Proto-Basque ( eu, aitzineuskara; es, protoeuskera, protovasco; french: proto-basque), or Pre-Basque, is the reconstructed predecessor of the
Basque language before the
Roman conquests in the Western
Pyrenees
The Pyrenees (; es, Pirineos ; french: Pyrénées ; ca, Pirineu ; eu, Pirinioak ; oc, Pirenèus ; an, Pirineus) is a mountain range straddling the border of France and Spain. It extends nearly from its union with the Cantabrian Mountains to ...
.
Background
The first linguist who scientifically approached the question of the historical changes that Basque had undergone over the centuries was
Koldo Mitxelena
Koldo Mitxelena Elissalt () (also known as ''Luis Michelena''; 1915, Errenteria, Gipuzkoa – 11 October 1987, San Sebastián) was an eminent Basque linguist. He taught in the Department of Philology at the University of the Basque Country, ...
. His work on Proto-Basque focused mainly on between the 5th century BCE and the 1st century CE, just before and after initial contact with the
Romans
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
* Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...
. The main method that he used was
internal reconstruction
Internal reconstruction is a method of reconstructing an earlier state in a language's history using only language-internal evidence of the language in question.
The comparative method compares variations between languages, such as in sets of c ...
since Basque has no known genetic relatives, preventing the use of the
comparative method
In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards t ...
. By comparing variants of the same word in
modern dialects and the changes that
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
loanwords had undergone, he deduced the ancestral forms and the rules for historical sound changes. His groundbreaking work, which culminated with the publication of his book ''Fonética histórica vasca'' (1961), was carried out mostly before the
Aquitanian inscriptions were found, but they fully backed up Mitxelena's proposed Proto-Basque forms.
[ Trask, L. ''The History of Basque'' Routledge: 1997 ]
Since then, a number of other prominent linguists, such as
Larry Trask
Robert Lawrence Trask (10 November 1944 – 27 March 2004) was an American–British professor of linguistics at the University of Sussex, and an authority on the Basque language and the field of historical linguistics.
Biography
Born in Ole ...
,
Alfonso Irigoien,
Henri Gavel and most recently
Joseba Lakarra Joseba is a Basque name meaning ''Joseph''.
It may refer to:
Football players
* Joseba Etxeberria
* Joseba Llorente Etxarri
* Joseba del Olmo
* Joseba Garmendia
* Joseba Arriaga
Bicycle racers
* Joseba Zubeldia
* Joseba Albizu
* Joseba B ...
,
Joaquín Gorrotxategi and Ricardo Gómez, have made further contributions to the field. Some of them, such as Lakarra, have focused their attention on even older layers of the language (Pre-Proto-Basque) that preceded the
Celtic
Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to:
Language and ethnicity
*pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia
**Celts (modern)
*Celtic languages
**Proto-Celtic language
*Celtic music
*Celtic nations
Sports Foo ...
invasion of
Iberia
The Iberian Peninsula (),
**
* Aragonese language, Aragonese and Occitan language, Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica''
**
**
* french: Péninsule Ibérique
* mwl, Península Eibérica
* eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a pe ...
.
Vocabulary
Studying the behaviour of Latin and early Romance loanwords in Basque,
Koldo Mitxelena
Koldo Mitxelena Elissalt () (also known as ''Luis Michelena''; 1915, Errenteria, Gipuzkoa – 11 October 1987, San Sebastián) was an eminent Basque linguist. He taught in the Department of Philology at the University of the Basque Country, ...
discovered that Proto-Basque *n was lost between vowels and that Proto-Basque had no *m. Both changes are relatively unusual cross-linguistically, but /n/ was also partially deleted between vowels during the history of the nearby
Gascon and
Galician-Portuguese
Galician-Portuguese ( gl, galego-portugués or ', pt, galego-português or ), also known as Old Portuguese or as Medieval Galician when referring to the history of each modern language, was a West Iberian Romance language spoken in the Middle ...
.
One of the puzzles of Basque is the large number of words that begin with vowels in which the initial and second vowels are the same. Joseba Lakarra proposes that in Pre-Proto-Basque there was extensive
reduplication
In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change.
The classic observation on the semantics of reduplication is Edwa ...
[ ] and that later, certain initial consonants were deleted, leaving the VCV pattern of Proto-Basque:
See also
*
Vasconic languages
The Vasconic languages (from Latin 'Basque') are a putative family of languages that includes Basque and the extinct Aquitanian language. The extinct Iberian language is sometimes putatively included.
The concept of the Vasconic languages is ...
*
Proto-Basque Swadesh list (Wiktionary)
Notes
References
External links
*
Joseba Lakarra (2006), "Protovasco, munda y otros: Reconstrucción interna y tipología holística diacrónica", in "Oihenart. Cuadernos de Lengua y Literatura".
Ricardo Gómez, "De re etymologica: vasc. -(r)antz 'hacia'", UPV/EHU / "Julio Urkixo" Euskal Filologia Mintegia{{in lang, es
Proto-Basque
Proto-Basque ( eu, aitzineuskara; es, protoeuskera, protovasco; french: proto-basque), or Pre-Basque, is the reconstructed predecessor of the Basque language before the Roman conquests in the Western Pyrenees.
Background
The first linguist w ...
Basque
Basque may refer to:
* Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France
* Basque language, their language
Places
* Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France
* Basque Country (autonomous co ...
Pre-Indo-Europeans