Suffix -ar in IE and Vennemann's Vasconic

Larry Trask larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk
Mon Apr 26 07:39:49 UTC 1999


On Wed, 21 Apr 1999, Eduard Selleslagh wrote:

> Not being an IE-ist myself, I would like to ask the knowledgeable
> people on this list for more (IE) information about the suffixes
> '-(t)ar' and '-ar' which exist in both IE and in Basque, apparently
> with roughly the same function and meaning: the former is an
> ethnonymic-forming device (with 't' after final vowel), while the
> latter can have a series of meanings, often expressing occupational
> relationship with something, or something more difficult to describe
> in a general way (e.g. collectivity, multiplicity).

The Basque suffix <-(t)ar> is indeed an ethnonymic.  In older
formations, it appears as <-tar> after a consonant and as <-ar> after a
vowel, a common type of alternation in Basque, though newer formations
do not always respect this distribution.

But I'm not sure what other suffix is intended here.  It is true that a
number of nouns end in a morph <-ar> and that many of these denote
things which are commonly encountered in bunches, like <ilar> `pea',
<izar> `star', <ondar> `sand', <abar> `branch', and so on, but nobody
knows if this ending represents a fossilized suffix or not.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk



More information about the Indo-european mailing list