Pre-Basque phonology (part 3)

[Roslyn M. Frank]

At 05:32 PM 9/17/99 +0100, you wrote:
>On Wed, 15 Sep 1999, Roslyn M. Frank wrote:

[RF]
> So faced with these representations of the same word,
> how does one go about reconstructing the form?  Keeping in mind that
> the attested cases are /ekhe/, /khe/, /kehe/, /eke/ /ke/ and /kee/,

[LT]
>I can't agree, I'm afraid, unless you can cite some documentary evidence
>for the reality of the ones I have queried.

[RF]
Leaving aside the item /kehe/ which I thought I had seen proposed, but at
the moment I can't find the reference, the sources are pretty much the
standard ones, starting with Azkue's dictionary. I don't know whether you
are referring to some other type of "documentary evidence" other than that
provided by the standard dictionaries of the Basque language which include
dialectal variants.

Again, in reference to the possible importance of such an item (I refer to
the phonological variants represented by this item), I would suggest that
if the item is archaic in some fashion, i.e., if it retains some earlier
features of the language that otherwise have been lost, then one would not
expect to find a large number of similar items precisely because it retains
an older feature(s) no longer regularly present in the dialect(s)/language.
You seem to dismiss it as irrelevant because its features are not more
widespread. Yet I would argue that such items should definitely be kept in
the data set in case at a later time other evidence should come forward
that would allow for the puzzle pieces to fit together in a different fashion.
bye,
Roz

************************************************************************
Roslyn M. Frank
Professor
************************************************************************
Department of Spanish & Portuguese	
University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA 52242
email: <roz-frank at uiowa.edu>
fax: (319)-335-2990