Basque butterflies again (again)

[roslyn frank]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

At 10:47 AM 1/25/00 +0000, Larry Trask wrote:

>Roz Frank writes:
[RF]

>> I would note that in addition to its meaning of "butterfly", Azkue (I:173)
>> lists <pitxilote> (B) with the meaning of "daisy" ("margarita de los
>> prados") while <pitxoleta> refers simultaneously to the following three
>> objects: a butterfly, a daisy and a poppy.

[LT]

>Yes.  A point I refrained from making in my earlier postings is this: a single
>Basque expressive formation often has a rather startling array of quite
>different senses, sometimes in a single variety, but more commonly, perhaps,
>in different varieties.  This is yet another characteristic which
>distinguishes expressive formations, even if not entirely sharply, from
>ordinary lexical items, which on the whole do not exhibit such a range of
>unrelated meanings.

[snip]

[RF]
>> In what are now non-Basque speaking zones of Navarre we find evidence for
>> the prior existence in the Basque of the zone for <mitxingorri>
>> (<*bitxi/pitxi(n)-gorri> from <gorri> "red"). Jose Maria Iribarren (1984)
>> records this expression, spelling it as <michingorri> and listing its
>> meaning as "poppy". The compound might be glossed as "pretty little red
>> thing".

[snip]

[LT]
>But the lesson I draw is again that these formations are, in general, neither
>ancient nor long-lived, nor even stable in form and meaning.

[snip]

>>  [LT]

>>> I therefore conclude that Lloyd's efforts at linking some of the Basque
>>> words to words in other languages (and also to one another) are without
>>> foundation.  The Basque 'butterfly' words are numerous and severely
>>> localized; they conform strongly to observed patterns for coining
>>> expressive formations; and they can scarcely be of any antiquity.

[LT]

>Well, I stand by these words, and I think the point raised above by Roz
>(multiple unrelated senses for individual formations) constitutes evidence in
>favor of my position.

Well I guess that one can draw quite different inferences/conclusions from
the same data. The point I tried to make throughout my previous discussion
was precisely the opposite of "the lesson" that Larry drew from it, namely,
that the referentiality of the items discussed was, indeed, motivated.
Stated differently, a compound expression such as <mitxingorri> 'poppy'
cited above seems to me to be fully motivated by its component parts:
*<bitxi/pitxi> 'pretty, little, lively', derived from <bizi> in its
palatalized form, and <gorri> 'red' (cf. Agud & Tovar 1991, III, 34; Azkue
for derivations of <bitxi/pitxi> from <bixi>). And you yourself stated in a
previous email, if I am not mistaken, that you agreed with Ed that the
origin of <bitxi/pitxi> in compounds meaning "butterfly" could be traced
back to <bizi>, although in your first message you didn't mention
explicitly that it was the palatalized/diminutive form of <bizi> that
appears to have given rise to this formation.

Hence, if <bitxi/pitxi> has a clear etymology, it does not follow that to
use the same term in a compound to refer to a butterfly, a daisy and a
poppy would demonstrate "multiple unrelated senses" for an individual
formation, quite the opposite, for the three objects would be projected as
analogically similar; metaphorically the same, if you wish. To refer to a
colorful flower fluttering in the wind and a colorful butterfly with the
same term isn't any less motivated, in my opinion, than referring to the
front end of a rocket as a 'nose-cone', or to a kite as a 'cerf-volant'.
It's simply a demonstration of the capacity homo sapiens sapiens have for
analogical thinking (cf. Lakoff, Turner, Johnson, et. al.)

What is less clear, however, is how one ought to go about explaining the
etymology of the second element *<-leta>, assuming, of course, that it is,
indeed, derived from what was once a meaningful suffixing element in the
language, perhaps a compound one (as opposed to being merely an
"expressive" ending). To examine the question in depth, one would need a
listing of all words in Basque ending in *<-leta> and then, after examining
them, attempt to see whether any sort of a pattern of meaning could be
detected, particularly if one were to view *<-leta> as a compound suffix.

Today there is no evidence in Basque for a productive suffix in *<-leta>,
as Larry has rightfully pointed out. However, if *<-leta> is viewed as a
compound suffix in *<-le-eta> things begin to look rather different. This
approach to the data would posit *<-le-eta> as a compound suffix that was
once productive in the language but no longer is and, hence, it is
encountered only as a fossilized suffix in compounds such as *<pitxileta>.

In favor of this thesis/hypothesis one could muster the following facts.
First, it should be noted that <-eta> itself is not in any way an uncommon
suffix in Basque where it confers the notion of a "collective" or "abstract
extension" to the root-stem (e.g., <lapur> 'thief, to thieve' becomes
<lapurreta> 'theft; the act of thieving' [and, yes, <-eta> has a variant in
<(k)-eta>). It shows up in compounds that are a bit harder to translate
into English, e.g., <gogoeta> (sg.) '(processes involved in) thought,
thinking, desiring, remembering', from <gogo> 'memory, desire,
consciousness, thought'. In <gogoeta> the notion <gogo> is conceptualized
in terms of an "abstract extension" of <gogo>, i.e., an abstraction or
concept derived from the meaning of the root-stem.  At other times <-eta>
appears to refer to the place where X or an abundance of X is found,
<elorrieta> 'a place characterized by hawthorns, a hawthorn grove'.

Furthermore as Larry and others have pointed out, the same suffix of <-eta>
is used as the marker of grammatical plurality in the oblique cases.
Indeed, this along with other aspects of <-eta> suggest that it existed in
the language before the system acquired the concept of singular/plural
contrast which is now has. The evidence suggests that previously this
suffix had a slightly different function in the noun phrase (or lexical
chain) than it does today. More work needs to be done on Basque along the
lines of what Lucy (1992) did for Yucatec Mayan since in Basque the marking
for number  (as singular and plural) appears to be a relatively recent and
not fully consolidated phenomenon as demonstrated by certain aspects of the
morpho-syntactic structure of the language, e.g., <-eta> as a suffixing
element still crops up with its older meaning and it has even been
suggested that <eta> in its modern meaning of 'and' is etymologically
linked to the same entity.  For example, today it is not particularly
unusual to find a sentence in a novel or book of essays that begins with
<Mikel'eta> (or 'Mikel-eta') and this expression is understood to refer to
'Michael and (the rest)' or it might be glossed as 'the collection of
Michael'; as 'Michael in his extended form'. It's not all that easy to
render the Basque meaning into English. Stated differently, there is every
reason to believe that the suffix <-eta> shouldn't be considered the new
kid on the block, rather it would seem that it dates back to
morpho-syntactic structures found in Pre-Basque.

And in the case of <-le>, it, too, is quite common in Basque being an
agentive suffix (does it have another name?), regularly used with verbal
stems to refer to 'actors', e.g., from the non-finite verbal form <i-kus-i
'to see', one constructs <ikus-le> 'spectator'; it can also be added to
non-verbal stems where the compound takes on the same meaning, i.e., of an
'agent' or 'actor', even when the compound refers to a non-animate entity.
For instance, from the same root-stem, i.e., <bitz/pitz-> based in turn on
a palatalized form of <bizi>, we have <phiz-le> 'that which lights,
animates, illuminates, enlivens, brings to life; brings about conception'
(Azkue II, 174) where <phizle> demonstrates a totally normal compounding
process. Also, it is clearly related to <bizi> 'to live; to be alive',
e.g., we have examples of <biztu> and even one document, Leizarraga's
translation of the New Testament, in which <viztu> appears (cf. Agud &
Tovar III, 147). Again, there is no reason to assume that <-le> is a recent
addition to the language.

Compounds, such as <biztu> are of interest for another reason since they
show that non-finite verbs such as <bizi> can be utilized to form new verbs
by the addition of the verbalizing suffix <-tu>. In the case of <biztu>,
the final /i/ is lost in the compound. And as we have seen, the palatalized
form of <bizi> went on to become a free-standing form, i.e., <bitxi/pitxi>,
at least that is a relatively standard interpretation of events. That means
a non-finite verb in <i> produced a free-standing stem. I mention this
since Larry has argued that this never happens, i.e., with reference to
whether the stem <bil-> in <bildu> could be related to the verbal radical
or stem <-bil-> in <ibili>. However, I must say that I agree with Larry in
that (at least today) non-finite verbal stems (such as <bizi, ibili>) do
not tend to produce free-standing root-stems nor, for that matter,
non-finite verbs in <-tu>.

When speaking of the way that verbs can be constructed in Basque using
<-tu>, the following is one of the more curious examples of Basque's
morpho-syntactic ingenuity. The verb is <zendu> which Mikel Morris
translates in his _Euskera/Ingelesa/Englis/Basque Dictionary_ (1998) as 'to
pass away, to give up the ghost; to disappear.' If one were to try to
unravel the etymology of this word following the normal discovery
procedures one would fail miserably. I mean that the normal strategy
involves looking first at the other lexical items demonstrating what
appears to be the same or a highly similar root-stem, i.e., phonologically
similar items. In this case, we would find dozens of examples of compounds
in <zen-> and it is well known that in the case of these other examples the
root-stem <zen> has a phonological variant in <zein> and that that variant
derives in turn from <zeren> 'of what (indeterminate)'. So one's first
inclination would be to assume that the etymology of <zendu> should be
traced back somehow to, say, <zenbat> 'how many'. But that would be wrong
for <zendu> is a non-finite verb that has been constructed from a finite
verb form of the verb <izan> 'to be', concretely from the conjugated form
of the third person singular past tense <zen> 's/he/it was'.

Actually one might argue that <zendu> is based on a relative clause
's/he/it that was'. For instance, it is commonplace in Basque to speak with
respect of the deceased. So when talking about one's mother who is
deceased, one might say, <Ama zenak horrela egin zuen> '(My) deceased
mother did it this way [the way you/the interlocutor are doing it]' where
<zenak> is <zen + n (relative claus marker) + determiner + erg.> which
converts the relative clause into an ergative subject. Hence, a root-stem
of <zendu> derives from a relative clause that in turn is based on a third
person singular past tense of a verb. I must admit that the English
translation '(My) deceased mother' fails to capture the affectionate and
respectful tone of the Basque phrase.

Which other languages do this sort of thing? I know that in Slavic
languages there are some pretty nifty ways of creating verbal compounds in
noun phrases. But I don't know of any thing that would correspond very
closely to what happens in the Basque example. Any ideas?

In conclusion, a much more rigorous analysis of the data concerning the
suffixing element *<-leta> would be needed before alleging that 1) it is a
compound suffix composed of *<-le-eta> and/or 2) that <-leta> in
<pitxeleta> (*<pitxi/bitxi-le-eta>) is actually derived from that suffix
and not from a totally unmotived expressive formation. However, given that
1) the old collective suffix in <-eta> gaves rise to the plural marker in
oblique cases in Basque and 2) it is found as a semi-fossilezed form in
toponyms, it follows that previously formations in <-eta> were more common
and that consequently if *<-le-eta> was once a producive suffixing element,
a formation like *<pitxileta/bitxileta> could be considered to date back to
Pre-Basque. It's all in how one looks at the data.

I would close by saying that Azkue lists:

<pitxeleta> 'butterfly';
<pitxilota> 'butterfly' (var. in <mitxilota>);
<pitxilote> 'daisy, poppy, butterfly'
 <pitxoleta> 'daisy, poppy, butterfly'.

Was the protoypic form *<pitxileta>?  I don't really know. The argument
outlined above is simply one way of looking at the data. Indeed, until
additional examples in *<-leta> are subjected to rigorous analysis, the
case for *<le-eta> must remain a highly tentative one. It could be that
*<pitxileta/bitxileta> dates back to an earlier stage and integrated what
was at that time a productive suffixing element made up of <-le> and
<-eta>.  Over time the compound suffix fell into disuse and ceased being
productive in the language. At that point the suffix's phonology would have
become unstable, as often happens when a once meaningful element in a
compound can no longer be disambiguated. But at the same time we need to
remember, as has been mentioned previous on this list, there is a
possibility that the Spanish suffixes in <-ota/-ote> may have played some
role here.

So it would appear that once again Larry and I will need to agree to
disagree, at least on some of these points.

Ondo ibili,
Roz Frank