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Seminario: Subgroups, Convergence and Substrate: Latin among the Italic languages
Prof. James Clackson (Universitā di Cambridge)
5 giugno 2013, ore 10:00
Dipartimento di Filologia, Letteratura e Linguistica dell'Universitā di Pisa,
Sala Riunioni di Palazzo Venera (via S. Maria 36)
The relationship between Latin and the other Indo-European languages of central Italy has been a topic of discussion and debate since Devoto (1929). Most scholars now agree that Latin, Faliscan and the so-called Sabellian languages (Oscan, Umbrian and others) together form a sub-group of the Indo-European family. However, Devoto's contention that there has been linguistic convergence among the languages of central Italy has also been supported by recent studies on a number of specific phenomena. Latin and the Sabellian languages may therefore have both formed an early subgroup and subsequently undergone a period of linguistic contact. In this paper I shall ask whether it is possible to separate out shared features which arose from prehistoric genetic unity from those which reflect prehistoric language contact. In particular, I shall consider developments in the verbal system of Latin and Sabellian which have been seen as diagnostic for their linguistic prehistory.