preceding vowel. If the other consonant follows, the new vowel is the same as the following vowel.[23]
Short a remains in most positions.[24][17] Long ā remains in an initial or medial position. Final ā starts to sound similar to [ɔː] so that it is written ú or, rarely, u.[25][17]
Short e "generally remains unchanged;" before a labial in a medial syllable, it becomes u or i, and before another vowel, e raises to higher-mid [ẹ], written í.[26][17] Long ē similarly raises to higher-mid [ẹ], the sound of written í or íí.[27][17]
Short i becomes written í.[28][17] Long ī is spelt with i but where written with doubling it is as ií. This may have been something like /i:e/, but it was probably spelled differently to avoid conflict with íí. [29][17]
Short o remains mostly unchanged, written ú;[30][17] before a final -m, o becomes more like u.[31] Long ō becomes denoted by u or uu.[32][17]
Short u generally remains unchanged; after t, d, n, the sound becomes that of iu.[33][17] Long ū generally remains unchanged; it changed to an ī sound in monosyllables, and may have changed to an ī sound for final syllables.[34][17]
The sounds of diphthongs remain unchanged.[35]
In Oscan, s between vowels did not undergo rhotacism as it did in Latin and Umbrian; but it was voiced, becoming the sound /z/. However, between vowels, the original cluster rs developed either to a simple r with lengthening on the preceding vowel, or to a long rr (as in Latin), and at the end of a word, original rs becomes r just as in Latin. Unlike in Latin, the s is not dropped, either Oscan or Umbrian, from the consonant clusters sm, sn, sl: Umbrian `sesna "dinner," Oscan kersnu vs Latin cēna.[36]
Proto-Italic kt and pt became xt and ft[17]
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. (Below, following convention, bold text for Umbrian and Oscan indicates words written in the native, Etruscan derived script, while italics represents words written in Latin-derived script.)
All diphthongs are simplified (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 (written u in the native script) in initial syllables: unu 'one' : Old Latin oinus; ute 'or' : Oscan auti, Latin aut; tuta 'city' : Oscan touto.[34]
Velars are palatalized and spirantized before front vowels and the front glide /j/ to probably a palatalized sibilant (perhaps the postalveolar /ʃ/), written ç, ś or simply s. (A similar change happened later in most Romance languages.) For example: Umbrian śesna 'dinner' : Oscan kersnu, Latin cēna; Umbrian façiu 'I do, I make' : Latin faciō. [37]
Like Latin, but unlike Oscan, intervocalic -s- rhotacized to -r- in Umbrian. In late forms of the language, final -s also becomes -r (a change not seen in Latin). For example, the genitive plural ending of -ā stems: Umbrian -arum, Latin -arum vs Oscan -asúm (compare Sanskrit -āsām). [38]
Original word final *t merges with final *d. Final t from apocope is not affected.[39] While initial *d- is preserved (spelled t in the native alphabet), earlier intervocalic *-d- (and sometimes *-l-) 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.[40] Final d is dropped: Umbrian dede vs Oscan deded vs Latin dedit (inflection of dō "give")[41]
Proto-italic *ū became /i/, sim (accusative singular) <PI *sūm "pig" [42]
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| Nominative | -a or -ā | -ai |
| Vocative | ||
| Accusative | -ām | -ās |
| Genitive | -as or -ai | -āsom |
| Dative | -ai | ? |
| Ablative | -ā(d) | ? |
Notes:
| Singular | Plural | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Masculine | Neuter | Masculine | Neuter | |
| Nominative | -os | -om | -e /ẹ̄/ | -a |
| Vocative | -e | |||
| Accusative | -om | -ōs | ||
| Genitive | - | -om | ||
| Dative | -oi | -īs | ||
| Ablative | -ōd | ? | ||
| Locative | Gen. | Dat. | ||
Notes:
The attested pronouns are:
Demonstrative pronouns are indirectly preserved in the forms hec/fec "here", from locative /hei-ke/, and hoied/foied from either fossilized ablative/hōd diēd/ or compound /hodiēd.[55]
The imperfect, pluperfect, and future perfect tenses and passive voice are not attested.[56] Moods other than the indicative are only attested in early Faliscan.[56] Secondary endings are attested for early Faliscan only.[57]
| Singular | Plural | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First person | Second person | Third person | First person | Second person | Third person | |
| Present primary[a] | -o /-ō/[58]; -m[b][58] | -t[58] | -nt[58] | |||
| Present secondary[c][d] | unattested | -s[57] | -d[57] | unattested | -te[57] | -(n)d[57] |
| Imperative[c] | n/a | unattested | n/a | -te[57] | unattested | |
| Future Imperative[c] | n/a | -tod /-tōd/[59] | unattested | n/a | -tod /-tōd/[59] | unattested |
| Perfect | -ai[60] | unattested | -ed; -et /ẹ̄t/[60] | unattested | -o-nd[60] | |
| Future[e] | -fō[61] | unattested | unattested | |||