Ancient Italy was a melting pot of languages that included not only Latin and Greek but also Oscan, Umbrian and many others, although Latin became particularly dominant after the Social War (91–88 b.c.e.). The book under review, derived from M.’s Ph.D. thesis (p. vi), pays special attention to the southern part of Italy and attempts to elucidate how language contact developed there; the main player throughout the work is Oscan. M.’s project is based on her painstaking research in many museums (p. vii), which is reflected in her remarkable command of data. Previous literature is quite thoroughly reviewed, and typos are very limited: ‘/f/ = <Ƨ>’ for ‘/f/ = <S>’ (p. 69; correctly with <S> on p. 77), ‘Table 1’ for ‘Table 4’ (p. 73), and ‘he’ for ‘they’ as the subject of putíans (3.pl.).
What the book particularly concerns is a form of Oscan spoken in Lucania, Bruttium and Messana, conventionally called ‘South Oscan’ (fourth century b.c.e. – c. the Social War). At the beginning of Chapter 1 (pp. 1–35), M. provides a succinct picture of the language (pp. 1–5). South Oscan is known to have been in close contact with Greek; most texts are written in an adapted form of the Greek alphabet (the Ionic set; see p. 63). M. suggests that the relationship between Greek and Oscan is ‘not the typical High/Low pattern’ and thereby expects to find ‘a new facet’ to our understanding of language contact in the ancient world (p. 5; see also pp. 52–3). To this end, she emphasises the importance of integrating perspectives from sociolinguistics, epigraphy and archaeology (see pp. 60–2). This attitude is evident in her detailed description of the history of the region, which forms the latter part of Chapter 1 (pp. 5–35; see also p. 91). Appendix 1 (pp. 244–57), where the sites related to South Oscan inscriptions are catalogued with historical and archaeological information, is also extremely helpful, as is Appendix 2 (pp. 258–75) with the dates and concordances of the data.
In Chapter 2 (pp. 36–62), M. discusses the methodology that she employs to identify symptoms of language contact in texts. Writers are thought to have been conditioned or influenced by social norms and circumstances (pp. 36–7). M. maintains that such extra-linguistic factors can be detected by analysing the use of personal names and orthography, which may reveal facets of linguistic and cultural contact even in a very fragmentary language like (South) Oscan (pp. 40–1). Such research has been limited in the region of Greek/Oscan contact (pp. 57–9); the book intends to fill this gap by highlighting South Oscan texts in Greek script (p. 43).
The following five chapters up to Chapter 8 (‘Conclusions’) deal in detail with linguistic features that appear in inscriptions. Chapter 3 (pp. 63–93) focuses on alphabets and writing conventions. M. discusses two problems in particular: the letter for /f/ and ‘extra’ signs (psi, xi etc.). Regarding the first issue, she emphasises the fact that the sign <8> is never attested in South Oscan (although found elsewhere) and then quite reasonably concludes, following M. Cristofani, that <8> was adapted into <S> in Naples, and it is the latter sign that was brought into South Oscan (p. 70). Based on the analyses of cases in Rossano di Vaglio, an important site of the language, M. also pointedly notes that the sign for /f/ should be used only with caution to establish (relative) dating of texts due to its significant variation over a long period (pp. 74, 77). With regard to the use of <B> for /f/, however, her claim that ‘<B> could have been used for /f/ at any time, since in Oscan /f/ was voiced as [v] or [β] word-internally’ (p. 77) may be an overgeneralisation; since the examples cited for such phonetics in R. Wallace (The Sabellic Languages of Ancient Italy [2007], p. 11) also come from Rossano di Vaglio, the voicing could be a regional phenomenon. Although she wants to locate the use of <B> for /f/ already in the third century in the coinage of Nuceria Alfaterna (p. 79), the reading is not entirely clear; cf. M.H. Crawford et al., Imagines Italicae (2011), p. 903. Also inconclusive is sabinís (p. 79 n. 48; or sabin{i}s) in Pompeii; as per J. Untermann (Wörterbuch des Oskisch-Umbrischen [2000], p. 642), it may be of Latin origin. Regarding the extra signs, M. makes the attractive assumption that people used them in order to ‘forge or maintain connections to Greek texts and Greek identities’ (p. 83).
The findings in Chapter 3 are applied to various genres of writing, as discussed individually in Chapters 4–7 (pp. 94–223): dedicatory inscriptions (Chapter 4), curse tablets (Chapter 5), legal texts (Chapter 6), official inscriptions, coins, funerary inscriptions, stamps and graffiti (Chapter 7). M. provides a number of interesting observations. For example, the quite common Oscan dedicatory formula dunúm deded (= Lat. donum dedit, ‘gave a gift’) seems not to appear in South Oscan, which M. regards as evidence for ‘a lower level of Roman influence’ (p. 108). The discussion about curse tablets is particularly rich in content. M. suggests that South Oscan and Central Oscan adopted curse tablets from Greek at different times by noting some stylistic differences between them (pp. 143, 147–8, 165). By way of contrast, legal texts (except a few very old cases in South Oscan and Pre-Samnite) exhibit less influence from Greek compared to other genres; rather, the legal koine among the Italic languages including Latin and Umbrian seems to have played a more significant role (pp. 167, 173, 192). Coin legends are presented as a category in which Greek dominance can be clearly observed. The majority of the legends, ethnics and personal names of Oscan origin are written in Greek; M. reasonably points out the advantages of such coins for trading in the Greek-speaking world (pp. 204, 206, 210–11).
However, there are some issues. M. regards the form κhομοι ‘earthworks, burial mound’ (Lu 29) as a case of lexical borrowing from Greek, χῶμα or χεῦμα, with the maintained pronunciation as shown in the spelling <κh> (pp. 125, 131; already p. 88); but the inflection type of κhομοι is different from the Greek counterpart, as indicated in K. Nishimura (Glotta 81 [2005], 160–83). Another issue arises in M.’s representation of Lu 46, where she transcribes a form in ll. 1 and 7 as μαραειν (p. 152), but this is not so simple a matter; the drawings provided by M. (orig. F. Murano's) and Crawford do not clearly confirm the reading, particularly for l. 1 (see Nishimura in East and West: Papers in Indo-European Studies [2009], pp. 163–79). Further, in dealing with official texts (pp. 194–204), her attempt to demonstrate Greek influence on South Oscan is quite speculative. M. also admits that ‘[w]ith such small numbers of texts, we must of course be cautious about making too many generalisations’ (p. 203).
It may frustrate some readers how frequently the paucity of texts is mentioned by M. (e.g. pp. 2, 8, 43, 192, 202, 219, 224, 229, 238). Yet the way M. deals with (South) Oscan is mostly careful and well-balanced albeit with certain issues. Particularly, her study based on genre (as well as ‘domain’ = ‘an area of life’; pp. 49–50) is promising for elucidating language contact situations in the ancient world (p. 241). M. has certainly succeeded in establishing her work as an indispensable touchstone for future studies of ancient Italy and beyond.
