The Sunuci (or Sinuci or Sunici ) was the name of a tribal grouping with a particular territory within the Roman province of Germania Inferior , which later became Germania Secunda . Within this province, they were in the Civitas Agrippinenses , with its capital at Cologne . They are thought to have been a Germanic tribe, speaking a Germanic language , although they may also have had a mixed ancestry. They lived between the Meuse (Dutch Maas , Latin Mosa ) and Rur rivers in Roman imperial times. In modern terms this was probably in the part of Germany near Aachen , Jülich , Eschweiler and Düren , and the neighbouring areas in the southern Netherlands , around Valkenburg , and eastern Belgium , in part of the old Duchy of Limburg . There is a town just over the Belgian border from Aachen called Sinnich, in Voeren , which may owe its name to them. In other words, they lived just north of the modern northern limits of Romance languages derived from Latin .
35-580: The etymology of the name Sunici is uncertain. It could derive from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root *sūs , *suwós ('pig'), or alternatively from PIE *sunus ('sons'). The name may thus be interpreted as meaning 'the young sons', which evokes the Italic custom of the Ver Sacrum . Since the word *sunus is absent from Celtic languages (which replaced it with * makʷo- ), the ethnonym
70-546: A French Jesuit who spent most of his life in India, had specifically demonstrated the analogy between Sanskrit and European languages. According to current academic consensus, Jones's famous work of 1786 was less accurate than his predecessors', as he erroneously included Egyptian , Japanese and Chinese in the Indo-European languages, while omitting Hindi . In 1818, Danish linguist Rasmus Christian Rask elaborated
105-677: A PIE homeland, the Kurgan and Anatolian hypotheses are the ones most widely accepted, and also the ones most debated against each other. Following the publication of several studies on ancient DNA in 2015, Colin Renfrew, the original author and proponent of the Anatolian hypothesis, has accepted the reality of migrations of populations speaking one or several Indo-European languages from the Pontic steppe towards Northwestern Europe. The table lists
140-732: A bridge over the Meuse, with a force of Betasii , Tungri and Nervii Two deity names have been associated with the Sunuci, a goddess Sunuxal or Sunuxsal and a god Varnenos or Varneno . What happened to Sunuci in the later part of the Roman era is uncertain. Their territory became the home of new groups who crossed the Rhine, part of the amalgamation of tribes known as the Franks . The Franks united under kings and later became semi-independent within
175-549: A conventional mark of reconstructed words, such as * wódr̥ , * ḱwn̥tós , or * tréyes ; these forms are the reconstructed ancestors of the modern English words water , hound , and three , respectively. No direct evidence of PIE exists; scholars have reconstructed PIE from its present-day descendants using the comparative method . For example, compare the pairs of words in Italian and English: piede and foot , padre and father , pesce and fish . Since there
210-453: A detailed, though conservative, overview of the lexical knowledge accumulated by 1959. Jerzy Kuryłowicz's 1956 Apophonie gave a better understanding of Indo-European ablaut . From the 1960s, knowledge of Anatolian became robust enough to establish its relationship to PIE. Scholars have proposed multiple hypotheses about when, where, and by whom PIE was spoken. The Kurgan hypothesis , first put forward in 1956 by Marija Gimbutas , has become
245-627: A language. From the 1870s, the Neogrammarians proposed that sound laws have no exceptions, as illustrated by Verner's law , published in 1876, which resolved apparent exceptions to Grimm's law by exploring the role of accent (stress) in language change. August Schleicher 's A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European, Sanskrit, Greek and Latin Languages (1874–77) represented an early attempt to reconstruct
280-613: A thousand years. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis , the original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Europe. The linguistic reconstruction of PIE has provided insight into the pastoral culture and patriarchal religion of its speakers. As speakers of Proto-Indo-European became isolated from each other through the Indo-European migrations ,
315-640: A tribal goddess. The name may be interpreted as the Germanic form *Sunuc(a)-saliō- ('whom provides the Sunici with housing'). The origins of the tribe are unknown, but it is likely that, like their eastern neighbours the Ubii , their ancestry included Germanic immigrants from the east of the Rhine who had been arriving for generations. Like the Cugerni for example, they may descend from Sicambri . Germania Inferior
350-422: Is a consistent correspondence of the initial consonants ( p and f ) that emerges far too frequently to be coincidental, one can infer that these languages stem from a common parent language . Detailed analysis suggests a system of sound laws to describe the phonetic and phonological changes from the hypothetical ancestral words to the modern ones. These laws have become so detailed and reliable as to support
385-572: Is believed to have had an elaborate system of morphology that included inflectional suffixes (analogous to English child, child's, children, children's ) as well as ablaut (vowel alterations, as preserved in English sing, sang, sung, song ) and accent . PIE nominals and pronouns had a complex system of declension , and verbs similarly had a complex system of conjugation . The PIE phonology , particles , numerals , and copula are also well-reconstructed. Asterisks are used by linguists as
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#1732772360059420-467: Is more probably of Germanic origin in this scenario. The Sunuci dwelled in the western part of the modern Rhineland region, around the towns of Eschweiler , Heimbach , or Kornelimünster . Their territory was located between that of the Tungri and Ubii . Dedications to their eponymous goddess Sunucsal(is) have been found across their territory. She was probably regarded as the original epithet of
455-502: Is not possible. Forming an exception, Phrygian is sufficiently well-attested to allow proposals of a particularly close affiliation with Greek, and a Graeco-Phrygian branch of Indo-European is becoming increasingly accepted. Proto-Indo-European phonology has been reconstructed in some detail. Notable features of the most widely accepted (but not uncontroversial) reconstruction include: The vowels in commonly used notation are: Claudius Labeo Claudius Labeo (1st. ct. AD)
490-424: Is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family . No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language , and it is the best understood of all proto-languages of its age. The majority of linguistic work during
525-558: The Indian subcontinent became aware of similarities between Indo-Iranian languages and European languages, and as early as 1653, Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn had published a proposal for a proto-language ("Scythian") for the following language families: Germanic , Romance , Greek , Baltic , Slavic , Celtic , and Iranian . In a memoir sent to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1767, Gaston-Laurent Coeurdoux ,
560-591: The Neogrammarian hypothesis : the Indo-European sound laws apply without exception. William Jones , an Anglo-Welsh philologist and puisne judge in Bengal , caused an academic sensation when in 1786 he postulated the common ancestry of Sanskrit , Greek , Latin , Gothic , the Celtic languages , and Old Persian , but he was not the first to state such a hypothesis. In the 16th century, European visitors to
595-478: The 19th century was devoted to the reconstruction of PIE and its daughter languages , and many of the modern techniques of linguistic reconstruction (such as the comparative method ) were developed as a result. PIE is hypothesized to have been spoken as a single language from approximately 4500 BCE to 2500 BCE during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age , though estimates vary by more than
630-759: The 2nd century BCE when the Cimbri moved through the area. In the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder described the Sunuci between the Tungri and the Frisiavones . They contributed troops to the Roman military, some of whom were stationed in Britain, including modern Wales. There is evidence from tablets found in the Rivelin Valley south of Stannington that retiring Roman auxiliaries of
665-569: The North Adriatic region are sometimes classified as Italic. Albanian and Greek are the only surviving Indo-European descendants of a Paleo-Balkan language area, named for their occurrence in or in the vicinity of the Balkan peninsula . Most of the other languages of this area—including Illyrian , Thracian , and Dacian —do not appear to be members of any other subfamilies of PIE, but are so poorly attested that proper classification of them
700-638: The Pontic–Caspian steppe and into eastern Europe. Other theories include the Anatolian hypothesis , which posits that PIE spread out from Anatolia with agriculture beginning c. 7500–6000 BCE, the Armenian hypothesis , the Paleolithic continuity paradigm , and the indigenous Aryans theory. The last two of these theories are not regarded as credible within academia. Out of all the theories for
735-526: The Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Kartvelian languages due to early language contact , as well as some morphological similarities—notably the Indo-European ablaut , which is remarkably similar to the root ablaut system reconstructible for Proto-Kartvelian. The Lusitanian language was a marginally attested language spoken in areas near the border between present-day Portugal and Spain . The Venetic and Liburnian languages known from
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#1732772360059770-414: The Sunuci lived, the tribal grouping which Tacitus later claimed to be the original tribal group which had been called "Germani", the so-called " Germani Cisrhenani ". Whether these original Germani had all spoken a Germanic language is unknown. Caesar and Tacitus were more interested in the fact that tribes from the east of the Rhine, who all eventually came to be referred to as Germani (the source of
805-483: The Sunuci tribe stationed in Britain were made grants of citizenship and land or money in the modern day city of Sheffield , with some speculation that a Roman villa complex at Whirlow Hall Farm was part of such a land grant. Tacitus also mentioned the Sunuci, as a people of this region during the Batavian revolt . Some of them joined the revolt of Gaius Julius Civilis , and were opposed by Claudius Labeo , who held
840-548: The Sunuci, there is no such clear record and it is their position which generally leads to them being understood as being a group settled during imperial times, and Germanic in the modern sense of speaking a Germanic language. On the other hand, there have been suggestions that they might represent the descendants, at least partly, of the Segni , one of the Germani tribes described by Caesar as having been in this region since at least
875-546: The common origin of Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, and German. In 1833, he began publishing the Comparative Grammar of Sanskrit, Zend , Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Old Slavic, Gothic, and German . In 1822, Jacob Grimm formulated what became known as Grimm's law as a general rule in his Deutsche Grammatik . Grimm showed correlations between the Germanic and other Indo-European languages and demonstrated that sound change systematically transforms all words of
910-582: The effects of hypothetical sounds which no longer exist in all languages documented prior to the excavation of cuneiform tablets in Anatolian. This theory was first proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure in 1879 on the basis of internal reconstruction only, and progressively won general acceptance after Jerzy Kuryłowicz 's discovery of consonantal reflexes of these reconstructed sounds in Hittite. Julius Pokorny 's Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch ('Indo-European Etymological Dictionary', 1959) gave
945-794: The empire, started moving into more populated Romanized areas to their south, and then proceeded to conquer a large part of Western Europe and found the Holy Roman empire . If any of the Sunuci remained in the area, they became part of this development. Proto-Indo-European language Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European Proto-Indo-European ( PIE )
980-654: The main Indo-European language families, comprising the languages descended from Proto-Indo-European. Slavic: Russian , Ukrainian , Belarusian , Polish , Czech , Slovak , Sorbian , Serbo-Croatian , Bulgarian , Slovenian , Macedonian , Kashubian , Rusyn Iranic: Persian , Pashto , Balochi , Kurdish , Zaza , Ossetian , Luri , Talyshi , Tati , Gilaki , Mazandarani , Semnani , Yaghnobi ; Nuristani Commonly proposed subgroups of Indo-European languages include Italo-Celtic , Graeco-Aryan , Graeco-Armenian , Graeco-Phrygian , Daco-Thracian , and Thraco-Illyrian . There are numerous lexical similarities between
1015-551: The modern word " Germany "), and all eventually came to speak a Germanic language, were less softened by civilization, and therefore difficult to defeat in battle or incorporate into the Roman empire. Some specific tribes who entered the empire later, such as the Ubii who lived between the Rur and the Rhine, are generally understood to be speakers of Germanic languages, and records exist concerning their immigration and settlement. However, for
1050-534: The most popular. It proposes that the original speakers of PIE were the Yamnaya culture associated with the kurgans (burial mounds) on the Pontic–Caspian steppe north of the Black Sea. According to the theory, they were nomadic pastoralists who domesticated the horse , which allowed them to migrate across Europe and Asia in wagons and chariots. By the early 3rd millennium BCE, they had expanded throughout
1085-426: The proto-Indo-European language. By the early 1900s, Indo-Europeanists had developed well-defined descriptions of PIE which scholars still accept today. Later, the discovery of the Anatolian and Tocharian languages added to the corpus of descendant languages. A subtle new principle won wide acceptance: the laryngeal theory , which explained irregularities in the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European phonology as
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1120-428: The regional dialects of Proto-Indo-European spoken by the various groups diverged, as each dialect underwent shifts in pronunciation (the Indo-European sound laws ), morphology, and vocabulary. Over many centuries, these dialects transformed into the known ancient Indo-European languages. From there, further linguistic divergence led to the evolution of their current descendants, the modern Indo-European languages. PIE
1155-730: The set of correspondences in his prize essay Undersøgelse om det gamle Nordiske eller Islandske Sprogs Oprindelse ('Investigation of the Origin of the Old Norse or Icelandic Language'), where he argued that Old Norse was related to the Germanic languages, and had even suggested a relation to the Baltic, Slavic, Greek, Latin and Romance languages. In 1816, Franz Bopp published On the System of Conjugation in Sanskrit , in which he investigated
1190-549: Was a Batavian and a military leader in the service of the Roman Empire at the time of the Batavian rebellion . He was prefect of the Batavian ala of auxiliaries, which went over from Lupercus to Civilis . Civilis, whose rival he was in their native town, not being willing to incur the odium of putting him to death, and yet fearing that, if allowed to remain with his army, he might excite disaffection, sent him as
1225-475: Was on the west of the Rhine and had been described by Julius Caesar , at the time of Roman conquest of the area, as part of Belgic Gaul . Many of the tribal names and personal names which he reported from this area, are considered to be Celtic , not Germanic. However already long before his time there appears to have been an influx of people coming from the east of the Rhine, including, in the particular area where
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