Basque 'sei'

[Stephane Goyette]

While I have the highest respect for professor Trask, I must disagree with
him on the impossibility of Basque SEI being a Romance loanword; see
below.

On Wed, 22 Sep 1999, Larry Trask wrote:

> [on Basque <sei> `six']

>> But I think in another venue you argued that <sei> was a loan word
>> in Euskera.

   (LT)

> No, I did not.  Quite the contrary: I have several times argued
> *against* the proposal, put forward by several other people, that <sei>
> is borrowed from Romance.  The problem is the phonology.  The Latin for
> `six' was /seks/, and all the descendants of this in Romance varieties
> in contact with Basque have a final sibilant, as far as I know, as in
> Castilian /seis/ and French /sis/.  Now, when Basque borrows a Latin or
> Romance word containing a final sibilant, it *always* renders that
> sibilant with some sibilant of its own, without exception.  So, Latin
> /seks/ should have produced a Basque *<zetz> or something similar, while
> Castilian /seis/ should have produced a Basque *<seits> if borrowed
> early or *<seis> if borrowed late.  But the only Basque form recorded
> anywhere is <sei>, and hence I conclude that a borrowing from Latin or
> Romance is impossible.

According to Gerhard Rohlfs (LE GASCON: ETUDES DE PHILOLOGIE PYRENEENNE,
Second Edition (1970), p.145) final -s shifts to -j when followed by a
voiced plosive, a liquid or a nasal: this is especially frequent in
Eastern Gascon, and Rolfs quotes such examples as ERAY DUOY RODOS "the two
wheels" (instead of ERAS DUOS RODOS): this -s to -j shift is also found in
Bearnese, which is close enough to the Basque country. Now, according to
the ALF, map 1235, the word for "six" in the area is found under various
forms, /ses/ and /seis/ being the most common. One would therefore expect
forms such as /sej/, /seij/ in front of voiced plosives, liquids and
nasals, and if Basque had borrowed such a form (perhaps from an expression
such as "six times", which I would expect to be something like /sej
betses/ in Gascon), the attested phonological form (SEI) would be
*EXACTLY* what one would expect.

There may be good reason not to believe SEI to be a Romance loanword, but
on the basis of the above, it is plain that its phonological form is not one
of them.

Stephane Goyette,
University of Ottawa.
stephane at Goyette.com