Etymological Dictionary of Basque - Cryptm.org

18 R. L. Trask
4. Phonotactics and morpheme structure in Pre-Basque
The following account applies to all lexical items except verbs. Verbal roots in Pre-Basque
were morphologically different from all other items, and they are described in Section 5
below.
Native and monomorphemic Pre-Basque lexical items were overwhelmingly disyllabic,
though we can reconstruct about fifty which were monosyllabic, some of them grammatical
items like pronouns, and also a few which were trisyllabic. We begin with the disyllabic
items.
A disyllabic lexical item had the general structure (C 1 )V(C 2 ){.}(C 3 )V(C 4 ). Any vowel or
diphthong could appear in either nuclear position, but we can reconstruct no item with two
diphthongs. All the consonants were optional, but, when C 2 and C 3 were both absent, the
aspiration [h] was obliged to separate the two vocalic nuclei. There were severe restrictions
on the consonants which could appear in each position, and these restrictions were made
more severe by the existence of the neutralizations described above.
Only six consonants could appear in the C 1 position: *b *g *z *s *l *n. The first three were
frequent, the next two less frequent, and the last rather uncommon. In something like fifty
per cent of lexical items, the C 1 position was empty, though in some of these cases the
aspiration [h] occurred initially.
In the C 4 position, the only possibilities were probably *tz *ts *R *N *L. But note that the
historical language possesses a handful of items with final tapped /r/; possibly Pre-Basque
also allowed final *r, but it seems more likely that it did not, and that the word-final tapped
/r/ of the modern language is a later development. In this dictionary, for simplicity, wordfinal
*R *N *L are represented as *r *n *l unless there is some reason to do otherwise.
Again, the C 4 position was frequently empty.
When C 2 was absent, then C 3 could be any one of the sixteen reconstructed consonants,
though *p was at best rare, as observed above.
When C 2 and C 3 were both present, producing a cluster, there were severe constraints. Only
the following patterns can be safely reconstructed, and examples of some of the permitted
individual clusters appear to be wanting:
one of *r *n *l plus one of *p *t *k *b *d *g *z *s *tz *ts
{[+sonorant][−sonorant]}
one of *z *s plus one of *p *t *k
{[sibilant, +continuant][−continuant, −delayed release, −sonorant]}
Here the symbols *r *n *l represent the neutralizations of the sonorant pairs in syllable-final
positions, and *p *t *k in the second group represent the neutralizations of the plosive pairs
after a voiceless sibilant. Given the heavy neutralizations of Pre-Basque, the retention of the
fricative/affricate contrast in the first group seems surprising, but there is good evidence for
this, at least after *r. [MORE: FHV 362-363]
The existence in the historical language of such words as ernai ‘awake, alert’ and erle ‘bee’
suggests that a very few other clusters may have been possible in Pre-Basque, but these other
clusters are so rare that I hesitate to assign them to Pre-Basque. These clusters may have
arisen by phonological developments such as syncope, as is commonly thought to be the case
in one or two other odd cases, such as modern esne ‘milk’.