The Latin Dialect of the Ager Faliscus: 150 Years of Scholarship (UvA Proefschriften)

Although the Ager Faliscus lay between the areas where Etruscan, Latin and Sabellic languages were spoken, the inscriptions from the area from before c.150 bce show that it used a speech of its own, known as Faliscan. Most scholars agree that Faliscan is linguistically very close to Latin, but the hypothesis that it is in fact a Latin dialect has not been the subject of a major publication until now. In this work, the linguistic data on Faliscan provided by the inscriptions are analyzed and compared to the languages of the surrounding areas. Sociolinguistic aspects such as language contact and local identity are discussed as well. The main conclusion is that Faliscan can indeed be regarded as a dialect of Latin. The work includes a re-edition of all inscriptions, in many cases based on autopsy.