Re: Basque bizarreries (was: Conland Digest etc.)

>OK, now the meanings of -tzat and -entzat look quite
>clear to me. In fact, I wouldn't consider -entzat like
>a 'surdeclined' form (possessive genitive +
>prolative), but like a form of its own. I cannot
>analyse something like *Norentzat dira hauek ?* like
>including any genitive in it, even a possessive one,
>and even if historically it may have been so.
Morphologically, the Basque destinative case is simply
the so-called 'prolative' (an equative/essive, in fact)
appended to the genitive. This is evident in the destinative
forms of the pronouns ("niretzat", "guretzat"...), which
take the suffix -retzat instead of -rentzat because the
genitive forms of the pronouns ("nire", "gure"...) do
not take the final -n of the genitive suffix -e(n). If
you take away the -tzat part of the destinative form,
you will always get the appropriate genitive form, but
by adding -(r)entzat to the absolutive form you won't
always get the appropriate destinative form.

Semantically, I don't find it so impossible to understand
the logic behind that compounding. Something that is
"for X" (X-entzat) is 'intended to be' (-tzat) 'possessed
by' (-en) X. That is, when you say that something is
for someone, its future state as a possession of theirs
is anticipated. But since it is so far only an assumed
or 'thought of' state rather than a consummate fact, you
append the equative -tzat which has a subjunctive meaning,
in the sense that the 'equation' it performs doesn't imply
factual truth (one may _act as_ a reporter or be _taken
for_ a reporter without necessarily being a real graduate
reporter). Though, admittedly, this results in an idiomatic
interpretation of -entzat, given that the straightforward
meaning would be simply "as/for X's", i.e. "in the assumed
or 'thought of' state of being X's" (as in "I mistook that
car for yours") instead of the anticipatory "in the state
of being assigned to become X's".


>But I was optimistic when fancying that I could think
>the Basque way, even for such a simple sentence as *I
>work as an engineer*. I'll have to study some more
>years to get to it :-(
Well, that Basque sentence is not that difficult, really.
The "lan egiten dut" part is in fact a fixed construction
similar to the "[...] suru" verbs of Japanese. The verb
"to work" has no single-word equivalent in Basque, being
instead a compound from the noun "lan" (work) and the verb
"egin [du]" (to do). This compound behaves transitively
(thus conjugated using the 'nor-nork' "du" auxiliaries),
its alleged object being the nominal part of the compound
even though it is grammatically an internal part of the
verbal phrase and not a free object syntagm (for that,
a determined syntagm would be required: "lan_a_ egiten
dut", "lan _hau_ egiten dut", but those would mean "I do
the task", "I do this task", instead of "I work").

Basque verbal forms are classified into synthetic and
compounded. Most verbal forms are compounded, while
only a bunch of verbs still retain synthetic forms. The
compounded forms consist of a conjugated auxiliary plus
one of the following non-finite forms of the main verb:

(1) Past participle:

"egin" [e-gi-n] ('done')
"hartu" [har-tu] ('taken')

(2) Locative verbal noun:

"egiten" [e-gi-te-n] ('in doing')
"hartzen" [har-tze-n] ('in taking')

(3) Genitive verbal noun:

"egiteko" [e-gi-te-ko] ('of doing')
"hartzeko" [har-tze-ko] ('of taking')

[The roots of the verbs in the examples are -gi- and
har-; the prefix e- is kind of a 'non-finite' marker,
-n/-tu mark the participle, -t(z)e is the verbal
nominalizer, -n and -ko are case suffixes]

The choice of these depends on aspect: (1) is used for
perfect tenses: "egin/hartu du" (I have done/taken),
(2) is used for imperfect tenses: "egiten/hartzen du",
(I'm doing/taking), and (3) is used for future tenses:
"egiteko/hartzeko du" (I will do/take).

Cheers,
Javier