Pre-Basque lexical items

Larry Trask larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk
Fri Sep 3 14:40:16 UTC 1999


No way can I reply in detail to this extremely long posting.  I'll reply
here to the first point, then later to other points insofar as I have
time.

On Fri, 27 Aug 1999, Jon Patrick wrote:

> My apologies for my lateness in replying to this message but life
> has been pandemonium here. This is my repsonse to Larry Trask's
> criteria for the admission of words in an analysis of early basque.
> Some methodological issues are relevant to all language analyses.

>      [LT]
>      Of course, I exclude
>     verbs, since native verbal roots are never free forms.

> This surprised me. Do you mean "sar zaitez" (Come in!) is not legal
> euskara and that "sar" is not a word. While the dictionary form of
> the word is "sartu"  I will use "sar" in the analysis.

You've picked out an exceptional case.  Let me explain a bit.

Ancient verbs containing verbal roots in Basque have the citation form
*e-Root-i, where the prefix *<e-> is of unknown function (though I've
proposed an explanation for its presence) and the suffix *<-i> derives
participles of verbs from nouns and adjectives, suggesting a
nominalizing force for *<e->.  Typical native verbs are <etorri> `come',
<ekarri> `bring', <ibili> `be in motion' (< <ebili>, attested) and
<ikusi> `see' (< <ekusi>, attested).  The root is thus not a free form
in the citation form (the perfective participle).  Nor is it a free form
anywhere else: in every finite and non-finite form, the verbal root is
always preceded by one or more prefixes, and, in every form but one, it
is also followed by one or more suffixes.

Certain verbs are problematic, notably the <n>-class verbs like <joan>
`go', <egon> `wait', <egin> `do, make' and <jan> `eat', but I have
proposed that these derive from originally regular verbs by regular
phonological change followed by analogical reshaping.  Hence, for
example, <egon> and <egin> would derive from *<egoni> and *<egini>, and
<jan> from *<eani>.

Now, the participle-forming suffix *<-i> is not confined to prefixed
verbal roots.  It also formerly served to construct participles of verbs
from nouns and adjectives.  For example, <hauts> `dust, powder' was the
source for <hautsi> `break' (presumably originally `pulverize');
<aberats> `rich' (itself a derivative of the Romance loan <abere>
`domesticated animal') yielded <aberatsi> `get rich', `enrich'; and so
on.

This suffix *<-i> was displaced by the participle-forming suffix <-tu>,
borrowed from Latin, which appears regularly as <-du> after /n/ or /l/.
For centuries this has been the regular verb-forming suffix of Basque,
and it is still fully productive today: <gizen> `fat', <gizendu> `get
fat', `fatten up'; <gorri> `red', <gorritu> `redden'; <nahasi> `mixed
up, confused', <nahastu> `mix up, confuse'; and so on.

Note also that a few verbs have switched from *<-i> to <-tu>.  For
example, `get rich' is <aberatsi> in our earliest texts, but usually
<aberastu> today.  Even the ancient <n>-class verb <izan> `be' appears
as <izatu> or <izandu> in some varieties.

In a few cases, it appears that the old participle in *<-i> became
specialized as an adjective after the participle was reshaped with
<-tu>.  Very likely the adjective <nahasi> is itself one of these cases.
This development is quite parallel to English, in which old participles
have sometimes become specialized as adjectives: `I have mowed the
lawn', but `new-mown hay'; `The metal has melted', but `molten metal';
and so on.

Now, there are about eight verbs in <-tu> which are unusual: they are
universal, they are attested early, but they have no known sources.
These are <sartu> `go in', <hartu> `take', <saldu> `sell', <galdu>
`lose', <sortu> `be born', `create', <lotu> `tie up', <heldu> `ripen,
mature', `arrive', <kendu> `get out of the way', `remove', and perhaps
one or two others.  Note that these do not contain the prefix *<e->.
Accordingly, they appear to be derived from nouns or adjectives whose
free forms have been lost.  That is, the stems of these verbs are not
verbal in origin, but nominal or adjectival.

Possible evidence is <saldu> `sell', which may very well derive from
*<sali>, the ancestor of modern <sari> `price' (the change /l/ > /r/
between vowels is regular), as is the loss of /i/ before a suffix).

Note also that <sartu> `go in', your example, is attested in one early
text as <sarri> (the doubling of the <r> is purely orthographic).  All
this suggests that these verbs were originally derived from nouns or
adjectives by adding the usual verb-forming suffix *<-i>, that the
source words generally disappeared from the language, and that the verbs
were transferred from the <-i> class to the <-tu> class.

Of course, the evidence for this scenario is insufficient for proof.
But it's fairly persuasive, nonetheless.  In all likelihood, stems like
<sar-> were not originally verbal.

Now, my original stricture was against the hundreds of ancient verbs
like <etorri> and <ikusi>, whose roots are never free forms.  For the
eight or so anomalous verbs like <sartu>, I have no objection if you
want to include their stems in your list, since these stems will meet
all of my criteria.  Anyway, save only for the anomalous <kendu> (which
has other and more regular variants), these stems will in no way be out
of line with the forms of non-verbal lexical items generally.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk



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