--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> > I have seen quite a few of his refutations of alleged
> > extra-Basque connections; they are extremely persuasive. Of
> > course, those making the connections often made it rather
> > easy for him by what might politely be called their cavalier
> > treatment of the data.
>
> Besides, Trask does not reject such external connections a priori (as
> Tavi put it, "Basque is an isolate, period"). For example, in "The
> History of Basque" he notes some striking similarities between Basque
> and Iberian and concedes that they might be distantly related or at
> least have influenced each other. What he does deny is a close
> sister-relationship between Basque/Aquitanian and Iberian, ruled out by
> the evidence we have.
>
"Aquitanian" isn't actually a language but an *epigraphic corpus*. And while many Aquitanian segments are identifiable as Paleo-Basque, a few of them are actually Iberian:
BAISER- ~ baiser
BELEX- ~
beles´LAVR- ~
laur´TALS- ~ tals but
HALS-TAVTENN- ~
tautin but
HAVTENN-
Some
of these reflect a isogloss
t-/h- where the former are from Iberian and the latter from Paleo-Basque. IMHO this is a consequence of what I call "Martinet's Law", by which fortis plosives (pronounced as aspirated) gave /
h/ in Paleo-Basque. They also have a different geographical distribution, with forms with
h- being found in the Pyrenean area and those with
t- further north. This evidence (mostly ignored by Vascologists) would indicate Paleo-Basque and Iberian, while originally part of a dialectal continuum, were already differentiated at the time of the Roman Empire.
However, a large part of the Basque lexicon have no correspondence in Iberian. IMHO this would be explained as the result of the expansion of Early Basque outside its Pyrenaic homeland, replacing the autochtonous language spoken in the Western Basque Country, whose pre-Roman toponymy isn't Basque but Celtic or at least IE.