Pre-Basque lexical items

[Larry Trask]

On Sat, 11 Sep 1999, Roslyn M. Frank wrote:

> Isn't there any category at all for lexical items that were in the
> pre-IE languages of Europe and ended up surviving in Basque and one
> or more of the IE languages?

There is, in principle, a category, but it's not so easy to find words
that belong to it.  The Romance languages contain a number of words
which have no known etymology.  Apart from those whose form suggests an
expressive origin, these are often labeled `pre-Roman' by Romanists, but
this label is no more than an admission of defeat, since nothing is
known of any possible source languages.

A few of these words have found their way into Basque, but, in most such
cases, it seems pretty clear that Basque has taken the word from
Romance, and not directly from the hypothetical source language.  As
Michelena liked to remark, not everything that is pre-Roman in Basque is
necessarily ancient in that language.  I know of no single case of a
Basque word which can be shown to have been borrowed directly from a
pre-IE language, but then it's not very clear how such a thing could
ever be demonstrated.

> What is said about the old verb form or primitive verb /ekarri/ "to
> carry"? It is primitive, as Larry has explained, because of the
> final /i/ as opposed to verbal constructions that create the
> infinitive by adding /-tu/, e.g., as in the case of /saldu/.
> However, /sal/ is not anymore of a free-standing morpheme in Euskera
> than /ekarr/ is. They differ in that the former carries /-i/ which
> is an infinitive marker that is no longer productive in the
> language.

Actually, the suffix <-i> marks a perfective participle.  There is no
reason to doubt the antiquity of <ekarri> in Basque, though I would
gloss it as `bring', not as `carry'.  (English `carry', = `transport on
one's person', is not really lexicalized in Basque.)  But it is far from
clear that the Basque verb is shared with any other language.  The
popular suggestion, of course, is that <ekarri> derives from the same
source as English `carry'.  But all the sources I have available agree
that `carry' is a borrowing from Old French <carier> `transport by
vehicle', itself ultimately from Latin <carrus> `cart, wagon'.

> Back to the problems of this category: in most cases it is easier
> simply to say that Basque borrowed the word from one of its IE
> neighbors.

It's not a question of what's easier: it's a question of which way the
evidence points.

> Nonetheless, a form like /ekarri/ is more convincing morphologically
> than /saldu/ because of its more ancient suffixing element.

Convincing in what way?  I know of no evidence that <ekarri> was
borrowed into Basque from another language.  The verb looks native, and
it can be inflected synthetically, which is evidence for ancient
existence in the language.  It also forms a causative <erakarri>, with
the ancient causative marker <-ra->, another sign of ancient status.

> It would suggest that if it is a loan, then it was loaned when /i/
> was still a productive suffixing element in the language.

Agreed, but I see no reason to suspect a loan.

> And I have no idea how one would date that time-depth.

We can't.  It's generally impossible to assign a time-depth to anything
in Basque before the arrival of the Romans: there is no evidence.

> On the other hand Larry's suggestion below is not devoid
> of merit.

[on the possibility of <saldu> `sell' from *<sali>, modern <sari>
`payment, cost, value, price', `prize']

The suggestion is not mine, but Michelena's, though I like it.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk