Re: Questions and Impressions of Basque

>> 1) Just how many verbs are widely found in finite forms? The book I have
>> says that mostly basque uses auxilliaries with non-finite verb forms,
>> but there are a very limited number of verbs that have their own forms
>> which don't need an auxilliary. It lists the forms of the most common in
>> the back, but I'd like to know how many there are in Total. I'd also be
>> interested to know what affix system for regular verbs was in Basque
>> before it started widely using auxilliaries.
>
>
> The amount of a dozen was given. That's about it indeed. As for the
> affix system of regular verbs before they used auxiliaries, not much
> is known unfortunately. Basque has had an analytical verbal system for
> quite some time. There are some texts in Middle Basque that have been
> found and those contain a Basque language pretty close to what is
> spoken nowadays, except for a few more synthetic verbs that are now
> analytic. My little booklet gives the examples:
> - eztazagut (ezagun) : I don't know him,
> - badakusazue (ikusi) : If you see him,
> - dantzuzkigu (entzun) : We hear them.
> Maybe you can do something out of them :) .
>
*Sigh* Its at times like this that I wish I had a time machine... I'd
love to know and see so many things about the past. It'd be entering an
alien world without leaving Earth to visit the past.

>
>> 3) THe book emphasizes that some of the (non-verbal) grammatical affixes
>> apply to *noun phrases* rather than nouns. This seems strange to me...
>> every other language with a case system (or other noun marking) I've
>> ever learned always always marks these things at least on the noun, and
>> possibly also on the adjectives. But in some of the basque examples, you
>> have these affixes glued onto the final word of a noun phrase even when
>> that word isn't the noun itself!
>
>
> A great feature that I used in Moten, where the affixes are *infixes*,
> which means you really cannot argue that they are clitics ;) .
>
I don't think I've ever seen Moten.... examples, Christophe? :) Any
sentence you like.

>>  I think the definite article is an
>> example of an affix that does this. Are these true affixes, or are they
>> really clitics?
>
>
> I'd say affixes, because they seem to have much more influence on the
> word they are added to than clitics would have. And they often blend
> in completely to be difficult to find out again, which isn't a usual
> feature of clitics ;) .
>
They seem to straddle the boundary to me. Although I think a lot of
linguistics is like that... we're trying to impose discrete categories
on a continuous spectrum.

> For the one who suggested the French Pyrénées, I have to warn that
> Basque in France is in some places a rather different dialect than the
> Euskara Batua that you see in textbooks. First, the main Basque
> dialect in France is called Eskuara, pointing to already a big
> phonemic difference, and then you have dialects like Souletin, which
> has /y/, voiced fricatives and affricates (though no /v/ ;) ), a
> phonemic stress accent and various lexical and grammatical differences
> :) . If all you know is Euskara Batua, better stay in Spain :) .
>
Don't you speak Basque Christophe? A member of the list questioned
whether Basque did indeed lack f; I believe that the only f I've seen so
far (and I've been reading the book a lot today) is in an obviously
borrowed word for coffee. I know I was told by someone that basque
lacked 'f', and it certainly doesn't seem to be present in any native
words that I've seen. Does the Basque dialect you speak have f? Do you
speak one of the French dialects, or one of the Spanish dialects?

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