Pre-Basque

[Larry Trask]

On Wed, 26 May 1999, Eduard Selleslagh wrote:

> Given the extended nature of the discussion on plosive-liquid
> clusters in pre-Basque, it might be helpful for Larry and/or others
> to reiterate the definition and parameters of the concept
> 'pre-Basque' (=Aquitanian?) and then address the problematic aspects
> of the notion 'proto-Basque' (=reconstruction?). If that is relevant
> to this list, that is.

Sure; glad to.

I apply the name `Pre-Basque' to the earliest unrecorded stage of Basque
which can be substantially reconstructed.  This is the period when
Basque was beginning to borrow words from Latin, and we can reasonably
date it to around 2000 years BP.  For Pre-Basque we have a substantial
phonological reconstruction, which is summarized and justified in Luis
Michelena's book Fonetica Historica Vasca (first edition 1961; second
expanded edition 1977; two later "editions" are essentially just
reprints).  Morphologically, we are much less well off: we can
reconstruct various bits and pieces of earlier morphology, but we can't
in most cases assign any dates.  Lexically, we have a reasonable
understanding of the current and attested words which are most likely to
have been present in Pre-Basque.

I use the label `Pre-Basque' because I consider the use of `Pre-' to be
standard in labeling an unrecorded early form of a single language.
A few of my colleagues prefer `Proto-Basque', but I consider this term
inappropriate: `Proto-' is normally applied to the reconstructed
ancestor of a family containing two or more languages, not to the
ancestor of a single language.  Michelena himself used neither term,
preferring the noncommittal `Old Basque'.

Since Basque has no known relatives, then, there appears to be no scope
for using `Proto-' in connection with it.

The name `Aquitanian' denotes a language which, according to Roman
sources, was spoken at the time of the Roman conquest of Gaul in
southwestern Gaul, between the Garonne and the Pyrenees.  Aquitanian is
sparsely attested, in the form of about 400 personal names and 70 divine
names embedded in Latin inscriptions, almost all of them either votive
or funerary in nature.

The Romans recognized a number of distinct sub-tribes of the
Aquitanians, and, south of the Pyrenees, they recognized a number of
distinct tribes occupying the area of the historical Basque Country.
Roman sources do not comment on the languages used in this southern
region, and hardly any written material survives.  We have a tiny
handful of texts bearing clearly Aquitanian names south of the Pyrenees,
all of them in the eastern part of the region in question.  We may
therefore conclude that Aquitanian was used in Roman times in at least a
part of the modern Spanish Basque Country.  But we have no evidence at
all for Aquitanian speech in the western parts, and it remains an open
question whether Aquitanian was spoken there at the time.  The (few)
personal names surviving there from the Roman period are all IE, and the
region is characterized today by the presence of a number of place names
which are not Basque and which appear to be IE.

Now, as it happens, the Aquitanian names, which are recorded in the
Roman alphabet, are in their apparent phonology strikingly similar to
our reconstructed Pre-Basque.  (Bear in mind that Aquitanian was not
used at all in reconstructing Pre-Basque.)  If our Pre-Basque were
written in the Roman alphabet, using Latin spelling conventions, then we
would expect to see something almost identical to the Aquitanian names
-- phonologically speaking, I mean.

Moreover, a sizeable proportion of the recurrent morphs in the
Aquitanian names can be readily identified with known items in Basque.
This is true for both stems and suffixes.  On top of this, the apparent
morphological structure of the Aquitanian names is identical to what we
find in words and names in Basque during the historical period.
Finally, assuming the correctness of some of the most obvious
Aquitanian-Basque identifications, we find that the Aquitanian personal
names made frequent use of kinship terms and related words like `son'
and `child' -- exactly what we find, independently, to be the case with
the earliest Basque personal names, recorded in the early Middle Ages.

All this is sufficient to persuade almost all specialists that
Aquitanian was an ancestral form of Basque.  But note that the recorded
Aquitanian may not be quite the *direct* ancestor of modern Basque.
Aquitanian is most abundantly recorded in the north, toward the Garonne,
and attestation of the language is much sparser toward the Pyrenees,
sparser still just south of the Pyrenees, and non-existent further west.
It may therefore be the case that most of our recorded names represent a
northern variety of Aquitanian which died out not long after the Roman
conquest, and that modern Basque descends from a somewhat different, and
largely unrecorded, southern variety.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk