Basque butterflies again (final)

[Larry Trask]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Roz Frank writes:

>  Returning now to the discussion concerning the possible relationship
>  between the Basque and Spanish (Castilian) items. First we should note that
>  it is well known that Moliner (1966:I, 373) and others (I don't have
>  Corominas at hand) derive <bicho> from Vulgar Latin <bestius> and Clas.
>  Lat. <bestia>. Yet there does seem to be room to question whether the
>  Basque term <bitxi/pitxi> might not have played some role also, in the
>  development of the Romance item.

Possible, certainly, but doubtful.  The problem, as always, is that Romance
influence upon Basque has been immense, while influences in the other direction
are few and mostly confined to local Romance varieties in direct contact with
Basque.

There is another point that needs to be made clear.  Like Basque, Romance has
its own expressive formations, including its own expressive stems and its own
patterns of expressive formation.  Some of these are clearly shared with
Basque.  In most cases, this arises because Romance forms and patterns have
diffused into Basque.  A good example is the Romance stem <coco(-)>, meaning
something like 'large round object', which occurs in a number of formations and
is even present in the source of our own 'coconut'.  This stem has diffused
into Basque, where it serves to derive several terms pertaining to the head.

When Basque shares something with Romance, we must always take Romance
influence on Basque as the default view, and we can only consider the reverse
direction when there is good evidence for it.  That's just reality.

>  Indeed, when I learned Spanish, my
>  understanding of <bicho> was that it referred to any sort of (small)
>  flying/creeping insect. It was used by metaphoric (ironic) extension, in my
>  opinion, to apply to large animals, e.g., a horse or cow. Again, I
>  emphasize that that was the way that I learned the expression from those
>  around me.

Sure, but Basque <bitxi> does not have anything to do with creepy-crawlies.

>  Furthermore, the extension of a word meaning "butterfly" to a class of
>  "flying insects" or to some other kind of flying objects that look like
>  more or less like butterflies would not be unusual, particularly if
>  speakers were no longer able to disambiguate the components of the compound
>  in question.

But I know of no evidence for such a semantic development in Basque, and I
don't know of much evidence for it in Romance, either.

As for the alleged compounds, I stress again that the Basque words are *not*
compounds, and indeed have no identifiable morphological structure at all.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk