--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...>
wrote:
>
> Trask claimed that most Romance words in Basque were borrowed from
Gascón, that the second most common source was Aragonese, then
Spanish. He pointed out that the market language in the Basque Country
and upper Navarra --until recently-- was Gascon, not Spanish.
>
But in the High Middle Ages the linguistic landscape was surely more
complex, with other varieties now extinct. The fact is early Romance
loanwords in Basque can't be attributed to any of the above languages.
> In an earlier post, you spoke of Basque soka, it's probably from an
Aragonese analogue of Spanish soga "rope"
>
Not really. In fact, intervocalic voiceless stops are characteristic of
the extinct language called "Pyrenaic" by GarcÃa de Diego, who
followed Elcock's pioneer studies about its remnants in Aragonese and
Bearnese (a Gascon dialect). Another Pyrenaic isogloss is the voicing of
stops after resonants (especially /n/), as in chunco 'reed' > chungo.
Both isoglosses can also be found in Basque, although they don't always
match.