Etymological Dictionary of Basque - Cryptm.org

32 R. L. Trask
‘that’, was reduced to (h)aen (attested), modern (h)ain ‘so (much)’. Less obviously,
/ee/ often becomes /ei/, as in zeren, genitive of zer ‘what?’, reduced to *zeen, modern
zein ‘which?’.
Sequences of three vowels are treated variously, but in a sequence of the form /ViV/ it is
usually the last vowel which is lost. For example, jaioterri ‘homeland’ is jaiterri in
places.
P36. Treatment of initial /e/ in participles
Word-initially, the vowel /e/, which occurred in all ancient non-finite verb-forms as the
prefix *e-, has developed variously according to the nature of the following segments.
P36.1. Loss. Before a following high vowel /i/ or /u/, /e/ is lost: *eizani > izan ‘be’; eutzi
(attested) > utzi ‘leave’.
P36.2. Glide formation. Before a following non-high vowel /a/ or /o/, /e/ becomes a glide
/j/: *eaRi > jarri ‘sit down’; *eosi > josi ‘sew’. This process feeds P**{56}. There is
no certain case of /e/ before /e/, but a possible instance is the verb jalgi ~ elki ‘go out’,
which perhaps results from *eelki, with glide formation in one form but coalescence
of the two /e/s in the other (M. ****{1977a: 515}).
P36.3. Raising. When the /e/ is followed by a consonant followed by a high vowel /i/ or
/u/, and a third syllable exists, /e/ is raised to /i/: ebili (attested) > ibili ‘be in motion’;
ekusi (attested) > ikusi ‘see’. This is part of the more general process P**{37}.
In all other circumstances, /e/ remains unchanged: ekarri ‘bring’, egosi ‘cook’, *egini >
egin ‘do, make’.
P37. Raising of first-syllable /e/
In the first syllable of a word of three or more syllables, /e/ is frequently raised to /i/ if the
second syllable contains a high vowel /i/ or /u/ separated by a consonant. For example,
common eguzki ‘sun’ is iguzki in some varieties, and the word for ‘onion’, borrowed from
Lat. cepulla(m), has everywhere /i/ in the first syllable: tipula, gipula, etc. This process is
pervasive in verbs: see P**{36.3}.
P38. Syncope
Syncope occurs occasionally in all varieties. For example, common andere ‘lady’ appears
as andre in some varieties. Syncope is pervasive in the Pyrenean dialects (R S A). Here it
even occurs in disyllables, so that, for example, common zara ‘you are’ appears as zra,
producing an initial cluster otherwise unknown in the language. {Cf. P64.}
P39. Metathesis of /oi/
Metathesis is frequent but unsystematic, and in general no rules can be given. But an
exception occurs in A, S and part of HN, in which word-final /-oi/, from earlier */-one/ by
P1, consistently metathesizes to /-io/. For example, common arratoi ‘rat’, from Lat.
ratone(m), is arratio in these varieties.