Basque butterflies (and phonemes) again

[roslyn frank]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

At 05:12 PM 1/24/00 +0000, Larry Trask wrote:

[LT]

>In Hualde's alternative view, initial */b d g/ in Pre-Basque had facultative
>voicing: that is, they could be realized, indifferently, either as [b d g] or
>as [p t k] -- "indifferently", because there was no contrast of voicing in
>word-initial plosives in Pre-Basque.  So far, this view is not significantly
>different from M's view, but now comes the difference.  Hualde proposes that,
>because of this facultative voicing, Pre-Basque word-initial */b d g/
>sometimes develop into modern /b d g/ but sometimes into modern /p t k/.  In
>other words, he reckons, one or the other voicing possibility was selected
>arbitrarily for each word, with some words receiving both treatments in
>different parts of the country.

Larry, what you describe Hualde as proposing doesn't seem to coincide with
the contents of the paper that I read. As you may recall, the last time you
paraphrased Hualde's position, saying that he argued that Pre-Basque had
facultative voicing, Hualde himself wrote a response to the list. Yet I
notice that you are repeating the same thing again here. So I'm confused.

Here is the rrelevant passage from an earlier exchange between the two of
us that you sent to the list on Mon. 13 Sept 1999. I had already read
Hualde's book on Basque phonology and I was asking you to clarify what you
meant when you presented Hualde's position as one of believing that the
voicing of initial plosives was "facultative".

> [LT]

>> Hualde has since developed his position in an article.  In fact, he does
>> not challenge Michelena's reconstructed phoneme system at all.  Rather,
>> he proposes to assign different phonetic features to the proto-phonemes.
>> In particular, while he agrees with Michelena that Pre-Basque had no
>> voicing contrasts in word-initial plosives, he believes that the voicing
>> of initial plosives was facultative, rather than phonetically
>> consistent.

[RF]
> Could you explain a bit more what is meant by the term "facultative" as
> opposed to "phonetically consistent" by giving a few examples?

LT]
Well, facultative variation is free variation: a speaker may choose
either variant freely, and it makes no difference.

Michelena's reconstructed Pre-Basque plosive system is */(p) t k b d g/,
where the symbols should not be taken too literally: they are chosen to
represent the usual modern reflexes of the segments.  (Note that */p/
was rare at best.)  The two series, "fortis" */p t k/ and "lenis" */b d
g/, contrasted only word-medially and mostly only intervocalically.
Elsewhere the contrast was neutralized, and word-initially only the
lenis plosives appeared.  In M's view, lenis */b d g/ have generally
developed into modern /b d g/, and hence ancient words generally do not
begin with any of /p t k/ (from */p t k/), unless some identifiable
process has intervened to bring about such a result.

But Hualde's view is that word-initial */b d g/ were facultatively
voiced: that is, speakers sometimes realized them as voiced [b d g], but
at other times as voiceless [p t k], in an indifferent manner.
******************

And in response to LT's statements cited above Hualde sent the following to
the list on Mon 16 1999:

[JIH]

Good morning everyone. I hope I am allowed to post this message, even
though I am not a member of this list. Dale Hartkemeyer has forwarded me
two or three recent messages regarding the ancient Basque plosives and I
would like to be given the opportunity to clarify my position, since it has
been the subject of some exchanges.

The problem of the ancient Basque plosves, as stated by Martinet and
others before him, can be summarized as follows: " How come  Basque, which
has a robust opposition between voiceless and voiced oral stops in
intervocalic position, shows a much weaker contrast in word-initial
position?" From Martinet's structuralist standpoint this is a problem
because the word-initial position is supposed to be the one where the
greatest number of contrasts is found in any language. To solve this
problem, Martinet made up a story that has to do with an ancient contrast
between fortis and lenis stops which was later somehow replaced by the
modern voiced/voiceless contrast. Michelena adopts a version of this
hypothesis, which has become the standard account.

My view is different. Basque differs from most languages presenting
assimilation in voice across morpheme- and word-boundaries in that it is
the morpheme- or word-initial consonant that assimilates to the preceding
morpheme- or word-final one, instead of the other way round. So in Basque
/s+d/ becomes [st], etc., whereas in, say, Spanish, /s+d/ becomes [zd].
E.g. the initial /d/ of <dator> "s/he is coming" becomes /t/ in [estator]
"s/he is not coming", [menditi(k)tator] "s/he is coming from the mountain",
etc. Or, to give you another example, whereas <buru> "head"starts with a
/b/, the same morpheme starts with /p/ in, say, [ajspuru] "stone head".
Nowadays, there is little chance that Basque speakers will identify initial
[p] and [b] as allophonic variants,  bacause of (a) their familiarity with
Spanish or French and (b) because the assimilation rule tends to apply only
in restricted phrasal contexts. BUT assuming that this assimilation applied
more frequently in the past (as  Michelena also assumes) it stands to
reason that if <tator> and <dator>, <buru> and <puru>, and so on for lots
of plosive-initial words, are variants of the same word in different
phonological context, this would inevitably lead towards a merger of the
voiced and voiceless oral stops in morpheme- and word-initial position
(where the alternation is found) but not morpheme-internally. End of the
story. The more complicated Martinet-Michelena hypothesis (which in
addition requires an unexplained transformation from ancient to modern
Basque) is, in my view, simply not needed and has no serious evidence in
its favor. Thanks for allowing me to clarify my position.
****************

Are we talking about a terminological problem? I mean when you use the term
"facultative" does it correspond to what Hualde describes. In other words,
does the following sentence by you mean the same thing or infer the same
thing that Hualde has stated?

>Pre-Basque had facultative voicing: that is, they could be realized,
>indifferently, either as [b d g] or as [p t k] -- "indifferently",

Stated differently, and please excuse me if I'm being obtuse, can the terms
"facultative" and "indifferently" be used to refer to a situation in which
the voicing is conditioned by certain phonological constraints, i.e., that
the voicing was phonological consistent when those constraints were
present. Could it be that you are saying the same thing as Hualde but I
don't understand the terminology that you are using.

Confused,
Roz