Pre-Basque phonology (PS)

[Larry Trask]

Sorry for the break, but the workmen arrived to install the new network
in my office, so I had to clear out.

On Mon, 6 Sep 1999, Roz Frank wrote:

> I don't know exactly what you mean by "word-forming suffix", but the
> example that I had in mind was a simple and well documented one,
> that of /bel/ and /beltz/ where /-tz/ has been proposed, I believe
> by Lakarra (or maybe earlier by Michelena) as a suffixing element.
> We find /bel/ in composition, e.g., as /goibel/ "sad, dark (as the
> sky)" which is transparent in terms of its two elements: <goi>
> "high" and <bel> "dark". Although today /bel/ is not considered a
> free-standing morpheme, we do have /beltz/ "black". I have seen
> /bel/ used by a native speaker in one of the Auspoa series books
> (sorry, don't have the book with me).  My suspicion is that we will
> discover other potential examples of this consonant cluster
> (understood as a fossilized/old suffix) in what appear to be
> non-compositional/primitives that are monosyllables.

I've already addressed <beltz> in an earlier posting.  There is no doubt
of the former existence of *<bel> `dark', though I am astonished to be
told that a modern speaker is on record as using it, since it is nowhere
recorded in the literature as a free form.

It is clear that certain recurrent Basque morphs are ancient
monosyllables.  Apart from *<bel>, we have *<bil> `round' for sure, and
several other candidates of varying degrees of plausibility.

And I myself suspect that Basque words with final clusters generally
result from some kind of vowel loss, though I lack the evidence to make
a strong case.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk