Basque <-ar>, <-(t)ar>

[Larry Trask]

On Sun, 28 Mar 1999, roslyn frank wrote:

[Rick Mc]

> >Does Basque -ar have a connection with Spanish -ar/-al?

[ moderator snip ]

> I don't know what the answer is to your question. Nor do I know how this
> ending is explained in Romance languages (I assume it appears in other
> ones). But I would like to ask Larry the following. In reference to what
> you say above, do you mean to infer, therefore, that there are/were once
> two suffixes in Euskera both spelled <-ar> but with different meanings?
> Or that they might be (have been) related?

OK.  First, Basque has a very frequent suffix <-(t)ar>, which is
attested, I think, in only one function: the creation of ethnonymics.
As a rule, we find <-tar> after a consonant and <-ar> after a vowel, but
there are exceptions.  Examples: <donostiar> `(person) from Donostia' (a
city); <zarauztar> `(person) from Zarautz' (a town).  In the usual
Basque fashion, the form is <-dar> after /n/ or /l/: hence <irundar>
`(person) from Irun' (a town).  We also find <-tiar> or <-liar> on
occasion, somewhat curiously.

It is widely suspected, but not established, that this suffix derives
from one or both of the Latin suffixes <-aris> and <-arius> -- more
likely the first, if anything, since <-arius> appears clearly to be the
source of the Basque professional suffix <-ari> (and variants), as in
<merkatari> `merchant', from <merkatu> `market', and <pilotari>
`jai-alai player', from <pilota> `jai-alai'.  The development of the
variant <-tar> from <-ar> would not be unusual in Basque.

A complication is that <-(t)ar> appears to be present in the compound
suffix <-(t)arzun>, which corresponds to English `-ness', and whose
second element appears to be shared with the noun-forming suffix
<-kizun>.  This <-(t)arzun> remains in the east, but has developed
regularly to <-(t)asun> in the west, as in <edertasun> `beauty', from
<eder> `beautiful'.  It is far from clear what an ethnonymic should be
doing in a suffix forming abstract nouns.

> I am referring to the fact that the suffixing particle <-ar/-tar> is
> alive and well in Euskera. However, to my knowledge its meaning is not
> precisely that of a "collective suffix" and it clearly is not
> "fossilized" in any sense of the word. I'm thinking of the <-ar> of
> expressions like <iltzear> (from <il-tze-ar> "on the verge of death" or
> the common use of <-ar/-tar> to refer to "someone or something from a
> given place (with no gender or animacy/inanimacy specified), "oriundo
> de", e.g., <Bilbotar> "someone from Bilbao." Certainly the same particle
> also seems to shows up occasionally as a suffix on free-standing
> root-stems, in contrast to the examples that you give where (at least
> today) there is no free-standing root-stem. At the moment none of the
> former examples come to mind (I don't have my files here), but, as I
> recall, their referentiality might be closer to what you are trying to
> get at with the above.

The <-ar> that appears in <hiltzear> `on the point of death', from
<hiltze> `death', is functionally distinct from all other suffixes, and
it is of unknown origin.  Nobody knows if it has any connection with any
other suffix of similar form.

The item I was talking about is functionally and formally distinct from
all the others, and its reality is not certain.  The point is that
Basque has a sizeable number of nouns which end in a morph <-ar> and
which denote things commonly encountered in bunches.  This has led some
people to suggest that *<-ar> might be an ancient collective suffix, now
fossilized in some nouns, like <izar> `star' and <negar> `tears'.  Only
in a couple of cases is there a plausible attested source for such a
derivative: <habe> `tree' and <abar> `branch(es)', <ondo> `residue' and
<ondar> `residue'.  We simply don't know whether the proposed collective
*<-ar> is real or merely a chimaera.  In any case, this *<-ar>, if it
ever existed, never seems to surface as *<-tar>.

> Nonetheless, to my knowledge, in Euskera this last ending is never used
> to create collective abstractions of the type "apple-grove". As you well
> know, to construct those abstractions the suffix regularly used (today)
> is <-di/-ti>.

Agreed, of course: in the historical period, <-di> has been the
productive suffix for constructing collective nouns for plant-names.
The proposed *<-ar>, if it ever existed, must have been far earlier, and
there is no evidence that such a morph was ever used with plant-names in
any systematic way.

> Since we already have the suffixing element <-ar> "male" occupying this
> slot, to add a third member would make for a pretty crowded closet....
> In other words, do you see the possibility that <-ar/-tar> mentioned
> above might be connected in some way to the "fossilized" ending you are
> discussing?

Yes, <ar> `male', whose existence is beyond dispute, frequently
functions as a final element in compounds, as in <katar> `tomcat', from
<katu> `cat'.  But I see no reason to relate this item to any of the
preceding.

On the whole, I can't see any reason to suppose that our hypothetical
collective suffix *<-ar> is related to the ethnonymic <-(t)ar>.

It should be pointed out that Pre-Basque had a modest phoneme inventory,
with severe restrictions on phonotactics and on morpheme structure.
There were relatively few forms which were well-formed (pronounceable)
in Pre-Basque, and the typically monosyllabic suffixes exhibit little
variety of form.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk