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[Larry Trask]

On Thu, 2 Sep 1999 jonpat at staff.cs.su.oz.au wrote:

> Ros Frank has asked me to send this item to the list on her behalf
> as she does not have subscriber access from her current account. I
> will offer my own account when I can get through the backlog in my
> mail.

> jon patrick

> *********************************8888

> I am writing to make a couple of brief comments on the monosyllabic
> project that Jon Patrick has mentioned on the list. I've beenout of
> the country for a while so I haven't been able to follow all the
> discussion of late.  Hopefully I won't be repeating to many things
> that have already been said.

> First, I would like to point out an aspect of the project that I
> find particularly interesting, although I don't think it has been
> mentioned on the list. As I understand the monosyllabic project, at
> least as it was conceptualized a year or so ago, it can be
> characterized as having two stages. The first stage is that of
> coming up with an agreed upon description of the phonological
> constraints of pre-Basque, i.e., its phonology prior to contact with
> the Romance languages. That stage requires developing a uniform
> description.

Well, *fairly* uniform, that's all.  Even the phonology of PIE is not at
present agreed upon by all specialists in all details -- far from it.
But the main lines are clear enough.

> However, as I understand the present situation in Basque there is
> not total agreement concerning this stage of the reconstruction of
> Euskera. Stated differently there are disagreements among Basque
> linguists.  That fact would seem to call for more than one set of
> "rules" to be developed and applied to the data. Or at least in the
> case of the elements in question, there would need to be two
> different renditions of the data provided, one that modelled it
> according to one paradigm and another simulation that would result
> from the alternate set of premises concerning this pre-Basque
> phonology.

No, this is too pessimistic.

At present, our reconstruction of the segmental phonology of the
Pre-Basque of 2000 years ago is agreed upon by everybody in all its main
lines.  The same is not true of the suprasegmental phonology, which is
being vigorously debated, but that is not much of a problem for our
purposes here.  There are a few debates about the phonetic details of
our phonological reconstruction, but these are parochial and have no
consequences for the system.  It is perfectly possible to present
reconstructed Pre-Basque words in a uniform transcription -- say, in
Michelena's transcription -- without causing any difficulties.
I myself might prefer */ll/ and */nn/ to M's */L/ and */N/, but this
makes no difference.

Potentially the most serious problem is the /h/, but I know of no one at
present who disputes M's conclusion that *most* instances of /h/ are of
suprasegmental origin.  However, it remains possible to disagree about
whether *some* /h/s are of segmental origin.  In practice, though, this
isn't much of an issue, and we can readily dispose of any difficulties
by reconstructing Pre-Basque -- contra M -- with a *phonetic* [h] in our
transcriptions, allowing users to draw their own conclusions.

> Secondly, as I understand it, once these rules are developed
> (whether they result in two or more simulations is not the issue),
> they can be applied to generate the total picture of what
> monosyllabic root-stems the phonological system in question would
> have supported/permitted.

This is a hope, no more.  Monomorphemic Basque lexical items which are
native and ancient (and not verbs) are usually bisyllabic.  There are
perhaps no more than fifty monosyllabic words, and this may not be
enough to provide a clear picture of the structure of monosyllables in
Pre-Basque.

I'll give you one oddity for free: while word-initial */b/ is
*exceedingly* common in bisyllabic words, it is all but unknown in
monosyllables.  This is curious, and I have no explanation.  It may be
no more than an accident of survival.

> Some time back I saw an early version of this data in which Jon had
> indicated which slots were filled and which were empty.  In the case
> of the empty slots, it would seem to me that they might provide the
> basis for some interesting discussion concerning why they are not
> filled.

Indeed.

> At the same time, as Jon knows, in my opinion some of the
> (apparently) monosyllabic root-stems may, indeed, be composed of a
> root and a suffixing element.  These patterns, of course, can be
> readily detected by examining the data, e.g., the percentage of
> root-stems that show the same final elements.

Again, this is a hope, no more.

> For those familiar with the suffixing processes in Euskera, I'm
> particularly interested in the way that the <-tz> suffixing element
> may be coming into play in the case of certain examples.

Well, I'm pretty familiar with the Basque word-forming suffixes, but I
don't know what you have in mind here.  Normally, a word-forming suffix
in Basque always contains at least one vowel.  Can you cite some
examples of what you have in mind?

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk