Les premières analyses des particularités morphosyntaxiques du basque au 17ème siècle

Abstract

It is well known that Basque presents certain morphosyntactic properties that can be considered exotic within the linguistic context of Europe. So it is interesting to see how the first grammarians to try to descrihe the language, viewed some ofthese properties. The first puhlished Basque grammar, puhlished in 1729, was written by Larramendi. But almost one century before, in a history book he published in 1638, A. Oihenart had devoted several pages to a description of Basque grammar: declension paradigms, case system, verb inflection. Using Larramendi's grammar as its main comparative reference, the paper expounds Oihenart's outstanding analyses of ergative case morphology, indefinite declension and auxiliary verbs.