Abstract
This paper explores the interaction of morphology and phonology in a set of Basque compound words which involve a phonological alternation at the beginning of the second constituent (labeled as lotura). The aim of the paper is threefold. First, to document, describe and provide an analysis of the empirical data. I propose a uniform account of the lotura data, based on the idea that the lotura consists of a featural linking element whose phonological content is [−voice, −continuant], inserted at the beginning of the second element of the compound. Second, this paper aims at establishing the cross-linguistic relevance of lotura-like compounding markers, arguing that the Basque lotura phenomenon is not an unusual case of morphology and that featural linking elements of a similar nature are abundantly attested in other languages. My claim is that although poorly described and documented, featural linking elements should be fully recognized and identified alongside other better described types of linking elements. Finally, I address the issue of the variability or irregularity of featural linking elements, arguing that there exist inherent systemic factors that generate and perpetuate it.
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Notes
All the examples are given in the Standard Basque (unified Basque) orthography, which is generally close to the IPA transcription, except in a few cases which are the following: s = [s̺] (an apico-alveolar hissing fricative), z = [s̻] (a lamino-alveolar hissing fricative), x = [ʃ] (a palato-alveolar hushing fricative) and the corresponding affricates ts = [ts̺], tz = [ts̻], tx = [tʃ]), see also Table 1. In the examples, the compound boundary is systematically indicated with a hyphen, but this practice does not always reflect the standard orthography.
Verb radicals (non-finite radicals according to the terminology of Lafitte 1944) are obtained by subtracting to the verb participle the endings -i, -n or -tu/-du, for instance ikus- from ikusi ‘to see’, ager- from agertu ‘to appear’, eda- from edan ‘to drink’. In Basque linguistics, verb participles are used as the citation forms (dictionary forms) of verbs.
And maybe /x/, but the corpus does not contain any example with a C2 beginning with /x/, which is due to the relative rarity of this phoneme in Basque word-initially. After this paper was completed, Michel Aurnague brought to my attention the word artzain-tx ispa ‘shepherd fork’ (artzain ‘shepherd’ + xispa ‘working fork’).
Basque exhibits other types of vowel losses at the end of the C1 in compounds, for instance baso ‘forest’ + urde ‘pig’ → basurde ‘wild boar’, as well as vowels shifts, as in katu ‘cat’ + kume ‘young of animal’→ katakume ‘kitten’. Such modifications do not entail any change at the beginning of the C2, so they are not considered to pertain to the lotura phenomenon.
But note that futbol-tzale and zezen-tzale are attested in some varieties of Northern Basque (Michel Aurnague, p.c.).
Orthographic <h> is mute in modern Basque dialects except in some Northern varieties, so in most dialects, words starting with <h> can be considered to start phonetically with a vowel. However, h might have been pronounced at earlier stages of the language, although some doubt subsists concerning its exact phonetic and phonological nature in ancient Basque. On the issue of /h/ and of aspiration in Basque diachronic phonology, see Gavel (1920, Chap. XI), Lafon (1948), Michelena (1977, Chap. 11).
This figure correlates the fact that about one third of all Basque lexemes begin with a vowel.
“In ancient compounds, it is regular that the consonants d, g, h occurring at the end of the initial member after the loss of the vowel that followed them […], appear as the voiceless -t before a vowel. Sometimes t was also written—and there is no reason to think that it was not pronounced—before the plosive at the beginning of the second member, but generally, its former presence manifests itself through the devoicing of this plosive.”
To my knowledge, compounds with erret- are the sole cases which nowadays still contain a graphic t supposedly resulting from a lenition, and it is probably worth observing that this word is already exceptional with respect to the lotura phenomenon because it is not a native Basque word, so the errege/erret case cannot be considered as representative evidence. Moreover, these words are not used in the oral language, so they should probably be considered as artificial, learned compounds.
Interestingly, the opposition that we encounter in the lotura driven alternations can be interpreted as fortition, following the structural analysis of the Old Basque consonant system as proposed by Martinet (2005:241, 243) and Michelena (1977:374) who argue that this system was based on a fortis (strong, long) vs. lenis (soft, short) opposition:
Fortis consonants (strong/long):
-
t
tz
ts
k
N
L
r
Lenis consonants (soft/short):
b
d
z
s
g
n
l
ɾ
Notice that lotura involves precisely a change from lenis to fortis for /d/, /z/, /s/, /g/ and /b/ if we fill the slot for a fortis labial stop with /p/.
The architecture of segment representation adopted in this paper follows feature geometry (Clements 1985; Clements and Hume 1995; McCarthy 1988; Sagey 1990, as well as Hualde 1991 for proposals concerning the architecture of Basque segments). The features [voice] and [continuant] are disjoined features, [voice] is located under the laryngeal node, whereas the location of [continuant] varies according to the authors: it is considered to be attached either directly to the root node (McCarthy 1988) or to the oral cavity (= supra-laryngeal) node (Clements and Hume 1995). In this study, [continuant] is considered to be attached to the root node, as shown in (23a) but this choice has no direct consequence on the details of the analysis of lotura.
This distinction is encoded by means of a specification which would mark lotura undergoing compounds as [+lot], and lotura resisting compounds as [−lot], or by any similar diacritic device.
Whether the marker is, in some cases, inserted but not realized (= vacuously inserted), or not inserted at all, is a research question that requires further investigation and analysis, see Wolf (2007:10).
In Labrune (1999), I presented an analysis of sai-sios as resulting from the insertion of an empty x slot, but I view sai-sios as a featural linking element in the broad sense because it is sub-segmental.
The velar /g/ has a possible rendaku-induced alternant which is /ŋ/.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Iñaki Rezola and Michel Aurnague for helpful discussions on the examples, as well as Dany Amiot and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on a previous version of this paper. I am also grateful to the organizers and audiences of the 11th French Network of Phonology Conference in Nantes, the Morphology and its interfaces conference in Lille, and the 3rd International Conference in Phonetics and Phonology in Tokyo, where earlier versions of this paper, or parts of it, were presented in 2013. I alone bear the responsibility for all remaining errors.
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Labrune, L. Featural linking elements in Basque compounds. Morphology 24, 377–405 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-014-9245-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-014-9245-9