Latino-Faliscan languages

Latin and Faliscan belong to the group, as well as Lanuvian and Praenestine, which are sometimes considered dialects of Latin.

Linguistic description

Latin and Faliscan have several features in common with other Italic languages:

• The late Indo-European diphthong evolved into ou.
• The late Indo-European from vocalic laryngeals evolved into a.
• The Indo-European syllabic liquids developed an epenthetic vowel o, giving Italic ol, or.
• The Indo-European syllabic nasals developed an epenthetic vowel e, giving Italic em, en.
• Word-initial aspirated stops from Indo-European were fricativised: > f, f, h, f.
• The sequence was assimilated into kʷ...kʷ (Proto-Indo-European *penkʷe 'five' > Latin quinque).

Latin and Faliscan also have characteristics not shared by other branches of Italic. They retain the Indo-European labiovelars as qu-, gu- (later becoming velar and semivocal), whereas in Osco-Umbrian they become labial p, b. Latin and Faliscan use the ablative suffix -d, seen in med ("me", ablative), which is absent in Osco-Umbrian. In addition, Latin displays evolution of ou into ū, though this happens later than the Latino-Faliscan era, occurring around the 2nd century BCE (Latin lūna < Proto-Italic *louksnā < PIE *lówksneh₂ "moon").

Phonology

It is likely that the consonant inventory of Proto-Latino-Faliscan was basically identical to that of archaic Latin. Consonants not found in the Praeneste fibula are marked with an asterisk.

The /kʷ/ sound still existed in archaic Latin when the Latin alphabet was developed, since it gives rise to the minimal pair quī /kʷiː/ ("who", nominative) > cuī /ku.iː/ ("to whom", dative). In other positions there is no distinction between diphthongs and hiatuses: for example, persuādere ("to persuade") is a diphthong but sua ("his"/"her") is a hiatus. For reasons of symmetry, it is quite possible that many sequences of gu in archaic Latin in fact represent a voiced labiovelar /gʷ/.