Long monomorphemic Basque words

[ECOLING at aol.com]

Trask writes:

> I am only interested in monomorphemic words, and
>monomorphemic words tend to be short, while long words tend to be
>polymorphemic, in Basque as in all the languages I know anything about.

>Consequently, Lloyd's objection could only constitute a problem for me
>in the following scenario:

>   Pre-Basque had lots of long monomorphemic words as well as short
>   ones, but, for some reason, the long monomorphemic words have been
>   generally lost from the language, while the short ones have
>   preferentially survived.

>And I don't see this as a plausible scenario.

When reworded slightly, I find it highly plausible indeed.

It is not that the long monomorphemic words have been generally lost,
it is that Trask's criteria exclude them from his considering them as
early Basque (this has been discussed in many other messages, one a
cumulation of 9 ways in which his criteria might usefully be modified).

It is one respect in which the totality of Trask's criteria embody a bias
against certain vocabulary
not justified by careful linguistic methodology.

Under Larry Trask's criteria for inclusion in his data set,
some polysyllabic monomorphemic words, a set which would
generally include all but the most common expressives,
are disproportionately disfavored for written records
because of their meanings.

Although "txitxi" 'chick' is perhaps recorded early
(Trask did not say otherwise in his message dealing with it),
Trask says it sticks out a mile.
I assume he means the two voiceless stops,
and the voiceless stop initial.

Words for 'butterfly' probably were also not recorded early,
among many others.

Some of those for 'butterfly' are monomorphemic,
at least under the sensible understanding that the
so-called reduplication is not a separate morpheme
unless some word exists with it removed, rather
the reduplication is a part of the shape of the root of
a number of expressive words.  Half of a reduplicated
form is not a functioning morpheme in such cases.
Trask has argued that the endings of some of these words,
such as /-leta/ etc. are not suffixes, not analyzable
as productive Basque morphemes.  If so, the forms are
monomorphemic.

I do not in this message deal with the question whether
the forms in question are reconstructible back to early Basque,
that is a different question from whether they are
monomorphemic.

Lloyd