Ligurian As Pre-Indo-European Substrate
A theory supported among others by French historian and philologist Marie Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville held that Ligurian was akin to Iberian and descended from a non-Indo-European substrate language once widespread in the western Mediterranean and roughly coterminous with the territory associated with the Cardium Pottery culture of the 6th and 5th millennium BC.
In 1889 and 1894 Jubainville proposed a non-Indo-European substrate language for Corsica, Sardinia, eastern Spain, southern France and western Italy based on the occurrence there of place names ending in -asco, -asca, -usco, -osco, -osca, as well as -inco, -inca. For examples of the Corsican toponymy cited by Jubainville, see Prehistory of Corsica. In Jubainville's view, two languages mentioned by classical authors were survivals from prehistory: Ligurian and Iberian. This choice of languages relies on Seneca the Younger, who spent eight years in exile on Corsica starting in 41 AD and expressed the opinion that the coastal Corsicans were Ligurian but the inlanders were from the Iberian peninsula, most like the Cantabri.
Some of the world's most famous linguists (Paul Kretschmer, Julius Pokorny) then went further with the concept of a Celto-Ligurian substrate. However, the pursuit of this "Ligurian shadow" (Mees' term) came ultimately to nothing definitive.
The main problem with Jubainville's theory is that there is nothing particularly "non-Indo-European" about the place name suffixes associated with a "Ligurian substrate". Suffixes such as -ascum, -asca, -osca, -incus, can just as well be Indo-European. Thus, they prove nothing, unless the associated roots are shown to be pre-Indo-European. The same "characteristically Ligurian" suffixes have been analyzed as Indo-European when occurring in Northern Italy or Southern France. For example, the Ligurian name of the Po, Bodincus, glossed as "bottomless" by Pliny (Hist. Nat., iii. 122), has been analyzed as containing the PIE base *bhu(n)d(h)- seen in Sanskrit budhnah and Avestan buna- "bottom", Greek pythmen "foundation", Latin fundus "bottom", Old Irish bond "sole of the foot" (see also Bodincomagus).
Another problem is the obvious anachronism between the pre-Roman Ligurian language and the Cardium Pottery culture of nearly 5,000 years before. Furthermore, several of the "ancient" suffixes cited by Jubainville, far from representing 7,000-year-old fossils, clearly indicate a continued productivity well into medieval and even modern times. For example, -asco is often found suffixed to a Roman personal name (e.g. Lucinasco, Marinasco, Martinasco, cf. the names Lucinus, Marinus, Martinus), evidently the name of the estate's owner, according to a well-known pattern of late imperial and medieval place name formation. In fact, the same suffix -asco is still used in modern Italian (and -ascu in modern Ligurian) to form gentilics from place names in and around the Roman region of Liguria; e.g. bergamasco from Bergamo, brigasco from Briga and Briga Alta, comasco from Como, mentonasco from Mentone, monegasco from Monaco, ormeasco from Ormea, roiasco from the Val Roia, tendasco from Tenda, urbasco from Urbe, etc. (-asca is, of course, the feminine form).
Read more about this topic: Ligurian Language (ancient)