Suffixal -sk-

[Larry Trask]

Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen writes:

> Could anyone tell us if Bask has a suffix of geographical of ethnic
> belonging containing /-sk-/? If so, could we have a few clear examples?

No; it does not.  With the possible exception of one or two ancient,
fossilized and uninterpretable suffixes, all word-forming suffixes in Basque
are syllabic, and something of the form <-sk-> is not a possible suffix.

As Ed Selleslagh has noted, Basque does have a compound suffix <-zko>,
consisting historically of the instrumental/adverbial <-z> and the
highly productive syntactic suffix <-ko>.  But this suffix never has
any geographical or ethnic functions.

The principal geographical/ethnic suffix in Basque is <-tar> ~ <-ar>.
The original distribution -- no longer universally respected -- seems
to have been <-tar> after a consonant, <-ar> after a vowel.  This
distribution is consistent with an original *<-dar>, but does not require
it.

Also usable in modern Basque as a geographical suffix is <-ko> alone,
but this derives historically from the addition of <-ko> to the
locative inflectional suffix <-n>, followed by loss of the <-n> in
this position.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
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