--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" wrote:
>
> > A little correction: Although he studied the isoglosses shared by
> > Aragonese and Bearnese, Elcock *never* posited a Pyrenaic substrate
> > language (as he was reluctant to substrates in general), but he said
> > that proposal was originally made by Saroïhandy, the pioneer of
> > modern Aragonese studies.
>
> Was S.'s Pyrenaic substrate Vasconic or Romance?
>
> > I haven't read him, but perhaps the title of his article "Vestiges
de
> > phonétique iberienne en territoire roman" (1913) might tell us
> > something.
>
> Thank you. I found a PDF copy of the paper (from RIEV 7:475-97) at
euskomedia.org. It is lacking the map, and the diacritics do not all
come out right (obviously a PDF made from a photocopy). Nevertheless it
answers my question as "Vasconic". Saroi"handy considered the Basques
to be descended from the Iberians (which is forgivable, since this was
over a decade before Go'mez Moreno started making sense of the Iberian
script).
>
But Paleo-Basque and Iberian could still be relatives, as shown by
lexical isoglosses like the ones registered in the Aquitanian corpus,
with Martinet's Law already going on (e.g. t- > h-).
> He observed that the three valleys in the mountains of Oloron have
_apelha_, _escupa_, etc., against common Bearnais _abelha_, _escuba_,
etc., with similar retention of unvoiced stops in _capeza_, _napo_, etc.
in the Aragonese of the valley of Tena and the upper Cinca basin. These
dialects also show voicing of stops after resonants, including Germanic
loanwords: _blanga_ for Bearn. _blanca_, _bango_ for Arag. _banco_.
>
That's right. All this is studied in Elcock's book, which also has a
map.
> This is what we have in most Basque dialects (but not
Roncalo-Souletin). I think the best explanation is that these areas
(Oloron, Tena, upper Cinca) were still Basque-speaking well into the
Middle Ages. I see no point in postulating a distinct Pyrenaic Romance
to explain S.'s data (although perhaps you have other facts pointing to
one).
>
Precisely. As I mentioned before, the Pyrenaic treatment of -ll- (also
found in Gascon and West Asturian and similar to the one of Sardinian
and some South Italian dialects) isn't shared with Basque. But even more
striking is the scarcity (or almost complete absence) of genuine Basque
lexicon and toponymy when compared to the Romance ones. So whatever
Paleo-Basque or Iberian dialects spoken there, they were extensively
replaced by Latin at an early date. There're also abundant traces of a
Romance language with a Bascoid substrate (later replaced by Catalan and
Gascon) in the toponymy of NW Catalonia (Pallars, Ribagorza) and Aran,
studied by Coromines and which would constitute the eastern flank of
Pyrenaic.