Pre-Basque phonology (fwd)

[Larry Trask]

On Mon, 27 Sep 1999, Eduard Selleslagh wrote:

[on the possibility of Basque <ke> `smoke' from Greek <kapno's>]

> Your second remark about the initial K-: maybe it should not exist,
> but it does. Maybe it's that what points to it being a loan.

The difficulty is that initial /k-/ should have come into early Basque
as /g-/.  Note, for example, Latin <colum> `distaff', which appears in
Basque as <goru>.

> That depends on when it entered Basque.

In order to yield the observed <ke>, the word would have had to enter
Basque rather late -- well after the Roman period.  And what source
could there have been?

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk