Pre-Basque phonology (part 2)

[Larry Trask]

On Sun, 26 Sep 1999, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:

[LT]

>> Anyway, a sequence *<be> > *<bhe> > <behe> is not something I've ever
>> seen before in any language.

> Turning this around, the -be ~ -pe alternation (and similar
> cases, maybe even <ke> "smoke") might stem from -behe > -bhe > -pe.

Well, maybe, but there's no evidence for such a thing.  Anyway, there is
no great mystery about the appearance of <behe> as a suffix <-pe>.  When
<behe> occurs as the second element in a word, it must lose its
aspiration, because the aspiration cannot occur later than the onset of
the second syllable.  The resulting *<-bee> is very naturally reduced to
<-be>: this sort of thing is not only natural but quite usual in Basque.
Note, for example, <bahe> `sieve', which is regularly reduced to <-bae>
or <-be> when it forms the second element of a compound, as in <zetabe>
`fine sieve', from <zeta> `silk' plus <bahe>.

Now, when <-be> follows a voiceless sibilant, it undergoes regular
devoicing to <-pe> -- a universal process in Basque.  And then the
variant <-pe> is extended analogically to other environments.  Such
extension of devoiced alternants is commonplace in Basque.  So I don't
really think there's any mystery here that requires exotic phonological
speculations.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk