Basque 'sei'

[Max Wheeler]

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[Stephane Goyette]

> From: <s455152 at aix1.uottawa.ca>
> Date: Sat, 25 Sep 1999 16:36:35 -0400 (EDT)

> 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.

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Hold on a bit, we need to look at relative dating here. For how long has [sej]
or similar been one of the allomorphs of 'six' in Gascon? The vocalization of
/-s/ in some environments is common to all of Occitan (though not everywhere
exactly the same environments, nor similar proportions everywhere). But it is
relatively recent, i.e. post-Medieval, as far as one can tell.

At what date is <sei> 'six' first attested in Basque, I wonder?

In Gascon [sej], as mentioned above, is a conditioned variant, before a small
minority of the words before which 'six' can occur. If a low cardinal number
is to be borrowed, isn't it far more likely to be the citation form, than a
minor conditioned variant?

Max Wheeler
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Max W. Wheeler
School of Cognitive & Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Falmer
BRIGHTON BN1 9QH, G.B.

Tel: +44 (0)1273 678975 Fax: +44 (0)1273 671320 Email: maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk
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