Basque <ibili>

[roslyn frank]

At 04:40 PM 1/28/00 -0500, Christopher Gwinn wrote:

>There is indeed a Gaulish word which might have this root - Pilentum, a
>Latinized Gaulish word for a  type of Vehicle - which should be *Pil-ont-on
>in Gaulish (perhaps meaning "wheeled thing").

>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Hans Holm" <Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de>
>Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2000 3:29 AM

>In a nutshell:

>What about being 'bili' a loan from Gaulish?
>    PIE *kwel-  > Cel *kwi:l-   > Gaul *pi:l >!> bask. pil/bil
> cf PIE *penque > Cel *kwinkwe  > Gaul *pimpetos (ordinal)

>Mit freundlichen Gr|_en
>Hans J. Holm, Meckauerweg 18, D-30629 Hannover.

In constructing an argument that would derive the Basque item as a loan
from Gaulish one should keep in mind the following set of facts: the
structure of the verb <ibili> demonstrates that it belongs to a class of
verbs with a prefix in /i-/ or /e-/ (cf. Trask 1995). These are considered
to be "ancient Basque verbs" where a prefix appears in all non-finite
forms, highly unusual in a suffixing language such as Basque. Furthermore,
<ibili> is a Class I or <-i> class verb which takes the suffix <-i>. There
are several hundred Class I verbs in Basque, although certainly not all of
them have the prefixing element in <i-> (or *<e-> as proposed by Michelena
1997). As Larry has noted in his detailed and thoughtful study of these
non-finite forms, the function of the prefix *<e-> has never been
established, although its antiquity in the language is evident.

In my own discussions with Larry on the IE list, I have taken the position
that <-bil->, the radical of <ibili>, was utilized in <bildu> (*ibildu> and
that <-bil> in compounds such as <gurpil> is related to the same verbal
stem. However, because <ibili> is a Class I verb, it's radical is contained
in the verb itself and as Larry has rightfully pointed out, we have no
evidence for free-standing parent-stems that then go on to become the
radicals of Class I verbs. It simply doesn't happen.

What can occur, however, is for the radical to break free of the non-finite
form and then become available for reprocessing as a member of Class III
non-finite forms through the utilization of the suffixing element <-tu>.
This appears to be what happened in the case of <phiztu/piztu> where the
radical <biz-> from the non-finite form <bizi>, a Class I (<i> class) verb
became the root-stem/radical of the new verb form. After undergoing
palatalization <bizi> became <bixi> and that palatalized version of the
Class I radical was reprocessed as the stem of a Class III verb, i.e.,
<piztu>, also recorded as <biztu>.

Conclusion: if there is a relationship between the Basque root-stem <bil>
and the IE materials, one needs to consider the time depth involved, i.e.,
for determining when the "copying" or "borrowing" would have taken place. I
don't know whether anyone has tried to assign a time depth to Class I verbs
in Basque, although I believe Larry would agree with me that they can be
assigned to Pre-Basque with no difficulty. Perhaps Larry can add some
additional insights into the problems that are involved here. In my own
case, my knowledge of IE linguistics is limited so I'd rather provide the
data on Basque, to the best of my ability, and let the rest of you figure
out how it ought to be interpreted.

Best regards,
Roz Frank