Iberian language
From Free net encyclopedia
{{language |familycolor=Isolate |name=Iberian |states=Spain, France |region=mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula |extinct=1st-2nd century AD |family=Language isolate |}}
- For other uses, see Iberian languages.
The Iberian language describes a linguistic group identified with the Iberian civilization (7th century BC – 1st century BC), formed in the eastern and south-eastern regions of the Iberian peninsula. These indigenous languages became extinct by the 1st to 2nd centuries AD, after being gradually replaced by Latin.
Iberian seems to be a language isolate. It is certainly not an Indo-European language. Links with other languages have been put forward, but they have not been demonstrated. One such proposed link was with the Basque language (Basque-Iberism), but this theory has been discredited.
Contents |
Geographic distribution
The Iberian language spread along the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula.
In the north, the Iberian language reached the south of France up to the Hérault river. Important written remains have been found in Ensérune, between Narbonne and Béziers in France, in an oppidum with mixed iberian and celtic elements. The southern limit would be Porcuna, in Jaén (Spain), where splendid sculptures of Iberian ridders have been found.
Towards inland the exact distribution of the Iberian language is uncertain. It seems that the culture reached the inland through the Ebro river (Iberus in Latin) up to Salduie (Zaragoza) but not farther.
Among the pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula it is believed that the following were of Iberian language: Ausetani (Pyrenees), Ilergetes (Lleida and Huesca up to the Pyrenees), Indigetes (coast of Girona), Laietani (Barcelona), Cassetani (Tarragona), Ilercavones (Murcia and Levante up to Tarragona), Edetani (Valencia, Castellón and Teruel), Contestani (Valencia, Alicante, Cartagena and Albacete), Bastetani (Granada, Almería and Murcia) and Oretani (Jaén, Ciudad Real, Albacete and Cuenca). Turduli and Turdetani are believed to be of Tartessian language.
History
The origin of the language is unknown. There are three main hypotheses to explain the origin of the language:
- African hypothesis: it proposes that the language arrived from the north of Africa. This hypothesis links the Iberian with Berber languages.
- Native hypothesis: it assumes that Iberian language was the language of the native people settled in the Iberian peninsula in the Neolithic.
- European hypothesis: in recent years a new theory has appeared. It links the arrival of Basques/Aquitani and Iberians to the Pyrenees and the Iberian peninsula with the arrival of the urnfield culture.
Writing
The most ancient texts date from the fifth century BCE and a written was used from then until the laguage's demise. It is suggested that most of the texts arise from an imitation of the Greek (until the 2nd century BCE) and Roman (from the 1st centrury BCE onwards). The Iberian language is written in three different scripts.
Greek Alphabet
The Greek alphabet, in the Ionic variant, at times called the Greco-Iberian alphabet, was used along the Andalusian coast around the fourth century BCE. The Lead of Alcoy and some other texts are written in this alphabet.
Latin Alphabet
Only a few cases of Iberian written in the Latin alphabet are extant. Only two short texts and some proper names remain.
Iberian Alphabet
The Iberian alphabet, also known as the Iberian script, is a semi-syllabary of the Iberians' own. It is this that was used the longest and most widely. It seems clear the Iberian script originated with the tartessian script, used in the southwestern penninsula to write the Tartessian language
The Iberian Script has two variants: the middle, or southeasten (in Jaén and Albacete), whose signs have a resemblance to the Tartessian script, and the northeastern, or levantine. The northeastern was the more widespread of the two and was later adapted for Celtiberian.
The northeastern script was deciphered in 1922 by Manuel Gómez-Moreno Martínez, while the first correct translations of southeastern were done by Ulrich Schmoll in 1961 and perfected by subsequent linguists, chief aong them Jürgen Untermann.
Description
Current Extent of Linguistic Knowledge
We know very little for certain about Iberian. The investigation of the language is past its initial phase of translation, and compiling of material, and is currently in the phase of identifying grammatical elements in the texts.
The hypotheses that we have are unconfirmed, and will remain so with some degree of certainty unless the discovery of a bilingual text will allow linguists to confirm these deductions.
Phonology
Vowels
Iberian has five vowels, the same as in Castilian Spanish or Basque, /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/, the front vowels (a, e, i) appearing more frequently than the back vowels. Although there are indications of a nasal vowel ([ḿ]), this is thought to be an allophone. It does not seem that there were differences in vowel length if judged by Greek transcriptions, if this is correct then Iberian uses the long e (Greek "eta") as opposed to the short epsilon.
Diphthongs
It seems that diphthongs were declined by [vowel] + [closed vowel], attesting to the /ai/ (śaitabi), /ei/ (neitin), and /au/ (lauŕ). Untermann observed that the diphthong /ui/ could only be found in the first cluster.
Semivowels
The possibility has been found for the semivowels /y/ (in words such as "aiun" o "iunstir") and /w/, although this only in loanwords such as "diuiś" from Gallic. This has cast doubt that semivowels really existed in Iberian outside of foreign borrowings (and diphthongs).
Consonants
- Vibrants: the vibrants [r] and [ŕ]. There is unanimity among linguists studying Iberian that [ŕ] is a simple vibrant, or flap. Correa has advanced the hypothesis that [ŕ] is a simple vibrant and [r] a compound vibrant, or trill. More recent hypotheses have proposed that [r] is an uvular fricative (Ballestar) or a retroflex vibrant (Rodriguez). Neither r appears at the start of a word, the same as with Basque.
- Siliblants: there are two siliblants: [s] and [ś]. The distinction is unclear. Ballester theorizes that [s] is the simple, alveolar "s" and [ś] is the palatal alveolar fricative. Rodriguez proposes that [ś] is the alveolar "s" and [s] is an affricate, either dental /ts/ or palatal /tç/ (similar to English "ch" as in chat). This theory coincides with the observation made by Correa that follows the adaptions made of Gallic names in Iberian texts. [ś] would be an alveolar or apical fricative while [s] would correspond to a fricative. It is worth noting that Basque also has two silibants: /s/ as apical alveolar and /z/ as laminal alveolar, which could correspond to [ś] and [s].
- Laterals: the lateral: [l], is normally interpreted as /l/. This is extremely rare in the final position and it could be that the distribution is on occasions complementary with [ŕ] (aŕika'l-er / aŕikaŕ-bi).
- Nasals:
- The n is a normal alveolar /n/
- The m rarely appears in the initial position. Velaza proposes that it could be a variant of /n/, backed by the example of iumstir/iunstir. José A. Correa advances the possibility that it may be a geminated or strong nasal. Rodríguez Ramos notes the idea that it could be a variant of /n/ in cases that it nasalizes the preceding vowel.
- There is a certain controversy over the letter [ḿ]. While it's thought that it's some type of nasal, there is no certainty as to the exact value. Several linguists have proposed the value /na/, based on similarities with texts written in the Greek Alphabet, as there are similarities between the suffixs -ḿi / -nai, and in the onomastic elements -ḿbar- / -nabar-. Another part of this theory seems to contradict iself with the transcription of ḿbar-beleś into Latin as VMARBELES. Correa proposes that this is a labialized nasal. It is not even clear that the sign is always pronounced in the same form. Ramos considers it a nasalized vowel, produced by progressive nasalization.
- Plosives: there are five plosives.
| unvoiced | voiced | |
| velar | /k/ | /g/ |
| dental | /t/ | /d/ |
| labial | /b/ |
- The evidence indicates the non-existence of the phoneme "p" as it is not documented in either the Greek alphabet nor in the dual Iberian systems. It is only found in Latin inscriptions naming native Iberians and is thought to be an allophone of /b/.
- It has been indicated that the phoneme /b/ would on occasions be pronounced similar to /w/ (this would be explanined by the frequency of the sign /bu/), as such it could have a nasalized pronunciation.
Morphology
There are a number of known affixes, especially applied to last names. For the Iberian language these seem to be postpositional, and apparenly more agglutive than declined.
The most well known are the following.
- -ar: Applied to proper names to mark possession.
- -en: Of a similar or identical use to -ar. -en or -aren are used for Basque genitives.
- -ka: Seems to indicate the person who recieves something
- -te: Seems to indicate the agent, or ablative
- -sken: Found on coins, applied to the names of a city or tribe to indicate origin or a plural genitive
- -k: Has been proposed on occasions to mark the plural. -k is a plural mark in Basque.
Proper Names
Thanks to the Latin Inscription of the plaque of Ascoli, which includes a list of Iberian leaders which was analized by Hugo Schuchardt the forms of Iberian proper names have been unraveled. Iberian names are formed by two interchangeable elements, each usually formed of two syllables, which are written together. For example, the element "iltiŕ" can be found in the following names: iltiŕaŕker, iltiŕbaś, iltiŕtikeŕ, tursiltiŕ, baiseiltiŕ o bekoniltiŕ. This discovery was a giant step, from this moment it was possible to indicate with confidence the names of persons in the texts.
The components of names are: abaŕ, aibe, aile, ain, aitu, aiun, aker, albe, aloŕ, an, anaŕ, aŕbi, aŕki, aŕs, asai, aster, atin, atun, aunin, auŕ, austin, baiser, balaŕ, balke, bartaś, baś, bastok, bekon, belauŕ, beleś, bels, bene, beŕ, beri, beŕon, betan, betin, bikir, bilos, bin, bir, bitu, biuŕ, bolai, boneś, boŕ, bos, boton, boutin, ekes, ekaŕ, eler, ena, esto, eten, eter, iar, iaun, ibeś, ibeis, ike, ikoŕ, iltiŕ, iltur, inte, iskeŕ, istan, iunstir, iur, kaisur, kakeŕ, kaltuŕ, kani, kaŕes, kaŕko, katu, keŕe, kibaś, kine, kitaŕ, kon, koŕo, koŕś, kuleś, kurtar, lako, lauŕ, leis, lor, lusban, nalbe, neitin, neŕse, nes, niś, nios, oŕtin, sakaŕ, sakin, saltu, śani, śar, seken, selki, sike, sili, sine, sir, situ, soket, sor, sosin, suise, taker, talsku, tan, tanek, taŕ, tarban, taŕtin, taś, tautin, teita, tekeŕ, tibaś, tikeŕ, tikirs, tikis, tileis, tolor, tuitui, tumar, tuŕś, turkir, tortin, ulti, unin, uŕke, ustain, ḿbaŕ, nḿkei.
In some cases linguists have encountered simple names, with only one element for a suffix: BELES, AGER-DO and BIVR-NO are not in the plaque of Ascoli, neitin in Ullastret and lauŕ-to, bartas-ko o śani-ko en other Iberian texts. More rarely there have been indications of an infix, which can be -i-, -ke- or -bo- (Unterman used oto-iltiŕ in front of oto-ke-iltiŕ or with AEN-I-BELES). In rare cases Untermann also encountered an element is- or o- prefacing a proper name (is-betartiker; o-tikiŕtekeŕ; O-ASAI).
In the elements that formed Iberian names it's common to encounter patterns of variation: as in eter/eten/ete with the same variations as iltur/iltun/iltu; kere/keres as lako/lakos ; or alos/alor/alo and bikis/bikir/biki).
Known Terms
Further reading
- Correa, J.A. (1994), "La lengua ibérica", Revista Española de Lingüística 24/2, 263-287.
- Quintanilla, A., Estudios de Fonología Ibérica, Vitoria-Gasteiz 1998, ISBN 84-8373-041-3.
- Rodríguez Ramos, Jesús, Análisis de Epigrafía Íbera, Vitoria-Gasteiz 2004, ISBN 84-8373-678-0.