On Tue, 25 Mar 2008 14:39:09 -0700 (PDT), Rick McCallister
<
gabaroo6958@...> wrote:
>My point is that even expressive words often have some
>suggestive tie-in --e.g. English zizz "to sleep" is
>onomatopoeic. Some of the Basque words beginning in
>mal- may be based in part on Romance mal-.
Of course. Trask was not denying that.
The thing is that in Basque there are a number of clear
"signatures" (the link I posted being only one such example)
by which expressive formations can be recognized. Some of
these patterns are onomatopoeic. Loanwords could be
included, provided they could be made to fit the pattern and
were semantically adequate. It's even possible that some of
the patterns were initially inspired by borrowings (foreign
words and phonotactic patterns by definition sound "exotic
and striking").
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
miguelc@...