--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@...> wrote:
>
> Martinet said that ancient Basque opposed initial [pH]
>
> > = fortis /p:/
>
> to [b],
>
> > = lenis /p/. I think you didn't read him well.
>
> He used a special sign [b.] with a circle subscript.
>
> > But [] indicates phonetic realization, while // is *phonemic*.
>
> I am not arguing against you here, but if we use fortis/lenis
opposition in phonemic notation, perhaps we should use /P/ and /P:/ to
avoid confusion with longa/brevis opposition.
>
In Trask-Mitxelena's system, fortis/lenis includes tenseness as well as
length contrast (as shown in your examples), so this isn't
contradictory.
By contrast, Martinet's system is modelled after Danish, and it turns to
be inconsistent when applied to (Paleo-)Basque, although I won't enter
into details. In my own version, Paleo-Basque fortis plosives became /h/
or were lost (Martinet's Law) at word-initial at an early date (around
La Tène period). A similar process, although less regular (almost
exclusively in velars), also happened between vowels, except when the
initial plosive was also fortis, in which case the internal one was
lenied.
In the case of labials, Paleo-Basque had also a fricative phoneme /B/
corresponding either to Romance /B-/ (< Latin v-) or /b-/ and which
regularly became /m/, as in e.g. /Bagína/> magiña 'sheath'. This
would explain the lack of a true phoneme /b/ (and not /p/, as assumed by
Mitxelena and Trask) in Paleo-Basque, as correctly pointed out by
Douglas. However, in some Paleo-Basque varieties, [b] could be found as
an allophone of lenis /p/, mostly at word-initial (there's a similar
scenario for the other plosives), so in the High Middle Ages
(Mitxelena's "Proto-Basque" is dated around the Visigothic period), a
new system emerged where fortis/lenis was replaced by voice contrast.