Pre-Basque phonology (part 3)

Larry Trask larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk
Wed Sep 22 11:06:04 UTC 1999


On Mon, 20 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.

Well, I'm afraid I can find nothing in Azkue apart from common southern
<ke>, northern <khe>, and the severely localized Navarrese and Roncalese
variant <eke>.  The other forms cited are not present in their
alphabetical positions, and Azkue normally puts everything in its
alphabetical place.

> 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.

Sorry; I don't follow.

First, it is not immediately obvious which of several variant forms is
most archaic.  That can only be determined by careful analysis, if even
then.

Second, the point about the word for `smoke' is that its regional
variation is exceptional in a unique respect -- in fact, in two unique
respects.  Failing evidence (and we have none here), it is impossible to
determine the source of this anomalous behavior, and impossible to say
anything about what form might be most conservative.

Third, it is not generally the case that archaic phonological features
survive in just one or two words, though there certainly exist cases of
this.  More commonly, an archaic phonological feature, if it persists at
all, persists in all surviving words of a relevant form (I exclude
proper names, which are complicated).

> You seem to dismiss it as irrelevant because its features are not
> more widespread.

No, I don't dismiss the word as irrelevant.  I merely note that it
exhibits uniquely anomalous behavior, behavior which, in our present
state of knowledge, is wholly inexplicable.

> 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.

But I have already said openly that I must include <ke> in my list,
because it satisfies all of my criteria, in spite of its anomalous form.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk



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