Pre-Basque phonology (fwd)

[Larry Trask]

On Fri, 10 Sep 1999, roslyn frank wrote:

> [LT]

>> Hualde has since developed his position in an article.  In fact, he does
>> not challenge Michelena's reconstructed phoneme system at all.  Rather,
>> he proposes to assign different phonetic features to the proto-phonemes.
>> In particular, while he agrees with Michelena that Pre-Basque had no
>> voicing contrasts in word-initial plosives, he believes that the voicing
>> of initial plosives was facultative, rather than phonetically
>> consistent.

> Could you explain a bit more what is meant by the term "facultative" as
> opposed to "phonetically consistent" by giving a few examples?

Well, facultative variation is free variation: a speaker may choose
either variant freely, and it makes no difference.

Michelena's reconstructed Pre-Basque plosive system is */(p) t k b d g/,
where the symbols should not be taken too literally: they are chosen to
represent the usual modern reflexes of the segments.  (Note that */p/
was rare at best.)  The two series, "fortis" */p t k/ and "lenis" */b d
g/, contrasted only word-medially and mostly only intervocalically.
Elsewhere the contrast was neutralized, and word-initially only the
lenis plosives appeared.  In M's view, lenis */b d g/ have generally
developed into modern /b d g/, and hence ancient words generally do not
begin with any of /p t k/ (from */p t k/), unless some identifiable
process has intervened to bring about such a result.

But Hualde's view is that word-initial */b d g/ were facultatively
voiced: that is, speakers sometimes realized them as voiced [b d g], but
at other times as voiceless [p t k], in an indifferent manner.

So, take Latin PACE(M) `peace', which appears in modern Basque both as
<bake> and as <pake>.  M's view is that the word was originally borrowed
only as *<bake>, and that <pake> results from later re-borrowing or
reshaping under continuing Romance influence.  Hualde, in contrast,
assumes that the original Pre-Basque *<bake> was pronounced
indifferently as [bake] or as [pake], leading to the observed variants.

I myself follow Michelena here, but note that, in any case, Hualde's
interpretation has no consequences for the Pre-Basque phoneme system,
but only for the phonetic realizations of the phonemes.

>> And <bat> `one' is pretty clearly derived from earlier *<bade>.

> This is an example that I've never fully understood. There is no
> attested evidence, to my knowledge, for any form like *<bade> and
> quite obviously it's a reconstruction. It it not, therefore, the
> reconstruction that eliminates this item from consideration as a
> monosyllabic parent-stem?

It is, but we must prefer reconstructed forms to modern ones when we
have the evidence to support the reconstructions.  In this case, we have
the well-supported observation that final plosives in lexical items are
almost always secondary in Basque (probably absolutely always), and we
have the evidence of words like <bedera> `one apiece' and <bederatzi>
`nine' (< *<bederatzu>), which appear to contain our *<bade> as their
first element, though with vowel assimilation.

[on the bisyllabic status of <behi> `cow' and <behin> `once']

> Again, doesn't the logic of this statement rest on the
> presupposition (within the reconstruction) that the aspirating
> northern dialects are the original ones, i.e., the ones showing us
> the "mother" forms (at least for this type of item) and the
> monosyllabic unaspirated southern variants the "daughter" forms? In
> other words are there not two choices: 1) to assume that the "older"
> form was monosyllabic and that the aspirated variants are
> innovations and, hence, came from a suprasegmental element, namely,
> aspiration, which was not found in the phonological system of the
> "older-parent"; or 2) as you have reconstructed it, to assume that
> the "older" form was bisyllabic and that the non-aspirated variants
> are innovations.

> Could you explain the rationale for choosing 2 over 1, particularly
> since we have no other sources for reconstructing earlier stages of
> Euskera than the information coded into the dialects themselves?
> Here I refer to the fact that the Basque reconstructions cannot draw
> on comparative data from other members of a larger language family,
> e.g., as in the case of IE studies.

True, but we can perform internal reconstruction, and we can also
perform comparative reconstruction when the several dialects exhibit
systematic differences.

The evidence for the antiquity of the aspiration in Basque is large and
of various kinds.  Here I can only briefly make a couple of points.

First, it is linguistically unusual and unnatural to create new
syllables in the middle of a word.  Hence northern <behi> versus
southern <bei> points clearly to the conservative nature of <behi>.

Second, we have minimal pairs in the aspirating dialects, like <sei>
`six' and <sehi> `boy, servant'.  If we took *<sei> as the ancestral
form in both cases, we would have no principled basis for explaining the
modern contrast.  It appears that we must reconstruct two Pre-Basque
forms with differing numbers of syllables, with the contrast surviving
in the north but lost in the south after the loss of the aspiration.

Third, aspiration survives today in the north.  It was also very
prominent in the west, in Bizkaia and Araba, during the Middle Ages, as
our written records show.  For the central dialects, there is no direct
attestation of any aspiration.  By far the most parsimonious scenario is
a Pre-Basque aspiration in all varieties, followed by early loss in the
center, much later loss in the west, and retention down to today in the
north.

Fourth, we have good evidence that ancient Aquitanian was an ancestral
form of Basque -- and the written aspiration is pervasive in the
Aquitanian materials.

> You end your discussion above by adding "with good reason". Could you
> elaborate?

I've deleted the passage, and now I can't remember just what the context
was.  But all of Michelena's conclusions are based upon a magisterial
scrutiny of the evidence, presented at great length in his 600-page book
Fonetica Historica Vasca and elsewhere.

> I am curious because your position (see below) concerning
> word-initial /h/ is that it is of suprasegmental origin, although
> it, too, is considered primarily a northern characteristic if I am
> not mistaken.

Today, the aspiration is confined to the northern varieties, apart from
a few words borrowed from northern varieties into varieties just south
of the Pyrenees.  But the historical evidence shows that this was not
always so.

[on Pre-Basque reconstructions with [h] ]

> Does it follow, therefore, that we could also write <behi> as
> *<be[h]i> or as *<bei>?

Yes.  Michelena writes *<bei>, and this is customary among Vasconists.
But there's no reason we couldn't write *<be[h]i>, if we preferred -- so
long as we are consistent.

> Keep in mind, I'm not trying to support any particular
> interpretation here, rather I'm attempting to understand the logical
> process involved in constructing an argument that gives priority to
> forms found in one dialect over those found in another.

Linguistic naturalness, comparative evidence, and written records.

> Specifically, I am interested in examining the kinds of
> argumentation utilized when the comparison in question is intended
> to lead to a reconstruction where no parent-form of the language is
> available (no triangulation) as is the case at hand.

Not quite so.  Bear in mind that comparative reconstruction *can* be
done in Basque when the several dialects differ in a systematic manner.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk