Un'ipotesi indoeuropea per l'etrusco 'svalce'

This paper presents a series of brief glottological and linguistic considerations regarding the frequent Etruscan verbal form svalce, commonly found within epigraphic documents. Moving beyond traditional translations such as "lived," and exploring Giovanni Semerano's alternative proposal that interprets the term as an euphemism for "died" or "completed one's life cycle," this study proposes a novel Indo-European derivation for the verb. The author suggests that 'svalce' originates from a reconstructed Indo-European root *mal/*mol - characterized by a localized productivity in the Epirotic and Balkan linguistic areas - which underwent an euphonic transformation into *smal and subsequently 'sval', with the initial -s functioning as a preterite suffix. By conducting a comparative analysis with linguistic data from Greek (βλώσκω), Tocharian, and various Balkan languages, the study demonstrates that the core semantic field of the root revolves around concepts of "extremity, summit, and movement from". Ultimately, the paper concludes that 'svalce' represents a metaphorical extension of this original Indo-European root, signifying the act of "reaching the end of a path"- which, in the context of Etruscan epigraphy, represents the completion of the human life cycle.