Basque Criteria 10 -17 for inclusion (4)

[Larry Trask]

Lloyd Anderson writes:

>  15.  The use of mere suspicion to exclude items,
>  or of occurrence in neighboring languages,
>  even when absent from the closest relatives of the
>  neighboring languages which are not proximal to the
>  language of focus (Basque).

Of course.  If there exists good reason to suspect that a given Basque
word *might* be borrowed, then it must be excluded from my list.
It would be potentially disastrous for me to include in my list
words which are not of native origin.

>  Trask writes, concerning "bill" (of bird) that the form
>  <moko>, variant <mosko> may possibly qualify on his other
>  criteria, but continues:
>
>  >But the widely held belief in a
>  >Romance origin will probably disqualify it.
>
>  A belief, no matter how widely held, should not be
>  considered relevant at all.  Evidence is relevant.
>  Perhaps Trask had some which he did not mention
>  because it did not seem germane or important at the moment.

Very many Vasconists and Romanists have looked at the Basque word
and said "This looks to me like a probable loan from Romance."
Even if I don't agree -- and in this case I probably don't --
I can't simply wave away a body of informed judgement.
If lots of specialists suspect the word of being borrowed, then,
unless I have good counter-evidence -- which I don't -- I must
exclude the word from my list.

Lloyd, in constructing my list, I must *always* err on the side
of caution.  Over-cautiously excluding some genuinely native
Basque words is not a problem for me.  But wrongly including
some borrowed words will have grave consequences.

Isn't this obvious?

If it's not, consider an analogy.

Suppose there exist a large number of paintings which are associated
with the great 14th-century Italian painter Pintore.  An art historian
is sure that many of these paintings, perhaps most, are not the work
of Pintore at all, but of his students and imitators.  But he's not
sure which are genuine.  So, how will he proceed?

I suggest he will proceed as follows.  He will sift through the
paintings and try to pick out the ones for which he can find the
*strongest* evidence that Pintore painted them.  Having identified
the (rather small) number of paintings which he feels are almost
certainly Pintore's own work, he will examine these in order to
identify, as explicitly as possible, the distinguishing features
of Pintore's work.  Having done so, he will then turn to the much
larger number of remaining paintings, and compare the features of
each in turn with the now known features of Pintore's work.  In this
way, he will be able, if all goes well, to identify further genuine
Pintore works which he had at first excluded, and also to determine
that the rest of the paintings, which fail to show the required
features, are not by Pintore.

Doesn't this make sense?  But this is *exactly* what I'm doing with
my Pre-Basque words.

Lloyd, it appears that you would protest volubly about our historian's
procedure, and demand instead that his initial list of best candidates
should be greatly expanded to include *all* paintings which might
*possibly* be Pintore's works.  Isn't that what you're demanding
of me?  And can't you see that such a procedure would be disastrous?

>  But this may possibly go along with
>  Trask's exclusion of items which occur *only*
>  in Iberian Romance and in Basque.

I exclude every Basque word shared with *any* language known to have
been in contact with Basque.  There is no earthly reason to make an
exception for Ibero-Romance -- which, after all, is the source of a huge
proportion of the loan words in Basque.

>  For such a distribution of attestations, lacking any other evidence,
>  I think standard linguistic methodology dictates a conclusion
>  that the item was in early Basque and borrowed into Romance,
>  rather than the other way round;

"Standard linguistic methodology" dictates no such thing.

In North America, we can cite a number of words which are found
in Algonquian languages, and also found in English, but not found
in any other North American languages.  Your "standard methodology"
would force the conclusion, then, that words like 'raccoon' and
'woodchuck' are English words borrowed into Algonquian.

Standard linguistic methodology, as I understand it, involves
scrutinizing all the available evidence and drawing conclusions
accordingly.  And, in the example of Basque and Ibero-Romance, this
procedure leads, in virtually every case in which a conclusion can
be drawn, to the conclusion that the word in question is a Romance
word borrowed into Basque.

>  or else perhaps in a "substrate", borrowed into both Ibero-Romance
>  and Basque, but with no reason to prefer this second explanation.
>  As has been pointed out by careful historical linguists,
>  supposed substrates should not be appealed to without direct
>  evidence of their existence, they are a wildcard.

Well, we agree about something.

>  16.  In addition to all the other restrictions, there is an implicit one
>  against verbs, because

>  >1. No ancient Basque verb is monomorphemic.
>  >A native verbal root is a bound morpheme,
>  >and hence no ancient verb will make my list.

>  While there is certainly nothing wrong with Trask seeking
>  the canonical forms of native ancient monomorphemic
>  lexical items, it would be appropriate to join any conclusions
>  drawn with the point that of course no verbs are included at all.
>  So the validity of any conclusion becomes yet again more
>  narrowly limited.

This is a bizarre comment.

Lloyd, I am expressly interested in studying the phonological forms
of Pre-Basque lexical items which are *monomorphemic*.  That's the
objective.  Got that?

Now, it is true that ancient Basque verbs are *never* monomorphemic.
*All* word-forms involving ancient verbs are polymorphemic.
So, verb-forms (and verbs) fail to be included in my study.

Why does this bother you?  And it what sense does this outcome
make my study "yet again more narrowly limited"?

Complaining that a study of monomorphemic lexical items fails
to include polymorphemic verb-forms is rather like complaining
that a study of mammals fails to include fish.  Now isn't it?

>  Trask has been explicit about this fact of Basque verbs
>  this is really a point about evaluating
>  whether the results of Trask's criteria can be representative
>  of an interesting portion of Basque.

Lloyd, I am not concerned here with your definition of "an interesting
portion of Basque", whatever that may be.  I am only concerned with
monomorphemic lexical items.

When I announce clearly that I am interested in studying monomorphemic
lexical items, and nothing else, you have no business complaining
"Hey, Traskie -- you're going badly wrong because you're ignoring
polymorphemic word-forms, which I happen to like."

>  Every restriction of
>  course reduces the range of any conclusions.  The exclusion
>  of verbs also does so, whether specified explicitly or not.

So.  In my study of monomorphemic lexical items, every time I
decide to exclude a class of polymorphemic word-forms, I am being
foolish, and I am ruining the validity of my results.  Uh-huh.

Say, Lloyd -- in your student days, did you do a course in logic?
How did you get on with it?  ;-)

>  It is well known that verbs can have different canonical forms
>  from non-verbs, in some languages, so it is important to point
>  out very prominently this kind of exclusion of verbs,
>  if one is studying canonical forms.
>  I do not wish to claim more on this point than literally just that.

I have already said publicly that ancient Basque verbs are never
monomorphemic and that they will therefore not be included in my list.
Isn't this good enough?

What do you want me to do, Lloyd -- buy air time on CBS? ;-)

>  17.
>  This is in one sense not a new criterion,

Unsurprising, since none of the last 16 was a new criterion, either. ;-)

>  but in another sense it is, and it is convenient to refer to it
>  with a new number.  It is an example of one noted long ago.
>  Range of distribution among dialects should be *relative to* the
>  number of dialects which can be included in the sample.

The number of Basque dialects included in my sample is not one of
the more vexing issues facing me.  I count *all* of them.

>  One reason a dialect cannot be included is that no word was
>  recorded for the concept in question.

But this is no reason for excluding the dialect.  My solution to the
relative paucity of data for the smaller and less well-studied
dialects is to group these with other dialects into larger assemblies,
which I then count as single dialectal entities.

>  Another reason, almost the same one in effect,
>  is that a loanword has replaced whatever the dialect would have
>  had otherwise.

No doubt, but there's nothing I can do about this, so I don't
worry about it.

>  The last point is what makes this item a new item.

Er -- yes, I guess.  So?

>  Trask writes:
>
>  >For example, 'pine tree' is the Latino-Romance loan <pinu>
>  >almost everywhere, while the eastern dialect Roncalese has <ler>
>  >and its neighbor Zuberoan has <leher> in some varieties.
>  >It is highly possible that <leher> ~ <ler> represents an indigenous
>  >word displaced almost everywhere by the loan word,
>  >but I can't be sure of this, and the word does not qualify for
>  >inclusion.

>  Admittedly any item could be better if attested in more rather than
>  fewer dialects, but in this case, the form <leher> ~ <ler>
>  is attested in 100% of the dialects where there is no loanword <pinu>.
>  100% is a rather high number.  Very different from a case in which
>  a non-loanword is attested in place of <pinu>.

Sorry; not so.  The word <pinu>, in its eastern variant <pino>, is
found in Zuberoan as elsewhere.  Only in the southern varieties of
Zuberoan do we find <leher> instead of -- or perhaps alongside;
don't know -- <pino>.

Anyway, I find this reasoning diabolical, I'm afraid.

The Basque word <badia> 'bay' is recorded nowhere but in the local
Bizkaian variety of the town of Lekeitio.  This word is therefore
found in 100% of the local varieties which have it.  So what?

>  The problem of criteria for the "best",
>  but not really meaning the "best", recurs here.

I know perfectly clearly what I mean by "the best candidates".
And a word attested only in one small corner of the country does
not qualify.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk