Pre-Basque phonology (fwd)

[Eduard Selleslagh]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Even though it may no longer be relevant, I wonder if this message ever got
sent.

[ Moderator's note:
  I've checked the incoming archives; this message was never received before.
  --rma ]

-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Trask <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
To: Indo-European at xkl.com <Indo-European at xkl.com>
Date: Friday, September 24, 1999 4:20 AM
Subject: Re: Pre-Basque phonology (fwd)


[snip]
>As far back as we can reconstruct, the best choice is an original
>*<aho>.  The origin of this is beyond our powers of recovery.

[Ed Selleslagh]

What about Lat. <anu-> (o-stem), which has a basic meaning of 'ring/ring
shaped'? The semantic proximity seems obvious, like the association of the
letter O with an open mouth.

Intervocalic -n- > -h- or -zero- is common in Basque (The latter also is in
Galician/Portuguese: Lisbona > Lisboa, and not only for -n-: Salavedra >
Saavedra [Oldhall], palacio > paço).

[snip]

>[on Basque <sei> `six']

>> But I think in another venue you argued that <sei> was a loan word
>> in Euskera.

>No, I did not.  Quite the contrary: I have several times argued
>*against* the proposal, put forward by several other people, that <sei>
>is borrowed from Romance.  The problem is the phonology.  The Latin for
>`six' was /seks/, and all the descendants of this in Romance varieties
>in contact with Basque have a final sibilant, as far as I know, as in
>Castilian /seis/ and French /sis/.  Now, when Basque borrows a Latin or
>Romance word containing a final sibilant, it *always* renders that
>sibilant with some sibilant of its own, without exception.  So, Latin
>/seks/ should have produced a Basque *<zetz> or something similar, while
>Castilian /seis/ should have produced a Basque *<seits> if borrowed
>early or *<seis> if borrowed late.  But the only Basque form recorded
>anywhere is <sei>, and hence I conclude that a borrowing from Latin or
>Romance is impossible.

[Ed]

Maybe it was a very early loan from a pre-Roman/Latin local Italic (or
Celtiberian?)?

Remember two things:
1. Lusitanian (Cabeço das Fraguas) looks a lot like Q-Italic.

2. 'six' is 'sei' in Italian, wich is also from Latin, like 'seis' in
Castilian. Of course, Italian was not in contact with Basque (unless some late
Romans already spoke something that began to look like it), but some northern
Italic, or maybe Celtic (but in any case IE, like Cantabrian??), language may
have been.

So, even though Romance must probably be excluded, it may still be a loan from
a related local language. Unfortunately, we know very little about most

Ed.