Etymological Dictionary of Basque - Cryptm.org

16 R. L. Trask
3. The aspiration
The prehistory of the Basque aspiration is largely a mystery. In the Aquitanian texts, the
letter H is very frequent, and we may suppose that the aspiration was correspondingly
frequent in Pre-Basque. As explained under P**{29} in Section **{6}, the aspiration was
lost from the central varieties of Basque too early to be recorded; it survived in the western
varieties of Bizkaia and Araba long enough to be abundantly recorded in the early medieval
period, but disappeared before the first texts in the 16th century; and it still survives today in
the northern (French) varieties, except that it has very recently been lost from ordinary speech
along the coast of Lapurdi. Among those northern varieties, the aspiration is decidedly more
frequent in the Zuberoan dialect than in the others. In particular, the aspiration generally
occurs in Z on every monosyllable which can bear it, excepting only ar ‘male’; this may be a
conservative feature but is more likely a Z innovation.
In the modern varieties retaining the aspiration, the position of the aspiration is very strange:
it is neither predictable nor contrastive. Some words are pronounced with an aspiration,
while other words are not. We cannot predict which words will contain the aspiration, or
even, in general, in which position it will occur if it is present. Yet there are few minimal
pairs, and pronouncing a word with the “wrong” value of the aspiration usually gives only a
less usual pronunciation of the word, or sometimes a non-word, but not a different word.
Moreover, quite a few words can be pronounced either with or without the aspiration, or with
the aspiration in either of two different positions, without harm.
In the historical period, the aspiration in the northern dialects is generally subject to several
constraints, as follows:
(1) There can be no more than one aspiration per word. This is true even in a
compound both of whose members bear the aspiration in isolation. For example, the
compound of hil ‘dead’ and herri ‘inhabited place’ may be either hilerri or ilherri
‘cemetery’, but never *hilherri.
(2) The aspiration cannot occur later than the onset of the second syllable. (A tiny
handful of exceptions, with an aspirated plosive in the third syllable, is reported for Z;
it is hard to know what to make of these cases.)
(3) The aspiration can only occur on a syllable with one of certain onsets. Wordinitially,
it can occur only if the word otherwise begins with any vowel or diphthong
or with a voiceless plosive /p t k/. At the onset of the second syllable, it can occur
only on a syllable which otherwise begins with any vowel or diphthong, with one of
/p t k/ not preceded by a sibilant, or with any liquid or nasal except /m/. In no
circumstances can the aspiration ever follow any voiced plosive, any fricative or
affricate, /m/, or any plosive preceded by a sibilant.
(4) If both the first two syllables begin with voiceless plosives which might in
principle bear the aspiration, then the aspiration, if present at all, will fall on the first.
In other words, the structures kheke and keke are permitted, while kekhe is not found,
and khekhe is of course prohibited. However, words like ikhatz ‘charcoal’ and ikhusi
‘see’ are commonplace.