Proto-Italic language

History

Phonology

Consonants

• was an allophone of before a velar consonant.
• The voiced fricatives,,, and were in complementary distribution with word-initial voiceless fricatives,,, and, and were thus originally simply allophones of each other. However, at some point in the Proto-Italic period, the allophony was somewhat disrupted by the loss of the voiceless allophones and, which merged with. Scholars disagree on whether to reconstruct Proto-Italic with the phonemes and still present, or to reconstruct Proto-Italic with the phonemes' voiceless allophones merged into, and their voiced allophones becoming independent phonemes,. Both of these sounds are relatively uncommon cross-linguistically, and eventually they were eliminated in all later languages, but differently in each.

  Vowels

• was perhaps not a true phoneme, but was inserted before consonants as a prop vowel. It can be reconstructed based on the outcome of the Proto-Indo-European syllabic nasals and, which appear in Latin as *em, *en or *im, *in, but also as *am, *an in Osco-Umbrian alongside *em, *en. Thus, it appears necessary to reconstruct as a distinct sound.

• Short: *ai, *ei, *oi, *au, *ou
• Long: *āi, *ēi, *ōi

Prosody

Grammar

Nouns

o-stems

• The genitive singular in *-ī is of unknown origin, but is found in both Italic and Celtic. It mostly ousted the older genitive in *-osjo in Latin. The older form is found in a few inscriptions, such as popliosio valesiosio on the Lapis Satricanus. It is also continued in some pronominal genitives, such as cuius < *kʷojjo-s < *kʷosjo, with -s added by analogy with the consonant stem genitive in -os. In Osco-Umbrian, neither ending survives, being replaced with *-eis, the i-stem ending.
• The nominative plural was originally *-ōs for nouns and adjectives, and *-oi for pronominal forms. The distribution in Proto-Italic is unclear, but both endings certainly still existed. The *-ōs ending was replaced altogether in Latin in favour of *-oi, whence the classical -ī. In Osco-Umbrian, the reverse happened, where *-oi was replaced with *-ōs, whence Oscan -ús, Umbrian -us.
• In Old Latin, the genitive plural was still generally -om, later -um. It was then reformed based on the ā-stem form *-āzom, giving the classical -ōrum.

  ā-stems

• The accusative singular ending would have been *-am originally, due to shortening of long vowels before final *-m. However, a long vowel is found in the attested forms. This long vowel most likely arose by analogy with the other endings that have a long vowel.
• The genitive plural ending was originally a pronominal form, PIE *-eh₂-soHom.

  Consonant stems

• For most consonant stem nouns, the ending of the nominative/vocative singular was -s for masculine and feminine nouns. This ending would cause devoicing, delabialisation and/or hardening of the stem-final consonant, as seen in *sniks above. Neuter nouns had no ending.
• n-stems generally had the ending *-ō, with the infix *-on- in the other cases. Neuters had *-ən in the nom/voc/acc singular, while the stem of the remaining forms is unclear.
• r-stems had *-ēr, alternating with *-r-. The alternation in vowel length was lost in Latin, but is preserved in Oscan.
• s-stems had *-ōs or *-os. This alternated with *-ez- in the other forms.
• The r/n-stems were a small group of neuter nouns. These had *-or in the nominative/vocative/accusative singular, but *-n- in the remaining forms.

• The genitive singular had two possible endings. Both are attested side by side in Old Latin, although the ending -es/-is may also be from the i-stems. In Osco-Umbrian, only the i-stem ending -eis is found.
• The Latin masculine nominative plural ending -ēs was taken from the i-stems.
• The neuter nominative/vocative/accusative plural originally had short *-a as the ending, or lengthening of the vowel before the final consonant. Already in Italic, this was replaced with the o-stem ending *-ā.
• The dative plural ending would have originally been added directly to the stem, with no intervening vowel. In Latin, there is an intervening -e- or -i-, while in Osco-Umbrian the ending is replaced altogether. It's not clear what the Proto-Italic situation was.

  i-stems

• There were apparently two different forms for the genitive singular. The form -eis is found in Osco-Umbrian. However, -es appears in early Latin, while there is no sign of *-eis. This could reflect the consonant-stem ending, but it could also come from *-jes. Compare also *-wos of the u-stems, which is attested in Old Latin, and may represent a parallel formation.
• The original form of the neuter nominative/vocative/accusative plural was *-ī. Already in Italic, this was extended by adding the o-stem ending to it.

  u-stems

• The neuter nominative/vocative/accusative singular must have originally been short *-u, but in Latin only long -ū is found. It is unclear what the origin of this could be. It may be a remnant of a dual ending, considering that neuter u-stems were rare, and the few that survived tended to occur in pairs.
• Like the i-stems, the u-stems had two possible types of genitive singular ending, with an unclear distribution. *-ous is found in Oscan, and it is also the origin of the usual Latin ending -ūs. However, the Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus inscription attests senatvos, and the ending -uis is also found in a few sources.
• The masculine/feminine nominative/vocative plural is not securely reconstructable. Latin -ūs seems to reflect *-ous, but from PIE *-ewes the form *-owes would be expected. The ending is not attested in Osco-Umbrian or Old Latin, which might have otherwise given conclusive evidence.
• The original form of the neuter nominative/vocative/accusative plural was *-ū. Already in Italic, this was extended by adding the o-stem ending to it, like in the i-stems.

  Adjectives

Pronouns

• is "this, that"

Verbs