Linguistic Society of America

Prehistory and the Italian Dialects

Author(s): Ernst Pulgram
Source: Language, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1949), pp. 241-252
Published by: Linguistic Society of America
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/410085
Accessed: 09-04-2016 12:09 UTC

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 PREHISTORY AND THE ITALIAN DIALECTS

ERNST PULGRAM

University of Michigan

The title of this article is more pretentious than the subject that I propose to
treat in these few pages.' My concern here is with a question of method; accord-
ingly I shall defer a more comprehensive treatment to some future publication,
and refrain from burdening the present essay with details and examples. The
purpose of this paper is to show how, through a study of pre-Romance archeology,
anthropology, and ethnology,2 the Italian dialects can be made to appear in a
new and perhaps brighter light.
The chief linguistic problem involved here is the validity of the substratum
theory. Much has been written in defense as well as in repudiation of it, in most
cases with illustrative examples which evidently and sufficiently either prove or
discredit the theory. Such procedure is acceptable in each separate instance; but
what has been established for a certain period and a certain place cannot be
transferred, in toto, to another sphere. There can be no question of assuming
substratum influence everywhere, or of rejecting it categorically, on the basis of
an investigation limited to a single area.
On the whole, the substratum theory has not fared well among scholars. But
curiously enough, the possibility of a superstratum, e.g. Langobard in northern
Italy, is in general less reluctantly, though by no means unanimously, accepted.
I can really see no intrinsic difference between the two phenomena; but I daresay
that the possiblity of a substratum is present more frequently than evidence for
it can be brought to light.3 Indeed it seems only reasonable to surmise that when
a new language is learned by an entire social group, the members of this group
cannot help pronouncing this new language with a certain 'accent'.4 Besides their

1 This paper was read, in abridged form, at the meeting of the Linguistic Society in New
York, 31 December 1948.
2 Some of the important sources in these subjects are: V. G. Childe, The dawn of Euro-
pean civilization (New York, 1939); Conway, Johnson, and Whatmough, The Prae-Italic
dialects of Italy (Cambridge, Mass., 1933); Friedrich von Duhn, Italische Grdberkunde
(Heidelberg, 1924); C. F. C. Hawkes, The prehistoric foundations of Europe (London,
1940); F. Messerschmidt, Bronzezeit und frtihe Eisenzeit in Italien (Berlin, 1935); E. Pais,
Storia dell'Italia antica (Torino, 1933); T. E. Peet, The stone and bronze ages in Italy and
Sicily (Oxford, 1909); D. Randall-MacIver, The iron age in Italy (Oxford, 1927), Italy be-
fore the Romans (Oxford, 1928), Villanovans and early Etruscans (Oxford, 1924); J. What-
mough, The foundations of Roman Italy (London, 1937).
3 See below 251.
4 Vittorio Bertoldi, Problemes de substrat, BSL 32.118 (1931): 'Que la langue latine
victorieuse ait effacd, par exemple, partout sur le domaine otf elle s'est superpos6e, toutes
les habitudes articulatoires des indigenes, qui 6taient le r4sultat d'une h6r6dit4 s4culaire,
nul ne saurait l'affirmer.' But some do so affirm. (The term hAbrdith will be discussed below,
fn. 11.) See on this basic principle especially Antoine Meillet, Sur les effets des changements
de langue, Scientia 51.91-8 (1932). However, his use of the term substratum, as meaning
'des changements que subirait, post6rieurement au changement de langue, la langue nou-
vellement adopt6e' (95), is wider than we want it to be (see below, fn. 11); Meillet himself
calls this atavistic theory an 'hypoth6se hardie' in any event.
241

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 242 ERNST PULGRAM

phonetic habits, they will also continue, to some extent, certain morphological
and syntactical features to which they are accustomed, to say nothing of a por-
tion, great or small, of their vocabulary.5 We shall restrict ourselves here to
phonological matters.
Latin, for example, was learned by a number of tribes and nations which, up
to the time of the Roman conquest, had spoken other idioms. Henri Frangois
Muller, Mario A. Pei, and others deny substratum influence in the Roman
Empire. They hold the view that Latin was continuous and uniform, phonologi-
cally and grammatically, down to the 8th century of our era, at which time, they
say, the development of Latin into the Romance languages took place precipi-
tously.6 When Urban T. Holmes reviewed Pei's book The Italian language (New
York, 1941),' he defined the position of the substratists clearly and concisely.
To Pei's claim that Etruscan, for example, had left no traces in Italian, he replied
that we could not judge this particular substratum in any event, because of our
ignorance of the Etruscan language.8
I want to make it clear that I am referring always to a LINGUISTIC, not to some
mythical RACIAL substratum, whose energies are thought to lie dormant for
centuries, then suddenly to arise for battle against foreign corruptions of speech
and soul, with the miraculous result that people talk again like some remote
ancestors. We know that the vocal apparatus of an anatomically and mentally
normal human being (whose normalness can be scientifically defined) can repeat
any sound produced by other human beings. The difficulty of certain foreign
sounds and the alleged inability to imitate them are relative and illusory respec-
tively; they are not anatomically or 'racially' conditioned.' Learners of foreign
languages know that one can acquire a fluent knowledge of vocabulary and
grammar, but that mastery of a 'native' pronunciation is far more elusive, and
is but slowly, if ever, attained. In order to overcome the difficulty, one must
control certain organs which are not normally used, or not used in the same way,
in speaking one's own tongue, and which have therefore partially freed themselves
of, or made themselves impervious to, control by the motor nerves.1' All this
5 A paper by George Hempl, Language rivalry and speech differentiation in the case of
race mixture, TAPA 39.31-47 (1898), offers valuable suggestions, apart from the unfortunate
term 'race mixture'. Too little attention has been paid to it. (Jespersen discusses the article
in his Language, chapter XI.)
6 See above, fn. 4.
7Romanic Review 32.445-9 (1941).
8 It may be noteworthy that Pei, in spite of his anti-substratum position, calls Pied-
montese, Lombard, Emilian, and Ligurian 'GALLO-Italian' dialects (146 and passim). Per-
haps the term is geographical; but there is no Gallo-Italy.
9 A student of mine declared that his attempts to learn to pronounce French correctly
were doomed in advance, since he, being of Anglo-Saxon 'extraction', could not possibly
cope with this Gallic way of talking. More frequent are the unfounded hopes of some that
because their grandfather spoke Italian, French, or German, the languages were 'in their
blood'. Often such reliance upon ancestral virtues determines a student's choice of language
study in college.
10 Perhaps there is a connection between this motor-automatism of audible speech and
the non-motorized automatism of the neural paths of inaudible speech, i.e. thought, which
consists in thalamo-cortical circulation. Cp. G. C. Campion and G. Elliot Smith, The
neural basis of thought 32, fig. 3 (London, 1934).

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 PREHISTORY AND THE ITALIAN DIALECTS 243

refutes a racial substratum, but at the same time aptly supports the possibility
of a linguistic substratum wherever it is reasonable to assume one. I suggest,
therefore, that by substratum we understand not racial linguistic inheritance,
but the uninterrupted continuation of acquired linguistic habits."
Where will it be possible to claim a linguistic substratum? Obviously only in
places where non-linguistic evidence, historic and prehistoric, actually shows
that the members of a social group, at a certain time, acquired en masse the lan-
guage of another group and adopted it as their own. But non-linguistic evidence
MUST be produced, in addition to linguistic. Linguistic agreements by themselves
prove nothing. Language is selective, and each idiom uses only a very restricted
number of the potential human phonemes and combinations of phonemes. Con-
gruences, therefore, may occur quite without contact between languages, espe-
cially in a family of related languages, like the Indo-European. The number of
phonemes being limited, recurrence of phonemes and phoneme sequences in
various branches of the same family, and even recurrence of typical phonological
changes, is to be expected and is indeed borne out by the facts.'2 Linguistic repe-
tition will not be significant unless coupled with non-linguistic evidence which

11 So eminent a linguist as Jakob van Ginneken maintained that the two varieties of the
Dutch r and 1 are due to racial differences among speakers of Dutch (Proceedings of the
Second International Congress of Phonetic Sciences at London 65-6 [1935])-that 'il y a
vraiment des races [N.B.] qui aiment la fermeture du larynx et il y a des races qui n'en
veulent rien' (67). He then passes on to a description of dolichocephalic and brachycephalic
speech organs and sound production habits (67-8). (One is reminded of Max Mfiller's scath-
ing words about 'a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar', Biographies
of words 120 [London, 1888]) Another paper on the same subject by the same author is
cryptically entitled La tendance labiale de la race m~diterrandenne et la tendance laryngale
de la race alpine, Archives n6erlandaises de phon6tique experimentale 8/9.76-92 (1933). See
also M. J. Sirks, Klang, Stimme und Laut im Geltungsbereich der Vererbungslehre, M&-
langes van Ginneken 1-13 (Paris, 1937), with bibliography 14-5: 'Die typischen laryngalen
Menschen aus Leuven, Aalst und Hasselt in Belgien, welche die Lippen fast immer ge-
schlossen halten [which is supposedly a racial characteristic, not merely a habit] und auch
Lippen ohne jeden Wulst besitzen, sind ein ausgezeichnetes Beispiel ..., da solche Men-
schen den o-Laut gar nicht aussprechen k6nnen' (13); note the word 'k6nnen'! It is hardly
necessary to observe that if a Belgian child, however tight-lipped and thin-lipped his
'racial heredity' might be, were brought up in an area where i was a phoneme, he would
naturally have no difficulty in mastering it. It was again Meillet who answered the problem
most succinctly (Scientia 51.97 [1932]) 'Il ne s'agirait pas de l'h6r6dit6 de caracteres anato-
miques acquis, mais d'une chose bien diffdrente, d'h6r6ditd d'habitudes acquises.' Instead
of the second 'h1r&dite', however, one had better read, 'continuation de pere en fils.' No
doubt physical properties of the vocal organs may be inherited. But to make a linguistic
shibboleth of Mendel's discoveries is absurd.
Similarly, F. L. PullS, Italia: genti e favelle (Torino, 1927), shows how, in spite of the
'diversith di forme craniche, di composizione di plasma [N.B.]' (564), all Italians really form
one people, and how there is basic agreement of the 'tipo somatico annalizzato ne' suoi
principali caratteri, col tipo glottologico e col tipo psicologico dei rispettivi idiomi' (560).
12 Even so comprehensive a change as, say, the dissimilation of aspirates (Grassmann's
law), operates in Sanskrit and in Greek independently. Palatalization of consonants before
yod in French can hardly have a causal connection with the same phenomenon in Umbrian.
Colloquial American innerest for interest and unnerstand for understand have no relation
with the Oscan change from -nd- to -nn-. But if in Naples, i.e. in former Oscan territory,
they say today unnici for undici, quanno for quando, a linguist ought to take another look.

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 244 ERNST PULGRAM

validates it.3" Since this check has by no means been conscientiously applied in
all arguments propounding a substratum, it is no great surprise that the term
substratum has fallen into ill repute.'4 Romance scholars consider linguistic
matters preceding Latin, or Vulgar Latin, outside their purview. Pei, for example,
is too stringent, I think, when he criticizes adversely 'the tendency of many
Romanists to push linguistic changes as far back in time as they will go."5 My
own aim will be to push them back, not further than they will go, but by all
means as far as possible.
In Italy we have at our disposal a comparatively rich store of prehistoric and
pre-Roman anthropological, archeological, ethnological, and linguistic mate-
rial. This must be gathered and evaluated by the linguist, to furnish more precise
illumination than is usually produced by vague references to Oscan, Umbrian,
Etruscan, Keltic, and Greek substrata. In an excellent article on the continuance
of the five ancient dialects just cited, Vorlateinische Einfliisse in den Mundarten
des heutigen Italien?,16 Gerhard Rohlfs concludes that some traces of Keltic and
Greek influence can be discovered in northern and southern Italy respectively
(the Greek residuum being apparent in vocabulary and syntax rather than pho-
nology), whereas Etruscan, Umbrian, and Oscan substrata are more than doubt-
ful in their areas. However, seven years later, in a much less well-known and less
13 So, for example, syntactical affinities between Egyptian and Keltic-see Julius
Pokorny, Zeitschrift fir celtische Philologie 16.95-144, 231-66, 363-94 (1926); 17.373-88
(1928); 18.233-48 (1930); William Lansberg, Lg. 16.95-9 (1940)-cannot be said to have any
more connection with one another than rorau6s and Potomac, both meaning 'river,' unless
someone first proves the reality of contact and exchange of cultural goods between the
Egyptians and the Kelts. Similarly, the theory of substratum influence of Oscan in northern
Spain, claimed by Mendndez Pidal (Origenes del espanol ??53 ff.) and supported by the
local name Huesca, allegedly derived from Osca, remains debatable until it has been proved
that a comparatively large number of Oscans, legionnaires or colonists or both, actually
lived in that area, spoke Oscan, and were influential enough to impose at least one of their
speech habits over a wide district. And even if that were proved, we should be dealing with
a superstratum, like Frankish in Gaul. Besides, Rohlfs finds a town named Huescar in the
south of Spain, and thinks that both names are of pre-Roman origin. See also W. D. Elcock,
De quelques affinit6s phon6tiques entre l'aragonais et le b6arnais (Paris, 1938), and Gerhard
Rohlfs, Le gascon: Etudes de philologie pyr6n6enne, Zeitschrift fiir romanische Philologie,
Beiheft 85 (Halle, 1935).
14 Bertoldi, op.cit. 117 n. 1: 'Que les linguistes les plus 6minents se tiennent en droit de
d6savouer les conclusions par trop httives de ceux qui d'un sain principe de recherche ont
fait une clef pour ouvrir toutes les portes, qu'ils r6clament de plus en plus de rigueurs de la
m6thode, ... tout cela est compr6hensible, c'est surtout salutaire pour le prestige de notre
discipline. Mais il s'agit toujours de r6serves relatives A la m6thode de nature A ne pr6juger
guere l'attitude A 1'6gard de la thdorie. En g6n6ral, on ne saurait trop insister sur la n6ces-
sit6 que dans ce genre de recherches, oh forc6ment une si large place est r6serv6e & l'hypo-
thbse, la clart6 de la forme soit en raison directe de l'obscurit6 de la matibre.'
It has been said that the substratum theory never proved anything that could not be
proved by other methods. In some instances that may be so, whereas in others ONLY the
corroborative evidence of substratum can settle an argument.
15 Romanic Review 32.113 (1941), in the review of Walther von Wartburg, La posizione
della lingua italiana (Firenze, 1940).
16 Germanisch-romanische Monatsschrift 18.37-56 (1930).

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 PREHISTORY AND THE ITALIAN DIALECTS 245

quoted publication, Rohlfs admits also an Oscan substratum." He has two basic
objections to applying the substratum theory indiscriminately: first, that certain
phonological phenomena in Italian that have been most commonly ascribed to
Italic bases exceed the territory for which a substratum can be claimed; and
second, that the same phonemes or the same types of phoneme substitution
occur in distant areas where the same linguistic substratum is out of the question.
Both objections have been discussed above. The first can be eliminated by thor-
oughness of research; the second is not valid, since recurrence of phonemes is
inevitable. Rohlfs refers the varying degrees of Italic influence upon Latin and
Italian, or the lack of it, to the degree of cultural strength of the societies in-
volved.'" He does not elaborate on this thesis,'9 but is satisfied with having shown
the way, and no doubt the proper way, for future investigations. Let us attempt
to establish, briefly, the relevant prehistoric and historic facts.
A bundle of isoglosses, running east and west from Lucca to Ancona, along the
height of the Apennines, separates the Toscana in the south from the Emilia, the
Romagna, Lombardy, and Liguria in the north. The last four provinces speak
Gallo-Italian dialects; their area coincides with that formerly occupied by Kelts.20
A linguistic boundary followed the same line in Latin also; to the north of it
Latin showed peculiarities that can be connected with Keltic and Venetic pho-
nology.21 The change from u to it, most frequently attributed to Keltic influence,
does not follow the same line of isoglosses, but swerves to the north not far from
the west coast, passes to the west of Parma, to the east of Mantua, to the west of
Verona, and turns northeast toward the valley of the Piave. Almost coincident
with this isogloss is the o/l line. It is surely striking that this linguistic boundary
very closely approximates the ethnic frontier of the ancient Veneti, and south of
the Po, at an earlier age, that of the Etruscans.
We are quite certain that a compact Keltic population can be assumed only
in the western Po country.22 There is also evidence that the Kelts, although they
penetrated into Italy over the eastern and central Alpine passes, rather than
from Gaul, moved on toward more permanent seats in the west. This is proved
by Keltic graves, which are older in the east than in the west. Unfortunately,
epigraphic records of Keltic in Italy are very scanty, in spite of the vast Keltic
17 La struttura linguistica dell'Italia 21 (Leipzig, 1937).
18 So already Hermann Hirt, Die Verwandtschaftsverhiiltnisse der Indogermanen, IF
4.38 f. (1894); see also Hirt, ed. H. Arntz, Die Hauptprobleme der indogermanischen Sprach-
wissenschaft 47, 209 (Halle, 1939).
19 The general ethnological principles, applicable to all areas, may be found in the paper
by George Hempl already referred to (fn. 5).
20 The boundary which, according to Wartburg and other Romanists, separates Eastern
from Western Romance, runs approximately along the same course. Whatever the merits
of this division of Romance territory, the real existence of an important linguistic frontier
cannot be denied.

21 See Joshua Whatmough, Quemadmodum Pollio reprehendit in Liuio Patauinitatem,

Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 44.95-130 (1933). Cf. also the older works by Hugo
Schuchardt, Der Vocalismus des Vulgairlateins (Leipzig 1866-8), and Karl Sittl, Die lokalen
Verschiedenheiten der lateinischen Sprache (Erlangen, 1882).
22 H. Pedersen, Linguistic science in the nineteenth century 54 (Cambridge, Mass., 1931).

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 246 ERNST PULGRAM

area and the protracted Keltic occupation. The reason for the paucity of Keltic
inscriptions (we have but three, one of them with a Latin translation) is prob-
ably to be sought in the illiteracy of the Kelts at the time of their entering Italy
and for a considerable time thereafter. (None of the Indo-European tribes in
Italy could write; they all learned it from the Etruscans, directly or indirectly.)
Perhaps the Kelts, or some of them, learned to speak Latin before they acquired
the art of writing. Besides, if anything was important enough to be incised in
stone, and anyone was rich enough to pay for the job, the inscription may well
have been composed in the language of literates, Latin, which possibly lent
added weight and prestige to the monument.
The Kelts of Gallia Cisalpina, like their relations in Gaul many years later,
were not expelled or supplanted by the conquerors, but merged with them peace-
fully though slowly. That especially Gallia Transpadana remained for the
Romans an essentially foreign land for a very long time may be seen from an act
of official discrimination, whereby as late as 89 B.c. this part of Italy, unlike the
rest of the country, was not yet granted the franchise. Instead, it had to content
itself with a complex and inequitable settlement in which cities were not accorded
the privilege of civitates.23 This they obtained only under Caesar, through the
lex Roscia in 49 B.C., because of the strategic and logistic importance of the area
for Caesar's wars. There seems to have been a continued Keltic tradition also
after the Kelts had learned to understand and talk Latin, in spite of Polybius'
story24 of their expulsion.25 All these facts point to fertile ground for substratum
influence; one cannot deny it categorically for that part of Italy.
Next, the Etruscan area. Rohlfs disclaims the influence of an Etruscan sub-
stratum."2 Others uphold its importance, particularly a group of Italian Etrus-
cologists, in whose writings, however, enthusiasm sometimes prevails over dis-
cretion. In keeping with the thesis of the present article, linguistic evidence will
not suffice to solve the riddle, least of all for Etruscan, since we do not know the
language." But even if we knew it, we should not be surprised if we could discern
but little influence of it on Latin, because of the peculiar social and political
position of the Etruscans in Italy. At the period in question the soil of Etruria
may have been as barren for a substratum as that of Cisalpine Gaul was fertile.
The Etruscans were not only foreigners, but unpopular conquerors. A com-
paratively small number of them arrived on the shores of Italy, to begin with
perhaps in piratical raiding parties. When they settled permanently they im-
posed themselves upon a previous population in all respects inferior to them.
Their internal quarrels and their lack of national solidarity were perhaps the
main causes for their failure to face the Italici in the south and the Kelts in the
north with greater success on the field of battle; and these reverses deprived them
23 G. E. F. Chilver, Cisalpine Gaul: Social and economic history from 49 B.c. to the death
of Trajan 7 (Oxford, 1941).
24 2.35.4.
25 See Joshua Whatmough, KEATIKA, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 55.82-5
(1944). For Keltic relics especially in northern districts (Switzerland) see J. Hubschmied,
Sprachliche Zeugen fiir das splite Aussterben des Gallischen, Vox Romanica 3.48-155 (1938).
2 Loc.cit. 48-53, 56.
27 See above, 242.

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 PREHISTORY AND THE ITALIAN DIALECTS 247

of the opportunity to subjugate the whole peninsula. We know that Roman

speech, as well as the Roman state, ultimately and relatively early conquered
Etruria. But how many speakers of Etruscan existed there at that time? Not
many of Etruscan stock, it is safe to say. Whether the native Italici of Etruria
had learned to speak Etruscan, we do not know. If they had, their own speech,
which was probably Mediterranean of some type and possibly not altogether
unrelated to Etruscan, may in turn have been a potent substratum for their
brand of Etruscan patois. But of all this we know next to nothing.
The area of what is now called Tuscan Italian coincides surprisingly well with
the country of the Etruscans, apart from their Campanian and Patavinian pos-
sessions. However, as Rohlfs shows on a map,28 one of the outstanding features
of modern Tuscan, often laid to an Etruscan substratum, namely the aspiration
and (outside of Florentine) complete disappearance of intervocalic unvoiced
stops, especially k, covers a much smaller area, notably that of the aspirated p.29
The Tuscan gorgia, as this feature of the dialect is called, was related to Etruscan
aspiration habits already by Nissen,"o and later by Schuchardt, Meyer-Libke,
Meillet, and Clemente Merlo.31 Rohlfs' argument on geographical grounds is not
convincing, because no one knows exactly in what district of their land the
Etruscans were thickly enough settled, or where there lived speakers of Etruscan
in large enough numbers, to modify local speech. But he also rejects Etruscan
substratum on chronological grounds: the dialect of Corsica, Tuscanized since
the 8th century of our era, does not show the gorgia; furthermore (and this argu-
ment seems to me much weightier), when Dante characterizes the dialects of the
Tuscan cities in De vulgari eloquentia,32 he does not mention this peculiar trait.
An indulgent attitude on his part toward Florence in particular can hardly be
assumed, and he does not highly prize Tuscan speech in general.33 It is not likely
that so striking a mannerism would have escaped him, or would have been passed
over in silence by such an astute and uncompromising critic."
29 Loc.cit. 49.
29 It should be added that not all unvoiced intervocalic stops are always aspirated. For
a syntactical explanation of the variations see Enrico Bianchi, La lingua italiana 46 ff.
(Firenze, 1943).
so Heinrich Nissen, Italische Landeskunde 1.494 ff. (Berlin 1883-1902).
31 For the last see Italia dialettale 3.84 ff. (1927). On the other hand, I have seen it sug-
gested, also by Merlo, that the substratum in Tuscany may be not Etruscan but Latin,
whereas that of Rome is Samnite, i.e. Oscan: Lazio sannita ed Etruria latina?, Studi etruschi
1.303-11 (1927). But before that, Francesco Ribezzo had demonstrated how, in the wake of
colonial expansion, there reappear in Pugliese, Salentino, certain features of Oscan which do
not survive in the Campano-samnite area: Reliquie italiche nei dialetti dell'Italia meridio-
nale, Atti della Reale Accademia di archeologia, lettere e belle arti, N.S. 1, Part II, 151-69
(1910).
32 I.XIII.2.
33 'Sed quamquam fere omnes Tusci in suo turpiloquio sint obtusi ...' (De vulg. el.
I.XIII.3).
34 This is an argument ex silentio, hence debatable. But hardly any room for debate is
left if one also disputes the validity of the most objective set of data for modern Italian
dialects at our disposal, namely Jaberg-Jud's linguistic atlas, as does Carlo Battisti,
Aspirazione etrusca e gorgia toscana, Studi etruschi 4.249-54 (1930), who terms some of the
atlas data 'molto discutibili' (254). In the matter of Etruscan substratum he offers exactly

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 248 ERNST PULGRAM

It is true that we do find a great deal of interrelation in Etruscan and Roman

onomastics;35 but this is in the main a process of borrowing, in which each side is
giver as well as receiver, and which need not be based on such an intimate fusion
of the two societies and their cultures as linguistic substratum influence pre-
supposes.36
It seems, then, that we ought to defer final judgment on the Etruscan sub-
stratum until we know the Etruscan language; the discovery of an Etruscan
'Rosetta Stone' may yet enable us to learn it. But we may well say now, with
due reservations, that in the present state of our knowledge, non-linguistic evi-
dence points to a negative rather than a positive answer.
The substratists themselves, even the most enthusiastic and least critical
among them, are suprised by the insignificant traces of Umbrian, if any, that
they can discover in modern Italian dialects of that area.7' Many, also, have
wondered at the scarcity of Umbrian inscriptions brought to light so far. This is
not due to illiteracy (at least after a rather early date), but rather, in contrast to
the Keltic situation, to the small area occupied by speakers of ancient Umbrian,
and, we may assume, to their slight number.38 They did not inhabit the whole
province now called Umbria, but only the fringe of it-in particular the upper
valleys of the rivers emptying into the Tyrrhenian on one side and into the
Adriatic on the other. We know this from the location of the cremating graves.

what we do not want, viz. 'la ripetizione a distanza di tempo di tendenze insite in una
predisposizione organica' (253-4), which is a piece of unsupported racial predeterminism.
Current usage with its vagaries indicates that the gorgia is a rather recent development
which is still in progress and therefore not easily codified and pressed into rules. After all,
linguistic investigation, especially dialectology, should reserve a space for certain un-
finished, labile phonological phenomena which have not established themselves so thor-
oughly as to dislodge the older forms completely among all classes of speakers within an
area. One should not proceed on the assumption that all change lies in the past and that, at
the time of one's research, a rule or even a 'law' must be found for every phonemic diver-
gence among dialects.
35 See Wilhelm Schulze, Zur Geschichte lateinischer Eigennamen, Abhandlungen der
k6niglichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu G6ttingen, phil.-hist. Klasse, N.F. 2 (Berlin,
1904).
36 See Pulgram, The origin of the Roman nomen gentilicium, Harvard Studies in Classical
Philology 58/59.163-87 (1948). It has also been claimed that the strong stress on the initial
syllable in archaic Latin, which led to the weakening of the stem vowel in compounds (facere
but conficere), rests on Etruscan habits of accentuation. (These habits we glean from the
form in which non-Etruscan names appear on Etruscan inscriptions: powerful syncope
after the strongly stressed first syllable produces such telescoped forms as Klutmnsta for
Klytaemnestra.) But it is also thought that Greek pitch accent modified Latin pronunciation
(see C. D. Buck, Comparative grammar of Greek and Latin 161 ff. [Chicago, 1923]), and
here there can be no question of a substratum, nor of an extensive popular superstratum.
Perhaps we are dealing, in both cases, with a fashion introduced by, and prevalent in, the
upper classes, modeled on a foreign speech of cultural superiority.
37 Concerning the phenomenon most frequently connected with Umbrian, the change
from d to r, see the exhaustive study by Ernst G. Wahlgren, Un probleme de phon6tique
romane (Skrifter utgivna av K. Humanistiska Vetenskaps-Samfundet i Uppsala, 26:4;
Uppsala, 1930).
38 For the development of this theory see Joshua Whatmough, Foundations of Roman
Italy 194 ff. (London, 1937).

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 PREHISTORY AND THE ITALIAN DIALECTS 249

The early settlers, from neolithic times, buried their dead; it is among these
people that we must seek the numerous tribe called by ancient writers the
Umbri, or "OpJ4pot, who occupied a vast area, reaching from the plain of the Po
(where they were neighbours of the similarly neolithic Ligurians) into the
Abruzzi.39 The language of those tribes we do not know: they left no written
records. But among the later invaders from the north, the bearers of the Villa-
novan culture, the bringers of Indo-European speech, were those people who
spoke that particular Italic dialect of Indo-European which has been called
Umbrian. (Another branch of the same culture and linguistic family, which
settled further to the south, were the Oscans, of whom we shall treat presently.)
Now the type of Italic speech called Umbrian was, like its speakers, restricted to
a very narrow area, which is fixed for us by the prevalence of cremation graves,
cremating rather than inhuming being the predominant rite of the newcomers.
This area lay between the Etruscans in the west and the Picenes in the east-
both rather warlike tribes, especially the Picenes; and so it is not surprising that
the Umbrian dialect exerted but little discernible influence on the speech forms
thereafter and still spoken in the much larger district called Umbria in our days.
Moreover, correct linguistic evaluation of the available Umbrian linguistic
material is difficult. The most important and longest incription we have is the
Tabulae Iguvinae (from Iguvium, now Gubbio), containing a number of ritual
laws and prescriptions, prayers, and incantations. Even if the time of their
formulation could be established (there are an older and a newer set, partly
repetitive in content but not linguistically identical), we should probably know
little more about the age of the linguistic forms employed therein. For prayers
and ritual laws have a tendency to be recited over and over for centuries, and to
be codified at any date, without taking part in normal linguistic changes. We
need but think of the Rigveda, Hebrew and Arabic prayers in the synagogue and
the mosque, and the Latin of the Catholic Church.40 Probably these Italic-
speaking Umbrians, in contrast to the earlier non-Italic Umbri, were a compara-
tively small and insignificant tribe, which only through the discovery of such
an extraordinary linguistic and historic document as the Iguvine Tables was
placed into the limelight. These Umbrian inscriptions, then, have assumed an
importance to us far greater than any that they would have if we possessed
equally rich finds of other tribes and cultures of those days. It should also be
borne in mind that the manufacture of such an extensive inscription, incised in
bronze, must have been very costly, and that the cost must have been defrayed
by the collegium of priests therein mentioned, the Fratres Atiedii, rather than
by a private person. Individual inscriptions are therefore very scarce, and their
number increases, in Umbria as elsewhere, with the progress of literacy and cul-
ture.

The Southern Villanovans, also invaders from the north, were obviously re-
lated to the Italic Umbrians ethnically as well as in their speech, which is called
Oscan after one tribe, the Osci, like the French allemand after the Alemanni.

39 See Ettore Pais, Storia dell'Italia antica 1.51 if. (Torino, 1933).
40 Although the 'Latin' heard in Italian, French, Spanish, and Rumanian churches is not
the same, still it is not Italian, French, Spanish, or Rumanian.

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 250 ERNST PULGRAM

They form the Samnite tribes, which settled south and southeast of Rome,
mainly in the Campagna, but extending far into southern Italy, over what used
to be Greek territory. We have numerous inscriptions, on a variety of subjects;
the difference from the Umbrian situation is due to the larger area, greater den-
sity, and longer survival of the Oscan-speaking population. These come mostly
from Campania, especially Capua and Pompeii; but the longest one, the Tabula
Bantina, comes from Bantia in Lucania. As for the tribal name 'Oscans', we must
assume a confusion of terms parallel with that mentioned for the Umbrians.
The people who in ancient texts are called Oscans, Osci, 'OrwKotL, according to
Strabo41 preceded the Etruscans, Greeks ('Pelasgians'), and Samnites in their
domiciles. They were pre-Italic, of unknown language (Mediterranean?), and
not identical with the Italic Oscans whose dialect we are now considering.
There are a number of features in the modem dialects of southern Italy which
bring to mind Oscan characteristics. Perhaps reasons for these agreements other
than substratum influence could with great effort be produced; but why should
one object in principle to a theory that has so much to recommend it, when alter-
native theories can be applied only with considerable straining? We know that
Oscan was spoken over the entire area, that it was a living idiom as late as the
first century of our era. But for unfavorable historic developments, it might well
have become the language of Italy in place of Latin (as French might have be-
come the language of England or of North America). The existence of an Oscan
literature is still a contested problem, but Mommsen, and others after him, held
the opinion that there had been one. We may be sure that Romanization and
Christianization became more and more superficial, less and less intense, as the
distance from Rome increased; whereas, on the other hand, Rome in her early
days owed much to the south in literature, in culture, and in great men. 'Christ
stopped at Eboli' they say in Lucania,42 where Christianity even now is just
another myth, full of the magic, spirits, superstitions, and incantations of antiq-
uity, and where poverty-stricken peasants till, as generations have tilled before
them, a now depleted barren earth which they do not own. One is left to wonder
how deep an imprint the ancient, medieval, and modern incursions of foreigners
-of Greeks, Phoenicians, Etruscans, Romans, Germans, Arabs, Normans-
left in this inhospitable land. The cultural and ethnic continuity since pre-
Roman days has been but superficially disrupted. Why should the Latin lan-
guage be a cultural good accepted and absorbed and passed on in toto, without
containing even traces of its predecessor?43
Before the arrival of the Italici, a large part of the Oscan territory had been
41 5.4.8.
42 See the novel by Carlo Levi, Cristo si 6 fermato a Eboli (1945). An English translation
was published in 1946.
43 On the doubtful value of an Oscan substratum theory if divorced from non-linguistic
continuity see above, fn. 13. As for the phonetic faithfulness of our records, Oscan spelling
is quite reliably phonetic (which Umbrian is not), so that, for example, the distinction
between V and I and f, in, spelling (in the Oscan alphabet) and pronunciation, is relevant
to the explanation of southern Italian i for Latin 9, 1 (elsewhere in the Romania, except
Sardinia, e), and of u for Latin 5, A (elsewhere in the Romania, except Sardinia and Rumania,
o).

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 PREHISTORY AND THE ITALIAN DIALECTS 251

colonized by Greeks. Indeed, there are Greek speech-islands even today, in

Calabria and Apulia; but their number has been decreasing steadily. Because of
the proximity to the mother-country and the uninterrupted exchange of cultural
goods across the Adriatic, Italian Greek, not being the language of a marginal
or isolated district (in the neolinguistic sense of Bertoni and Bkrtoli), now corre-
sponds to modern rather than to ancient Greek, without, however, having failed
to preserve some archaic traits."
Would it be erroneous, then, to assume some sort of Greek substratum for
certain areas of ancient Oscan? Probably not, even though it might be hard to
prove it.45 If the principles set forth at the beginning of this paper have any
validity, such an assumption cannot be false a priori, provided that it is supported
by non-linguistic evidence and is not demonstrably contradicted by linguistic
records. Whether this Greek substratum comes into Italian dialects through
Oscan and Latin, or through Latin directly, is a complex problem, made no easier
by our defective knowledge of Oscan.
In current Italian usage, Rohlfs finds only syntactical and lexical borrowings
from Greek, but nothing in phonology.46 Rather, it seems to him that Greek as
spoken in Italy now shows certain Romance features. This is tantamount to
speaking of a superstratum. Pisani, on the other hand, believes that he is able to
discern also phonemic influences of Greek in southern Italian dialects.47 Most of
the work still remains to be done.
If one puts side by side a map of the ethnical subdivisions of ancient Italy,
and a map of the dialects of ancient Italy of about 400 B.C., one cannot help
being struck by what Whatmough calls 'the neat agreement of dialectal and cul-
tural areas'.4" And if one adds a third map showing, as far as that is possible, the
principal living dialects of modern Italy, the agreement will again be so astound-
ing as to merit more than a placid relegation to coincidence, or a skeptical and
non-committal reference to a possible substratum.49
It would not be rash to assume substratum influence as far back as there have
been successive languages in a given area, even though one will of course find no
evidence for it beyond the date of the earliest written documents."5 But before
venturing assertions, it will always be indispensable to adduce non-linguistic
"44 See Gerhard Rohlfs, Etymologisches Worterbuch der unteritalienischen Griizitis t
(Halle, 1930); Die Quellen des unteritalienischen Wortschatzes, Zeitschrift fiir romanische
Philologie 46.135-64 (1926); Scavi linguistici nella Magna Grecia (Roma-Halle, 1933); and
other publications.
46 A good case for a Greek substratum for a number of dialectal phonemes has been made
by Vittore Pisani, Neolinguistica e indoeuropeo 174 ff. (Roma, 1940).
46 Vorlateinische Einfliisse 38-41, 56.
47 See above, fn. 45.
48 KEATIKA 10.
49 Meillet, Scientia 51.98 (1932): '... certaines concordances sont trop frappantes pour
6tre attribu6es au hasard et il faut reconnattre que dans les 6volutions linguistiques con-
s6cutives & un changement de langue, certains traits r6sultent ... d'une influence exerc6e
par la langue qui a 6t0 liminde.'
50 For Italy, going one step beyond earliest documentation, see Vittorio Bertoldi, Plurale
mediterraneo in residue fossili, M6langes van Ginneken 157-69, on a Mediterranean sub-
stratum. Names are probably the only clues one may properly expect.

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 252 ERNST PULGRAM

evidence that the situation allowed a linguistic substratum and was conducive
to it. Naturally, a circular argument, proving prehistoric assumptions by lan-
guage and then explaining language by these same assumptions, is factually and
logically illicit.
Non-linguistic evidence lies in the professional province of the anthropologist,
the ethnologist, the archeologist, and the historian; but the linguist will often
find it necessary to have recourse to these disciplines, and those who specialize
in them may do well to compare their results with those of the linguist. In any
event, the linguist and philologist (a distinction somewhat overworked of late)
must not and cannot content himself with written documents only, because if
he does his results will be too narrow, and much less significant than they might
be. If he judiciously gathers factual knowledge from all sources that have a bear-
ing on man's history and hence on the history of man's speech, he will not need
to concede defeat, plead agnosticism, or admit ignorance, whenever he is for-
saken by recorded tradition, by the littera scripta.

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