Excluding data

[Larry Trask]

On Sun, 5 Sep 1999, Jon Patrick wrote:

> Lloyd Anderson's message of 19th Aug expresses, much better that I
> could, the method I intend to apply in the study of early BAsque.
> For me the key factor is to present a record of ALL words available
> for analysis and record HOW I can classify them. In the case of
> sound imitative words it is important to retain them in the database
> and show how their phonological profile as a class is similar or not
> to non-imitative words.

But, in order to do that, you must first have some independent criterion
for distinguishing imitative words from others.  What do you propose?

> In keeping with my last message I find the
> idea of excluding data because they don't conform to someone's
> particular expectation about the data inappropriate in trying to
> produce a generalised stochastic profile of the language.

First, I myself am not trying to produce a generalized stochastic
profile of the language, and hence chiding me for going about my own
quite different task in a way that is not suitable for your task is
entirely inappropriate.

Second, I repeat yet again that I am *not* excluding any data because
they don't fit my expectations.  I am excluding data for entirely
different reasons, reasons that are independent of my expectations and,
in my view, entirely justified for the task I have in mind.  For
example, the universal word <ke> `smoke' definitely does not fit my
expectations, but I have to include it anyway, because it satisfies all
of my criteria.

> In basque we have the word for the sound of the heartbeat as <taup>
> and the word for heartbeat as <taupa> as reported to me by native
> speakers.

Of course.  But this word is not general in Basque.  It is more or less
confined to the center of the country, being restricted, as far as I can
determine, to the Gipuzkoan dialect and to adjoining parts of the
Bizkaian dialect.  It appears to be unknown in the French Basque
Country, unrecorded in the Pyrenean dialects and in High Navarrese, and
not general in the Bizkaian dialect.  Furthermore, the word is only
first recorded, in the form of its derivative <taupada>, in 1888.

On top of this, the word violates at least four of the
morpheme-structure constraints which are generally obeyed by words
meeting my criteria:

(1) No initial voiceless plosive;
(2) No initial coronal plosive;
(3) No final plosive;
(4) No final labial.

All this is highly consistent with the conclusion that <taup> is a
recent innovation in Basque, of strictly imitative origin, confined to
the center of the country.

To the best of my knowledge, the earliest recorded Basque word for
`heartbeat' is <ola>, though even this dates back only to 1750.  This
word is not phonologically unusual in any way at all.

The word <ola> still finds some use in the French Basque Country, but
today the most usual word for `heartbeat' there is <pilpira> ~ <pirpira>
~ <pilpiri>, often with the Romance-derived suffix <-dura>; this word is
recorded no earlier than 1880, and it too has a form which marks it off
plainly as an expressive formation of no great antiquity.

> My suggestion here is that potential sound symbolic words
> are so close to the actually words for natural elements that their
> usage in an analysis of early basque is potentially vitally
> important to understanding the phonological structure of the
> language.

But all the evidence points to the conclusion that the word <taup> *did
not exist* in early Basque.  How, then, can it possibly shed any light
on the phonology of early Basque?

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk