Basque <(h)anka> (was Re: Hittite <hurkis>/wheel)

[roslyn frank]

At 04:35 PM 2/27/00 +0000, Larry Trask wrote:

[snip]

>All but the westernmost dialects of Basque have a word <(h)anka> 'haunch',
>and also 'buttocks', 'leg', 'paw', 'foot' in places.  This word is regarded by
>all Vasconists as a loan from Romance.

>A certain long-ranger has recently been interested in finding evidence of a
>genetic link between Basque and the two North Caucasian families.  He has
>noted that Basque <(h)anka> looks quite a bit like something in Caucasian, and
>he therefore denies the loan status of <(h)anka>, insisting that the word
>must be native and ancient in Basque, and therefore cognate with the Caucasian
>item.  How can we reply to him?

>Well, the problem is that cluster /nk/.  This was indeed perfectly normal in
>Pre-Basque.  But, in the early medieval period, Basque underwent a categorical
>phonological change, in all but the easternmost dialects, by which plosives
>were uniformly voiced after /n/.

>For example, the Latin word <incude(m)> 'anvil', which was borrowed early
>into Basque, appears today as <ingude> in all but the easternmost dialects.

>Likewise, the native adverb-forming suffix <-ki> appears today as <-gi> after
>/n/.  For example, <eder> 'beautiful' forms <ederki> 'beautifully', but <on>
>'good' forms <ongi> 'well' in all but the easternmost dialects, which alone
>preserve <onki>.

>Now, the word in question is *everywhere* <(h)anka> in Basque, and no such
>form as *<(h)anga> is recorded anywhere.  Therefore, the very form of the word
>is enough to *prove* that it was not in the language at the time of the
>change, and must have entered the language later -- from whatever source.

>As it happens, we know the source: it is the very widespread Romance <anca>
>'haunch', with regular regional developments like French <hanche>, all
>ultimately from a Frankish *<hanka>.

>But, even if we didn't know the source, the form of the word would tell us at
>once that this is a late entry into the Basque lexicon, and therefore probably
>a borrowing.

There does seem to be a good case that could be made for <(h)anka> being
related to the French/Romance forms mentioned above and consequently a
recent borrowing. But what is one to make of the Basque word <zango>
(<zanga-> in composition) that means 'leg, foot, calf' and its phonological
variant in <zanko, zankho> (<zanka-> in composition) with the same
meanings? Are we to assume that 1) it that isn't related in anyway to
<(h)anka>; 2) that Euskera borrowed a French form and then added a sibilant
to it; 3) that Euskera has two totally unrelated words, one borrowed and
the other native; or 4) that Euskera has two words, one clearly a recent
borrowing and yet another that derives from a deeper layer, i.e., a western
European substrate that gave rise to the Romance items as well. If one were
to choose the fourth alternative, it would provide a slightly different
source for the Old French <haunche> and one wouldn't have to rely only on
an unattested Germanic/Frankish form, but rather there would also be an
amply attested word field available for comparative purposes in Euskera.

Finally, there is another aspect of <zanka-> that I've always found
curious. Although metaphoric conventions can pass from one language to
another, much as lexical loans do, at times the metaphors call attention to
themselves. For example, in Euskera the Labourdin expression <zango-arraba>
is defined as  'pantorrila/mollet/calf of the leg'. However, since in
Euskera <arraba> actually means 'fish roe' there is an explicit connection
made between 'fish roe' and 'calf of the leg'. This same metaphor occurs in
Russian and Dutch among the Indo-European languages, while in the
Finno-Ugric languages the examples are very abundant. According to Otto J.
Von Sadovszky (_Fish, Symbol and Myth: A Historical Semantic
Reconstruction_ Budapest/Los Angeles 1995: 3), "there is no equation
between the two items ['fish roe' and 'calf of the leg'] in any of the
Romance or Celtic languages, and geographically the closest [to Euskera],
where it occurs, are [the] Dutch, Slavic and Finno-Ugrian languages".

In terms of the analogy, obviously we are speaking of the way that the
shape of the muscle in the calf moves under the skin, the way it suggests
the form of an egg-laden ovary of a fish. Or at least that would be my
interpretation of this analogy. Again it suggests familiarity with, if not
direct knowledge, of the gestation cycle of fish, as well as the fact that
the eggs in question might have been a source of food for the name-givers.
Stated differently, we might argue that the metaphor in question would be
typical of a people familiar with harvesting fish such as sturgeon and
salmon, for example, as opposed, say, to populations occupying a steppe or
desert zone. Here I am only pointing out the sort of information that one
might derive from finding such a metaphor in the lexicon of a given language.

As I said, metaphoric conventions can arise independently or pass from
language to language. In the case of the expression <zango-arraba>, while
the use of this metaphor doesn't necessarily attest to the antiquity of the
word <zango>, it does suggest that we are dealing with a type of
association that is attested in other languages, most abundantly in
Finno-Ugric languages.

Roz Frank