Hualde's view

[Eduard Selleslagh]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>
Sent: Sunday, February 06, 2000 3:32 PM

[snip]
> I'm afraid that if Hualde is serious about the "merger", his
> explanation is not only not simpler, but leaves more things
> unexplained.  In the first place, there are a good many
> indications that Pre-Pre-Basque initial **p-, **t- and **k- had
> simply been dropped (sometimes leaving an aspiration), as in the
> well-known cases of *karr- > harri "stone", Aquitanian Talsc- ~
> Halsc-, morpheme variants such as -tegi ~ -egi "house, place"
> (maybe connected to Bq. etxe "house" < teg(i) + -xe (dim.)), etc.
> But one can dispute or dismiss this evidence.

[Ed]
A few remarks:

-In Iberian toponyms e.g. there is a root kal- that might be related to *karr-,
a root that seems to be widespread in the Mediterranean area (cf. e.g.
Carrara).
-Iberian too, has apparently this opposition t- <> zero-, like in Ibi-Tibi,
eban-teban.
-Etxe could be derived from **tetxe, itself maybe < **tekte < IE root, like in
Lat. tectum (and Du. dak), or else be related to (not necessarily derived, e.g.
in N. Catalonia, from) Grk. the:ke:.

This is not to say I disagree with what you said.

> More seriously, a merger of voiced/unvoiced segments in initial
> position, while in itself acceptable for the cases of **k-/**g- >
> *g-, **p-/**b- > *b-, and (not sure how Hualde wants to interpret
> these) **ts-/*s- > *z-, *ts'-/*s'- > *s-, leads to more problems
> than Mitxelena's account already has in the case of supposed
> **t-/**d- > *d-.  The problem is that there are no Pre-Basque
> words beginning with *d-.  Hualde's merger doubles the problem of
> the missing initial dental, and fails to explain the
> superabundance of vowel-initial words.

> Another fact which contradicts the merger of voiced ~ voicedless
> stops in morpheme initial position is the phonological make-up of
> verbal roots, which can start with contrasting b-, d-, t-, g- and
> k- (e-man (*e-ban), e-dan, e-torr-i, e-gin, e-karr-i) [only *p-
> seems to missing, except as a variant of *b, as in ipini ~ ibeni
> "to put"].

[Ed]
Taken together with your p-t-k- loss theory (which looks plausible in view of
the abnormal number of vowel-initial words) this would mean that verb-initial
e- might go back to *ke-. Since the Basque 'infinitives' are actually
participles (the reverse of mod. Grk.), we come close to Germanic ge- (and Lat.
co-???) again. Maybe Gmc. ge- IS a non-IE substrate vestige.

> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal

Ed. Selleslagh