The pre-Roman elements of the Sardinian lexicon

Swanenvleugel, C.

Swanenvleugel, C. (2025)

The pre-Roman elements of the Sardinian lexicon

Doctoral Thesis

The Sardinian language descends from Latin, introduced to Sardinia following the Roman conquest in 238 BCE. Yet, parts of the Sardinian vocabulary cannot be explained from a Latin perspective and may instead reflect remnants of extinct languages once native to the island. This dissertation aims to uncover Sardinia’s linguistic prehistory by systematically examining these non-inherited words. Through phonological and morphological analysis, it reconstructs several properties of the pre-Roman Sardinian language. The study argues that there is insufficient evidence to support a genetic relationship between Pre-Roman Sardinian and languages such as Berber, Basque, or Etruscan. However, it does find evidence suggesting that Sardinia’s Pre-Roman language was closely related to other unattested languages once spoken along the western Mediterranean Sea coast of Europe.

Historical linguistics