Basque 'sei'

[Eduard Selleslagh]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Larry Trask" <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Sent: Friday, January 14, 2000 3:27 PM

[snip]

>> [ES]
>> The nature of the contrast of the two Iberian sibilants is not entirely
>> unknown, as some toponyms have survived: e.g. Saitabi(a) > Xa'tiva,

> Very interesting.  I didn't know that this etymology had been established.
> Has it been?

[Ed]
i.e. a number of authors think so, but I haven't been able to dig that out from
my documentation, for now. It can certainly be identified with Grk. Saitabi's
which in turn is assumed to be Xa'tiva (the local, Valencian name, with x =
[esh]. "Ja'tiva" is the Castilianized form, now widely used because Valencian
is losing ground rapidly in southern parts of the province of Valencia and in
Alacant).

Other forms are S'aitibi (in Lat. alphabet Saetabi) and the obvious ethnonym
S'aitibietar.

>> which indicates that the S must have been rather closer to Basque (apical) s
>> than z.

> Why?

[Ed]
Because of the correspondence of s' with Valencian x, and with Basque apical s
(wheneever a similar word or segment is encountered in Basque and Iberian).
Sometimes it corresponds to Cast./Val. s (which is also rather apical) like in
s'aguntiko <> (from?) Sagunt(o), Lat. Saguntum..

E.g. in the text of the stela from Sinarcas, we can interpret and re-write
(because there is no distinction of voiced/unvoiced stops etc., and no word
separation in the original) part of the text as saying "gauek as'ko
loitegarri"; in Basque "asko" (with apical s) means Sp. 'bastante' in both its
meanings: '(largely) enough' or 'a lot'.

> True, at a much later stage, a shushy sibilant in Arabic sometimes came into
> Castilian as [esh], developing later to jota.  But on what basis can we
> extend this pattern centuries further back into the past?

>> Some Iberian words are extremely similar to some Basque words

> I'd be very careful here.

[Ed]
See above. I admit anybody's guess is as good as mine.

> First, it is not trivial to identify Iberian words at all.  Many Iberian
> texts use a mark which looks like a word-divider, but not all do so, and not
> all do so consistently.  Decisions about word-boundaries in such cases are
> difficult and debatable.  In practice, nothing much interesting can be said
> about Iberian words.  Instead, it is the seemingly recurrent morphs which
> attract attention.  These are presumed to represent morphemes, and some of
> them do indeed resemble items in Basque.  However, in almost no case do we
> know the meaning of the Iberian item, and hence the comparisons must be
> strictly of forms -- not very illuminating.  The few Iberian morphs to which
> meanings can be assigned with some confidence do not, in general, look like
> anything in Basque.

[Ed]
Some do: see e.g.'asko'.

> In its phonological structure, Iberian seems to be rather similar to Basque,
> and hence it is perhaps not very surprising that similar sequences exist in
> both languages.  But, when we don't know the meanings of the Iberian items,
> we have no right to claim that Iberian and Basque possess "extremely similar
> words".  Finally, recall that Basque is of no more assistance in reading
> Iberian than is, say, Norwegian or Zulu.  This must count for something.

[Ed]
I would object to that: there are similarities, and there was very likely some
exchange among these lgs. I know a lot of crackpots have pretended to have
translated Iberian texts and that most of that is simply impossible to be true
(like based upon modern Basque words, or of Romance origin, and worse), but
some parts of texts can be interpreted (i.e. one can guess the general meaning)
if other information is available, like the likely use, purpose, archaeological
context etc., and some connection with (mainly) Basque root stems or words
doesn't seems too far-fetched, and this yields a compatible meaning.

>> (I know you don't accept this to be anything but coincidence),

> There is no reason to see anything other than coincidence when all we have is
> resemblances in form, with no meanings attached.

>> and these similarities always point to a systematic correspondance of the
>> two Iberian sibilants and Basque s and z.

> Really?  This is news to me.  What evidence can you adduce to support this
> claim?

[Ed]
See above.

>> From toponyms and other words one can deduce that Aquitanian and Iberian
>> also had the corresponding affricates (ts and tz). In Iberian script these
>> are written exactly as the non-affricated ones. In other scripts and in
>> Aquitanian in Latin script orthography is pretty confusing, but often
>> resembles later usages.

> The Iberian script distinguishes only two sibilants, and I know of no hard
> evidence that the language actually had four.

> The defective Roman script used for writing Aquitanian doesn't distinguish
> any sibilants at all very clearly, except that X or XS seems to have
> represented affricates, while S and SS appear to have represented fricatives.

>> I don't know where you found that Aquitanian may have had two additional
>> sibilants.

> This derives from the conclusion that Aquitanian represents an ancestral form
> of Basque, more or less identical to the Pre-Basque reconstructed from
> Basque-internal evidence.

> Modern Basque has the following sibilants: laminal <z tz>, apical <s ts>, and
> palato-alveolar <x tx>.  Now, one feature of our reconstruction is that only
> the first four could ever appear in the unmarked forms of lexical items,
> while <x tx> were entirely confined to expressive variants -- mainly
> diminutives.  We therefore surmise that Pre-Basque -- and hence Aquitanian --
> *may* also have had these last two, even though they don't show up clearly in
> the written records.

[Ed]
I'm truely sorry: this apparent disagreement is caused by my very restrictive
use of the word 'sibilant', excluding the voiced and palatalized forms. Maybe I
should have said somethging like 'various s sounds'. Michelena e.g. calls the
palatalized forms 'chicheantes' (Fr. chuintantes). BTW, Iberian script doesn't
distinguish affricated forms either.

[snip generally known stuff]

>>>> The Castilian s and z/c (theta) are the descendants of the old Basque-type
>>>> distinction, I believe.

> [LT]

>>> I don't follow.  Castilian /s/ simply continues Latin /s/, except that it
>>> is apical, whereas the Latin /s/, on the Basque evidence, was probably
>>> laminal.  But the Castilian theta derives ultimately, in most cases, from
>>> Latin /k/ before a front vowel; this is thought to have become some kind of
>>> affricate before developing into theta (or into /s/, according to region).

> [ES]

>> In derivations from Latin this true, but in all other cases it is not. I
>> didn't mean that the Castilian s/z distinction is descended directly from
>> the Basque apical/laminal opposition, as a parallel evolution in particular
>> words, but that its very existence is due to a pre-existing awareness of
>> such a phonological distinction (it did in Iberian), something most European
>> languages don't have (and ditto for the rhotics).

> "A pre-existing awareness"?  Strange wording, almost mystical.

> May I translate into terms more familiar to me?

> I presume the suggestion is that the Castilian s/z contrast derives from
> areal pressure, from the influence of neighboring languages that already had
> it.

[Ed]
Something like that: familiarity with the phenomenon, even if they didn't have
it themselves. Like I'm aware of French uvular r, but I can't really pronounce
it even though I'm fluent (and used to work) in French.

> But the modern s/z contrast dates only from the 16th century -- rather late
> for areal influence from Iberian, I'd say, or even from Basque -- which in
> any case has a distinction decidedly different from the Castilian one.

[Ed]
As we know it, yes. But there must have been a precursor distinction that
turned into the present one. I think this was already discussed on this list
some months ago.

> As for other European languages, I will remind you of Martin Joos's 1952
> paper in Language, in which he argued that an apical/laminal contrast in
> sibilants was in the medieval period widespread in Europe.

[Ed]
In which languages you mean?

>>>> What about Arabic? It certainly has various sibilants.

> [LT]

>>> Yes, but it does not have an apical/laminal contrast, and I know of no
>>> evidence that Arabic phonology had any effect on Castilian phonology, still
>>> less on Basque phonology.

> [ES]

>> As far as Castilian is concerned, I am not so sure: does any one have any
>> references or information on that subject?

> No, but I no of no evidence or argument that Arabic ever had the slightest
> effect upon Castilian phonology, apart from the forms of a few individual
> words that entered Castilian after Arabic mediation, like <jabo'n> 'soap'.

[Ed]
Actually, I was not thinking of an Arabic influence, but it may have existed
after so many centuries. I was just using it as an example of a lg. with more
than one sibilant (in casu emphatic/normal).

>> In Basque, it is rather the opposite: e.g. kuttun < kitab, i.e. Arabic words
>> were adapted to Basque phonology.

> Yes, and this is what normally happens in borrowing.

> By the way, Basque <gutun> ~ <kutun> ~ <kuttun> (and other variants), which
> has been applied to various kinds of written things, is thought to derive
> from the Arabic plural <kutub> 'books'.  This appears to be one of the rare
> cases in which Basque has taken over an Arabic word without Romance
> mediation.

> Larry Trask

[Ed]
I read once that there are a few more, but I can't find the reference.

Ed. Selleslagh