-l(a)

edit with form

Morpheme
Language:	Raetic, Etruscan
Type:	inflectional
Meaning:	'of/for'
Function:	genitive
Attestation:	none

Commentary

It is unclear what exactly is the Raetic equivalent of the Etruscan genitive II (Rix 1985: 126 f., Wallace 2008: 46). The existence of a genitive in *-l(a) would be expected because this must be the historical basis of the pertinentive II -le. The genitive II poses some difficulties even in Etruscan. In Archaic Etruscan inscriptions, the ending appears as -a (examples in Wallace). Since -l must be historical – after all, it is part of the pertinentive and ablative endings, and also appears in Neo-Etruscan – its lack in Archaic Etruscan remains to be explained. Most probably, -l was lost in this position (which indicates a velar allophone), and then reintroduced in a form of paradigmatic levelling under the influence of the ablative and pertinentive endings. The second irregularity of the genitive II is its allomorph -al (with stems not originally ending in *-a) in Neo-Etruscan. The context of this allomorph appears to be determined both phonotactically (stems in -l) and semantically (names); Rix (p. 126) assumes that a is a generalised stem vowel. Cp. the contexts of -le vs. -ale of the pertinentive II. The pre-apocope auslaut *a can, like *i in the genitive I *-s(i), be inferred from the form of its derivatives, the endings of the pertinentive and ablative.

While the genitive I *-s(i) is very well documented in Raetic, no instances of the genitive II – in any form – can be securely identified. The Archaic Etruscan form -a can essentially be argued for any word ending in -a – this is in most cases reflected in TIR to simplify reviewing the cases. The only possible case of a genitive in -(a)l is kaial on PA-1, somewhat modified by the word aχvil (with stem-final l) appearing in the same inscription.

It is possible that genitives originally were adjectives of possession, which enabled them to serve as bases for cases (pertinentive, ablative), see Rix 1985: 127.