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Ligurian language (ancient)
The Ligurian language was an ancient tongue spoken by the Ligures, an indigenous people inhabiting regions of northwestern Italy and southeastern France during pre-Roman and Roman times. Because Ligurian is so sparsely attested, its classification and relationship to neighbouring languages has proven difficult, prompting debate among linguists for much of the 20th century.[4][5] The current scholarly consensus is that Ligurian may have been an Indo-European language, possibly Celtic, or at least influenced by or related to Celtic languages.[6][7][note 1] However, this hypothesis is primarily based on toponymy and onomastics, and on a few glosses given by ancient Graeco-Roman writers (since no Ligurian texts have survived), and thus remains partly speculative due to the scarcity of data.[5] Because of that, some scholars have even cast doubt on the existence of a Ligurian language itself.[8][9] Influenced by the work of Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville, some 20th-century scholars have attempted to identify Ligurian as a remnant of a Pre-Indo-European or Indo-European substratum. These theories, particularly those attempting to establish additional connections with data from other European regions, have faced increasing criticism in recent scholarship.[4][5] Ancient sourcesEthnicityWriting in the early 1st century AD, Greek geographer Strabo mentions that:
While earlier writers called the Salyes 'Ligurian', Strabo used the denomination 'Celto-ligurian' in the early 1st century AD. According to scholars, this suggests that their culture gradually came under the influence of a Celtic-speaking elite, as evidenced by the Celtic name of their rulers and towns, and the Celtic influence on their religion.[10][11] Similarly, the Segobriges were identified as Ligurians by the oldest texts about the foundation of Massalia, but their ethnonym and the names of their chiefs are undoubtedly Celtic.[12] It is possible that ancient authors such as Hecataeus of Miletus (6th c. BC) and Apollonios Rhodios (3rd c. BC) used 'Ligurian' as a generic term for such distant and partially known tribes, or merely as a geographic reference that had no relevance to their ethnicity.[13] By the middle of the 2nd century BC, Polybius travelled to the region and wrote that the tribes dwelling in the Provençal inlands were Celtic.[13] Ligurian lexiconSome glosses appear in the text of ancient writers. Greek historian Herodotus, while discussing the name of the people known as the Sigynnae (Greek: Sigúnnai), a nomadic tribe from Central Europe, noted that the term sigynnae was also used by the Ligurians living "up beyond Marseille" to refer to traders.[5] The Ligurian name of the River Po, recorded as Bodincus, is said by Pliny to mean "of unmeasured depth" in Ligurian, which can be compared to Sanskrit budhná- ('bottom, ground, base, depth'), Latin fundus and Middle Irish bond ('sole of the shoe').[14] Many of the other proposed Ligurian glosses remain uncertain. The term lebērís (λεβηρίς), recorded by Strabo as a Massiliote word for 'rabbit', is believed to have been borrowed into Latin as lepus. Pliny the Elder mentions langa or langurus as a type of lizard inhabiting the banks of the Po River, which Johannes Hubschmid linked to the Latin longus ('long'). The term asia, meaning 'rye' and recorded by Pliny, could be amended to sasia and connected to the Sanskrit sasya- ('corn, grain, fruit, crop') and Welsh haidd ('barley'), though these connections remain unsure.[14] ClassificationRelationship with Celtic Linguists Patrizia de Bernardo Stempel and Xavier Delamarre have argued that many names of tribes described by ancient scholars as "Ligurian" can be explained as Celtic. This includes the Ingauni (Celt. *Pingāmnī), Salyes (< *Sḷwes), Ligauni (Celt. līg- or liga-), Intimilii (Celt. uindi-), Maricii (Celt. maro-), and Oxybii (Celt. oxso- or uxso-),[15][16] as well as the Iemerii (Celt. iemur-), Orobii (Celt. orbi-), Segobrigii (Celt. sego-) and Reii (Celt. *riio-).[17] Furthermore, de Bernardo Stempel notes that some lexical items appear to be common to Ligurian and Celtic, such as cotto- (Alpes Cottiae), gando- (Gandovera), ambi (pago Ambitrebio), ebu- (Eburelia), medu- (Medutio), seg- (Segesta Tigulliorum), catu- (Catucianum), and roud- (Roudelium).[18] Arguing for a connection between Ligurian and Celtic languages, de Bernardo Stempel has listed the following isoglosses as common traits shared by both language groups:[18]
Amongst Celtic subgroups, common innovations are only shared with Lepontic, including *ks > s, *nd > n(n), *st > z, VCyV > VyCV, the analogical acc. pl. *-aś > -eś after the nom. pl. -es (consonantal stems), gen. sg. -y-os & -ei-s → -ei -os (i-stems), gen. sg. *-osyo, 3rd sg. preterite in -te, patronymic -alo-, patronymic -ikno-, gamonymic -iknā, and monothematic personal names. Conversely, some innovations are shared between Ligurian and the Gaulish language of the early sources, such as gen. sg. *-ī, 3rd sg. preterite in -tu, and patronymic -ikno-.[18] Non-Celtic Indo-European formsOn the other hand, some Ligurian ethnonyms show a weaker or less evident connection to Celtic, such as the name Friniates, which can be hardly regarded as genuinely Celtic.[19] Similarly, although Deciates seems to derive from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root *dek̑-, it does not appear to be Celtic. Consequently, Javier de Hoz suggests classifying the name as "restricted Ligurian", given the tribe's geographical location.[20] The ethnic name Taurini, from the Indo-European *tauros ('bull'), does not follow the metathesized Celtic form taruos. According to Delamarre, this could be explain by the influence of Latin, or else by a preservation of the archaic form.[21] The ethnonym Eguiturii (PIE *h₁éḱwos 'horse') also features an archaic preservation of labio-velar -kʷ-, in contrast to Gaulish epos (which can be compared to the Ligurian Epanterii).[22] The similarity between the ancient names of Genoa (Genua), in the ancient Ligurian region, and Geneva (Genaua), in Celtic-speaking territory, has been highlighted by scholars,[23] but if both toponyms could derive from the Celtic *genu ('mouth'), the PIE stem *ǵónu- ('knee'), which is commonly found in other Indo-European language groups, may also be at the origin of the names.[5] Rubat Borel has highlighted unusual Ligurian phonological changes not seen in Celtic languages, such as *upo- > uea- and *o > a in unstressed syllables, the toponymic suffix -asc-, and the retained *p in Porcobera, which would make claims of Ligurian as a Celtic language problematic.[7] To explain those differences, Patrizia de Bernardo Stempel has argued that Ligurian may represent an archaic Celtic dialect that was in contact with a non-Celtic substratum.[16] According to Bernard Mees, Ligurian appears to share some phonological features with Celtic while differing significantly in morphology, suggesting it was a separate language with certain similarities to Celtic, following the opinion of Jürgen Untermann, who thought that Ligurian is best considered linguistically separate from Celtic and Italic.[7] Substrate theoriesIn the late 19th century, Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville proposed that the Ligurians constituted an early Indo-European substratum in Western Europe, separate from both Gaulish and Italic groups. Building on classical sources, he identified a range of place names and tribal names that did not fit neatly into known Celtic or Italic patterns. His theory, which came to be termed "Celto-Ligurian", influenced philological and archaeological approaches for the following decades. According to scholar Bernard Mees, de Jubainville became "the intellectual grandfather to a genealogy of prehistorical and protohistorical substratum theories".[4] By the 1920s, scholars were using the "Celto-Ligurian" idea to explain problematic Indo-European toponyms and hydronyms across much of Europe. For instance, Paul Kretschmer argued that some inscriptions in Etruscan script (later identified as Lepontic Celtic) provided evidence for a Ligurian linguistic layer, but subsequent discoveries established these as clearly Celtic with only limited Etruscan influence. In the 1930s, Julius Pokorny adopted these insights for his pan-Illyrian (or "Illyro-Venetic") theory, linking it to the prehistoric Urnfield culture. Consequently, many difficult place-name etymologies were attributed to a hypothetical Illyrian layer, leading to broad, stratigraphical theories that traced Indo-European linguistic influences from Gaul all the way to the Balkans.[4] By the late 1950s, Pokorny's theories had lost its momentum following critical scrutiny. The underlying place-name elements championed by de Jubainville and Pokorny, however, were reworked by Hans Krahe into his "Old European" theory. Focusing on hydronyms, Krahe advanced a more refined approach, yet it remained conceptually indebted to de Jubainville's earlier "Celto-Ligurian" framework. Though Krahe proposed a more systematic argument than the earlier "Illyrian" or "Celto-Ligurian" frameworks, his theory still faced criticism for assuming that widespread, older Indo-European features belonged to one single language rather than several archaic dialects.[4] Linguist James Clackson has criticized these approaches by stating that "the label 'Ligurian' merely serves to conceal our ignorance" about the pre-Roman linguistic landscape in various regions of Europe.[5] References
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