cebolla/tipula/kipula

[Larry Trask]

Rick Mc Callister writes:

>       In Lapesa's Historia de la lengua española I came across
>  Basque tipula, kipula "onion" < cepulla
>  The Spanish form is cebolla

>       The question is why tipula?
>       Was it borrowed at a time when /ke-, ki-/ was in the process of
>  changing to /ce-, ci-/>? and both pronunciations were in use i.e. *kepulla,
>  *cepulla
>       Was the word borrowed from 2 different dialects of Romance? or at
>  two different times by different dialects of basque?
>       Or did /ki-/ > /ti-/ occur later in Basque?

The answer to the last question is "no".

This fluctuation in the place of an initial plosive is not normal
in Basque, and the word for 'onion' appears to be unique in exhibiting
this particular variation.  The traditional view, still taken seriously
today, is that the word was borrowed at a time when the Romance
palatalization was well advanced, and that the unfamiliar Romance
[kj-] was variously rendered by the Basques as [k-] or as [t-].
But nobody really knows, and other interpretations are possible.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

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