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Re: Basque & Katzner's Languages of the World

From:Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Date:Thursday, November 15, 2001, 5:37
Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>>> . In particular, I wish his phonological descriptions (which are very >>> anglocentric, perhaps not surprisingly) had used IPA instead of fuzzy >>> things like "There is both a soft r and a hard r" in Basque. Which >>> brings >>> me to my question: for those who know (something about) Basque, what the >>> heck is he talking about? Trilled and non-trilled? Trilled vs. >>> approximant? Meep?
I just bought R.L.(Larry) Trask's "History of Basque" an incredibly complete and as far as I can tell accurate work (a budget-buster, alas). Very conservative, no wild-blue-yonder stuff, in fact he demolishes most of everyone's speculations about the language. Apparently there is a tapped r (written "r") and a trilled one "rr". The odd thing to me is that they can contrast word-finally (I suspect it has to do with what happens when a suffix is added, since it seems they're written "-r" in both cases, unless I've misread.) They also contrast medially of course, but not initially; in fact Basque dislikes initial r: Lat. rege- 'king' > errege. Modern Spanish loans excepted. Fascinating book, TOTALLY fascinating language.

Replies

Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Michael Poxon <m.poxon@...>
Keith Gaughan <kmgaughan@...>