Basque 'sei'

Max Wheeler maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk
Wed Oct 6 17:16:45 UTC 1999


-- Begin original message --

> From: Larry Trask <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
> Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 08:53:36 +0100 (BST)

> But just how late could a Gascon word for `six' be borrowed into Basque?
> After all, the Basque names for `7, 8, 9, 10' and so on are decidedly
> non-Romance.

> With respect, I don't think the facts of modern Gascon are necessarily
> relevant, since the Basque word is certainly not borrowed from modern
> Gascon.  Is there any possibility of dating any of the relevant Gascon
> phonological developments?

-- End original message --

Firstly, just a reminder that it's misleading to speak of seis > sei as 'a
Gascon development' as if it were typical of ALL Gascon of ALL times.
According to Ronjat (I. 280) "altern. de tipe s/-i suivant liaisons en,,,pays
de Foix et quelques parlers aq[uitains] voisins" i.e. SE Gascon not adjacent
to Basque speaking region. He notes -s > -h in SW "aquitain" (i.e. Basses
Pyrenees, adjacent to Basque region), having noted on the previous page that
"les faits aq[uitains] S.-O. en liaison [sont] beaucoup plus recents que les
faits [du] l[anguedocien] occ[idental] plus aut" The rest of "aquitain" has
final -s unchanged. Luchaire (1879) on Pyrenean Gascon has abundant cases of
final /-s/ maintained, in dialect transcriptions. The only item I can see with
s-vocalization in any of his transcribed dialect texts is <mais> 'more' in
proclitic contexts before /j/ or /dZ/. Nothing similar in the documents he
cites. And <seis>, he notes, is often pronounced with an initial pal.-alv
fricative.

I think you need to be desparate to get Basque 15th-century <sei> 'six' out of
this. Even the Italian 'etymology' is less worse.

Max
______________________________________________________________
Max W. Wheeler
School of Cognitive & Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Falmer
BRIGHTON BN1 9QH, G.B.

Tel: +44 (0)1273 678975 Fax: +44 (0)1273 671320 Email: maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk
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