Fwd: Re: Pre-Basque Phonology

[Roslyn M. Frank]

> Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1999 10:18:51 Larry Trask wrote:

> [LT]
>>> And <bat> `one' is pretty clearly derived from earlier *<bade>.

> [RF]
>> This is an example that I've never fully understood. There is no
>> attested evidence, to my knowledge, for any form like *<bade> and
>> quite obviously it's a reconstruction. Is it not, therefore, the
>> reconstruction that eliminates this item from consideration as a
>> monosyllabic parent-stem?

> [LT]
> It is, but we must prefer reconstructed forms to modern ones when we
> have the evidence to support the reconstructions.  In this case, we have
> the well-supported observation that final plosives in lexical items are
> almost always secondary in Basque (probably absolutely always), and we
> have the evidence of words like <bedera> `one apiece' and <bederatzi>
> `nine' (< *<bederatzu>), which appear to contain our *<bade> as their
> first element, though with vowel assimilation.

Larry, is this theory on *<bade> yours or did you glean it from some other
souce? And if it isn't yours, could you share with us who first came up with it
and when? Did that person use the same explanation?

Just curious,
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