Pre-Basque phonology (PS)

[Larry Trask]

On Fri, 17 Sep 1999, Roslyn M. Frank wrote:

[on that bear-name <Belis>, possibly ??<beltz> `black']

> True. There isn't much way to determine what exactly the speaker's
> said, whether it was <Beltz> or <Beltza> only the Englishman
> rendered what he heard as <belis>. However I'm not so certain that I
> agree with you that one would expect to encounter <Beltza> as the
> nickname for the animal. I think things may be a bit more
> complicated. Whereas today if a Basque speaker is asked to translate
> a word from English to Basque, s/he will normally do so by attaching
> the former distal demonstrative to the item, i.e., the word appears
> with the suffixing element <-a>.

Yes, this practice is universal among Basque-speakers, except among
those from the far eastern end of the country, where a speaker asked for
(say) `black' will often respond with <beltz>, rather than with the
definite form <beltza> which you will be given everywhere else.

> However, does it follow that this "pseudo" definite article

I don't see anything pseudo- about it.  It's just the article.
For most Basque-speakers, the citation form of a noun or an adjective
includes the article.  French-speakers often do much the same in their
language.

> is used by Basque speakers when creating nicknames for animals and
> people?

In my experience, it more commonly is, though not exceptionlessly so by
any means.  In fact, the use or non-use of the article in these cases is
governed by rules which are at best complex and obscure, if indeed any
rules exist at all.

> And it is commonplace for last names ending in <beltz> to appear as
> <beltz>, e.g., Urbeltz, not *Urbeltza.

Yes, but surnames are a different case, since they were created quite a
few centuries ago, before Basque began to be recorded in texts.  We have
good reason to suppose that the modern omnipresence of the article in
Basque has only developed within the last few centuries.  Picaud's
12th-century glossary, the first piece of relevant written evidence we
have, records some nouns with the article and others without, suggesting
that, at that time, the article was just beginning to be used in
citation forms.  Basque surnames, which probably mostly date from a
period slightly later than the 12th century, likewise show great
variation in the presence or absence of the article.  This is well
illustrated by that most stereotypical of all Basque surnames, which
appears about equally as <Etxeberri> and as <Etxeberria>, `(the) new
house'.

> In the same way <maite> "love" is a commonplace first
> name, not <maitea>.

Ah, but this is a very special case.  The female given name <Maite> is
the usual Basque equivalent of the Spanish name <Maria Teresa>,
resulting from an accidental similarity in form between this name and
the Basque word <maite>, which I would gloss as `beloved', not as
`love'.  If the word <maite> had genuinely been pressed into service as
a given name in its own right, then we would expect it to be the
equivalent of the (rare) Spanish name <Amada>, not of <Maria Teresa>.

> Or, for example, we find <txiki> "little" often
> used as a nickname, not <txikia>.

I agree.  This item, when used as a nickname or as a sobriquet, usually
does not take the article.  But its opposite <handi> `big' usually does:
recall, for example, Pio Baroja's famous fictional character <Xanti
Andia> `Big Jim', in which <(h)andi> takes the article.

Anyway, <beltz> `black', in my experience, usually does take the
article.  The personal name <Nunno Baltza> `Nunno the Black', `Black
Nunno', is frequent in medieval documents, attested as early as 984 and
recurring a number of times in the 11th and 12th centuries.  (The item
<baltz> is the usual western variant of common <beltz>.)

> >From a cognitive perspective, does the creation of nicknames of
> this type tend [in all languages] to respond to the vocative usage?
> If they do, then it would be logical (I think) for the item not to
> carry the <-a> suffix in Euskera. On that note, although the terms
> "lord, sir" will be translated as <jauna>, my friends' mastiff still
> responds to <Jaun>.

I can't comment on what happens in all languages.  But Basque vocatives
are also interesting.  In the modern language, these overwhelmingly
occur with the article, as in <jauna> `sir' (from <jaun>), <andrea>
`madam' (from <andre>), <gizona> `man' (from <gizon>), and so on.  But
there are interesting exceptions: for example, the vocative of <mutil>
`boy' is, in my experience, practically always <mutil>, and not
<mutila>.  Don't ask me why.

[on the spelling of Aquitanian names in Latin texts]

> Further proof that they were attempting to render sounds that were
> foreign to the language they were writing in, although after reading
> recent mailings to the list, I wonder just how many alphabets are as
> faithful to the phonology of the language as in the case of Latin or
> Spanish.

Depends largely on how recently the writing system was invented and
established.  But it's really only the Aquitanian sibilants that show
marked fluctuation in spelling, confirming strongly our independent
conclusion that Pre-Basque had a lot of sibilants, in comparison with
the one of Latin.

> Interesting. Isn't there also the fact that Basque last names often
> include case-endings in them

Sorry; I don't follow.  I'm not aware that a Basque surname ever
contains a case-ending, apart from the genitive <-en>, as in names like
<Mitxelena>, literally `Michael's (place)', and <Harotzarena>, literally
`the smith's (place)', with the `place' understood.  What have you got
in mind? If you're thinking of the very frequent affix <-ko>, found in
all those wonderful surnames like <Goikoetxea>, <Garaikoetxea> and
<Urrutikoetxea>, this is not a case-ending at all, but a relational
(syntactic) suffix.

> and perhaps more so at that time when the notion of a "last name"
> was far less stable and/or formalized? I refer to the fact that
> "last names" frequently refer(red) to geographical locations where
> the Stammhaus was located, i.e., the <baserri>, and as a result the
> individual was identified with the site or location and, hence, the
> need for a genitive ending,

Yes.  Basque surnames are overwhelmingly geographical in origin: they
tell where some ancestor of the name-bearer lived.  This is not
surprising, given the enormous importance of households in traditional
Basque society.  Very few surnames derive from personal characteristics,
and, interestingly, none at all from professions or offices.  Hence we
find lots of names like <Harotzarena> `the smith's (place)', but none at
all like *<Harotz(a)> `(the) smith'.

> although I assume you are talking about other kinds of examples
> where the donor really appears to have been bilingual (not just
> repeating the genitive ending on an already existing name), a bit
> like the trilingual author of the _Glosas Emilienses_ (a source of
> very early examples of Castillian) who wrote notes to himself in the
> margins in his native tongue, Euskera, while translating the Latin
> text into Castillian. It's interesting how many times this document
> is discussed in canonical histories of the Spanish language but
> without any mention of the marginal notes that are clearly visible
> in reproductions of the manuscript. H'mmmmm.

True. The Emilian Glosses are far more celebrated among Vasconists than
among Hispanists, even though they provide the first written record of
both Basque and (I believe) Castilian.  But then Castilian begins to be
abundantly recorded shortly afterward, while Basque doesn't.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk