Re: Is Basque IE?

I used to think that top-posting was for jackasses only, but in my last post, Yahoo's new format forced me to be a jackass by default. To avoid more auto-braying, I am pretending to start a new topic, but it is the same old topic, and I have pasted Tavi's response to my criticism of Gianfranco's theory. I will attempt to respond in the "palaeo" way, and may "neo" drop dead!

> In my opinion, the resemblance between Basque and IE personal
> pronouns is best explained by assuming that Basque is a
> Nostratic language, related to PIE but not derived from it,
> superposed on a
Cantabro-Pyrenaean substrate having only one
> nasal phoneme. This phoneme was usually reflected as *[n],
but > when two examples occurred in successive syllables, the first
> was dissimilated
to *[m]. Hence the pronoun *mi 'I, me'
> (surviving
as such in archaic Etruscan, but in PIE incorporated > into the verbal system) became Proto-Vasconic *ni, but the noun > *menti 'hill, mountain' retained *m...n because the C-P
> substrate allowed this sequence, and Basque has regularly
> _mendi_. (Note the Tarraconian
place-name Mentissa/Mentesa
> /Mentosa. The
Nostratic root is likely identical with PIE
> *men- > 'to project' in Latin _mons_
etc. Or the place-name is > simply of IE origin and no long-range inference is valid
> here.)
>

Basque mendi has *nothing* to do with IE *men- but with Celtic *bando-/*bendo- 'peak, top'. This is corroborated by the diminutive forms pentoka (L, LN) 'hill', pendoka (G, L) 'sloppy terrain', pendoitz (HN, LN) 'precipice', (Bazt, HN, L, LN) 'slope', mendoitz (LN) 'slope'.
'Sloping' terrain, not a 'sloppy' copy. The original sense of the /p/-anlaut forms was apparently 'steep slope', corresponding exactly to Corsican _péntica_ 'id.'. Celts never settled in Corsica and this word has nothing to do with Celtic *bendo-, much less with _mendi_, apart from the obvious contamination _mendoitz_. See J. Hubschmid, Sardische Studien (Bern 1953) 59-61, Paläosardische Ortsnamen (Firenze 1963) 168-9, Thesaurus Praeromanicus II (Bern 1965) 105-6.
> Thus I disagree with Michelena and others
about */m/ in Proto-
> Vasconic. Michelena
derives Bq. _mehe_ 'thin' from *mene, this > in turn from *bene. But other Bq. words like _behe_ 'bottom'
> and
_behi_ 'cow' show no such development *ben- > *men-, so I
> think *men- was a
permissible sequence.

>
Actually,
neither behe nor behi had a medial nasal, as otherwise we'll have nasal vowels in Roncalese and/or Zuberoan. Unlike assumed by Academic Vascologists, a velar stop *-k- can also be the source of Basque -h-, as a particular case of Martinet's Law.
unlike e.g. mihi 'tongue' < *bini.
Shame on me for neglecting to check Roncalo-Souletin for nasal vowels. We discussed Martinet's Law before, I copied the book chapter in which he expounded it, and I do not accept it.
> 1. Bq. _aho_ 'mouth, face' probably continues ancient *ano
> (cf. _ahate_ 'duck' < Lat. acc. _anatem_, etc.), so it would go
> better with Lat. _a:nus_, and I will refrain from the obvious
> jokes.
>
Once again, there's no nasal here, and we'd better reconstruct *Cabo, with regular lenition of the labial stop before /o/.
Once again, shame on me. Now we can watch Gianfranco attempt to derive THAT from PIE.
> 9. Bq. _barre_ 'laughter'.
>
There're also the variants parre, farre, parra, farra, barra. This is a loanword from Hispano-Arabic (cfr. Spanish farra, parranda).
Arabic has no [p], having changed Semitic *p to [f] long before the Moorish invasion. Spanish retains it in borrowings (e.g. _farruco_). But the Arabs borrowed your non-IE 'duck' word (*patta > pata) with /b/-anlaut and spread it to the Caucasus. I doubt this 'laugh' word originated in Arabic.
> 40. Bq. _gizon_ 'man' has a combining form _giza-_ (e.g.
> _gizakote_ 'big hefty fellow', _gizarte_ 'society', _gizatzar'_
> 'big man, giant, brute, cad') which you choose to ignore. Very > likely _gizon_ continues an ancient
compound (represented by
> the pers. name Giso:n or Kiso:n in Greek letters) of the
> simplex _giza_ and _on_ 'good', hence 'good man, bonhomme'.
>
As I told before, gizon is a straightforward loanword from Celtic (Gaulish) *gdonjo- 'man', so there's no place here for on 'good'.
Like Gianfranco, you ignore what your simplistic theory cannot explain, namely the combining form _giza-_.
> The alleged reduction *bo- > *o- is contradicted by _bost_,
> _bota_, _botz_, etc.
>
As Basque has diverse and often contradictory sound changes, we must assume there were several linguistic varieties which interacted in Paleo-Basque (something you implicty acknowledge above).
So there MAY have been a variety which deleted *b before *o. I need better evidence than the hypothetical derivation of _on_ from _bonus_ (either Latin or GF's Vascoid IE) to convince me. Note the Aquit. pers. name Borsus (whether this means 'Quintus', as suggested by Hubschmid, ThPr II.147, is dubious).
> 77. Bq. _su_ 'fire' was originally *sut as we see from
> _sutondo_ 'proximity to fire'. The divinity Sutugius (CIL
> 13:164) was perhaps a god of the hearth.

>
The -t- in sutondo is actually a junction between compound elements when the first ended in a vowel and the second one had no initial consonant.
Really? Where did it come from, the same never-never-land as Larry Trask's expressive formations?
> 79. Bq. _txori_, _xori_, diminutives of _zori_ 'fate, luck', orig. 'bird',
>
Actually, 'bird' and 'luck' are *homonymous* word.
Divination by birds makes an etymological identity highly plausible, and I was not the one who originated this idea.
> Of course, since you have obviously invested considerable time > and personal reputation into this theory, I do not expect my
> criticism (or that of others) to have any effect.

>
I also see you haven't changed your views in despite of my criticism.

Octavià

Nope.

DGK