Etymological Dictionary of Basque - Cryptm.org

20 R. L. Trask
With C 2 , C 3 and C 4 only:
*indar ‘force’; *astun ‘heavy’; *urdin ‘green, blue’; *ergel ‘stupid’; *ezker ‘left
(hand)’; *izter ‘thigh’; *ezpain ‘lip’
With all four C positions filled:
*bazter ‘edge’; *bizkar ‘back’; *gordin ‘raw’ {treated as bimorphemic in The
Dictionary: see *gorr-} ; *laster ‘fast’; *beldur ‘fear’; *zintzur ‘throat’
Monosyllabic items conform to the restrictions for C 1 and C 4 given above, though initial *b is
curiously rare here. Examples:
*ni ‘I’; *gu ‘we’; *[h]i ‘you’ (sg.); *zu ‘you’ (pl.); su ‘fire’; *laur ‘four’; *[h]aur
‘child’; *gatz ‘salt’; *[h]itz ‘word’; *[h]uts ‘empty’; *gain ‘top’; *bits ‘spume’;
*zotz ‘stick’; *sats ‘ordure’; *gau ‘night’; *nor ‘who?’; *zer ‘what?’; *ur ‘water’;
*[h]ur ‘hazelnut’; *ui ‘pitch’; *sei ‘six’; *gaitz ‘bad’; *on ‘good’; *zur ‘wood’; *ar
‘male’; *oin ‘foot’; *[h]otz ‘cold’; *[h]ots ‘cry, shout’; *bel ‘dark’; *bil ‘round’
Trisyllabic items are like disyllabic ones with an extra vowel added at the end. In general,
only a single consonant can occur between the second and third vowels, and that consonant
cannot be a plosive. In a few cases, {the nature of} this last consonant has been lost beyond
recovery, though its former presence can still be detected. Examples:
*ardano ‘wine’; *gaztane ‘cheese’; *aRaNo ‘eagle’; *itsaso ‘sea’; *ituRi ‘spring,
fountain’; *anari ‘ram’; *aiNala ‘swallow’; *[h]iguni ‘disgust’, *burdina ‘iron’,
*buztaRi ‘yoke’; *eztaRi ‘throat’; *beraRi ‘ear’; *[h]odeCi ‘cloud’; *iz{e}Ci ‘fir’
There are almost no certain examples of trisyllables ending in a consonant, but one likely
case is *enazur ‘bone’. Two possible exceptions to these constraints are ipurdi ‘buttocks’
and izerdi ‘sweat’, but these are perhaps bimorphemic in origin, if now opaque. Also
problematic is gorosti ‘holly’, but there are good reasons for suspecting this of being either
non-native or bimorphemic. There are quite a few trisyllabic adjectives ending in /i/, such as
itsusi ‘ugly’ and egarri ‘thirsty’, but these are probably bimorphemic, containing the
adjective-forming suffix -i.
Perhaps the only candidates for four syllables are the common goroldio ‘moss’ and the purely
Bizkaian arerio ‘enemy’. But the first of these is suspect for several reasons, while the
second is too limited in distribution to be safely assigned to Pre-Basque.
Finally, there remain a few items, all monosyllabic, which have final clusters in the historical
language: beltz ‘black’, (h)artz ‘bear’, gantz ‘fat, lard’, bortz ‘five’, ertz ‘edge’, and perhaps a
few others. It is not clear how we should regard these. For beltz, there is good evidence that
we should reconstruct *beletz, and anyway the word is surely bimorphemic. For (h)artz, a
possible IE source has been much discussed. For the others, we must take seriously the
possibility that a vowel has been lost, most likely a final /a/ by the process given as M**{4}
in Section 8. Note, for example, that the word for ‘alder’ is well recorded both as (h)altza
and as (h)altz, with the second form undoubtedly resulting from such vowel loss.