Etymological Dictionary of Basque - Cryptm.org

28 R. L. Trask
P15. Plosive–sibilant fluctuation
FHV 296-297
P16. Intervocalic plosive loss
{[FHV 226-227]}
P17. /d/ ~ /r/ fluctuation
Between vowels, there is sporadic fluctuation between /d/ and the tapped /r/. For example,
common edan ‘drink’ and euri ‘rain’ appear in places as eran and as eudi, and the verb
meaning ‘seem’, ‘resemble’ appears as both irudi and iduri in various parts of the country.
Michelena (1961a: 227) reports that historical /d/ shifts to /r/ between vowels almost
regularly in certain varieties of B G HN. In Z, earlier /r/ becomes /d/ quite consistently
after a diphthong, as in atxeidü ‘steel’, from earlier atxeirü.
P18. Apical assimilation I
The laminal sibilant /z/ sporadically changes to the apical /s/ before a following consonant,
especially before /t/. Example: ***
P19. Apical assimilation II
The cluster /rz/, with laminal /z/, often develops to apical /s/, and the cluster /rtz/ often
develops to /st/. This change is most frequent in the west, where it nearly always occurs,
and least frequent in the east, where it rarely occurs. It is favoured by the presence of
another /s/ in the word. For example, in some eastern varieties, in which the the abstractnoun-forming
suffix is usually -(t)arzun, we find -(t)asun in words containing /s/, such as
osasun ‘wholeness, health’, from oso ‘whole’. Special cases aside, original /rz/ survives in
Z R S and in the Mixe variety of LN, but becomes /s/ elsewhere (M. 1961a: 362). For the
second change, M. (1961a: 367) proposes the pathway */rtz/ > */rzt/ > */rst/ > /st/.
P20. Dissimilatory sibilant loss
[FHV 291]
P21. Sibilant merger
In the west, laminal /z/ and apical /s/ have merged as the apical, and laminal /tz/ and apical
/ts/ have merged as the laminal. From the textual evidence of spelling confusion, this
merger began in B in the 17th century, and it has been slowly spreading eastward. In
recent years, the merger has gone to completion in almost all of Bizkaia, in western
Gipuzkoa, and in some urban areas of central Gipuzkoa. Recently, however, there has
been an educational campaign to restore the lost contrasts, and western speakers who do
not natively have the contrasts now often attempt to produce them. This merger has
generally been ignored in western writing, and it is ignored in this dictionary, except that
we should be aware that some western forms recorded with the “wrong” sibilant are
probably only spelling errors resulting from the merger.