Sobre el europeo antiguo y la reconstrucción del protovasco

Abstract

As reported in the literature (cf. Mitxelena 1964, Trask 1997), for centuries Basque has been compared with numerous languages by a number of scholars. Among professional linguists, it seems to have been both the Hamito-Semitic language family and the Caucasian languages that have attracted most attention in the comparative enterprise. Unfortunately, in most of such attempts the zeal for the search of relatives of Basque has led some scholars to overlook the rules of the comparative method (cf. Mitxelena 1950, 1963 and Hamp 1998). Thus, in these comparisons one can find confusions between argumentation and typological and genetic conclusions, the mixing of patrimonial terms and (sometimes recent) loanwords in any of the languages object of comparison; and last but not least mistaken (and biased) morpheme segmentations and morphological analyses (e.g. in the Basque-Caucasian comparison).
   This paper discusses the way in which the hypotheses postulated in Vennemann (1994) and later works affect the reconstruction of Proto-Basque and the history of the Basque language. According to them, the Old Central-European hidronymy would constitute evidence not for an Indo-European language (against the classical explanation of Krahe and his followers), but for Vasconic one. Specifically, V. assumes that such non-Indo-European language would be the ancestor of Basque and other languages that disappeared over time and supports his claims by a working explanation of the main features of Old European through Basque. Despite the flattering prospect of us the Basques as the only remnants of Old Europe, the reading of his article does not lead us to conclude that it provides the considerable advance that we could have expected for our field of study. In this paper, we make no statement on the accuracy of V.'s analysis of the toponymic data nor on Kitson's (1996) reaction to such an analysis, but we show that (i) V.' s linguistic reconstruction does not correspond, in very important respects, to what we reasonably may know about Proto-Basque structure, and (ii) consequently, on the basis of such a reconstruction one can hardly genetically relate Old European with Basque.
   V. uses to his own benefit the attested phonological and lexical similarities between Iberian and Basque, but does not mention other well-known differences such as the existence of aspiration and lenis-fortis oppositions in sonorants in Basque. V. also takes for granted the Basque-Iberian hypothesis which goes against both the specialists' opinion and the evidence that it has no effect on the deciphering of Iberian. V. clearly manipulates the distribution of phonemes in modern Basque so that a and vowel-initial syllables seem to be overabundant (closer to the phonemic distribution he holds them to have in Old European), and taking that alleged abundance for granted he claims that e and o are secondary in Basque. V. does not mention the absence of /p/, /m/ and /r-/ in Proto-Basque and claims, against all historical and dialectological evidence, that /h/ is in free variation in the modern dialects which still have it, while postulating both the loss of non-existent laryngeals of which no trace has been attested (but which would suit his particular view of the evolution of Old European) and voiced/voiceless doublets which were clearly late and marginal. His theory of the syllable, root and word structure in Old Basque is clearly inadequate and his use is so lax that it allows him to justify any etymology by means of Basque, for which he grants himself the dubious benefit of false segmentations, erroneous analyses of Basque (but more recent) morphemes such as the article in -a or his ignorance of other data (e.g. those of Basque toponymy). All in all, V.'s "typologically minded" reconstruction (in Kitson's words) does not provide new and effective solutions to real problems of the (pre)history of the Basque language, which should be the only raison d'être of any linguistic reconstruction of interest in the field.
   I think I have shown that V. 's reconstruction of Old European cannot be maintained if taking as the starting point this author's claims about Proto-Basque and the subsequent evolution of Basque. Obviously V. does not follow the assumptions and principles frequently postulated by historical linguists and more recently by Hamp whose observance is necessary in order for any new proposal of genetic relatedness or language classification in linguistic families to be deemed acceptable for discussion or at least suggestive, that is, worth testing. V. 's hypotheses do not contribute to the solution of any known or potential problem of the reconstruction models currently in use, nor do they answer any question posed in the literature around those two axes. V. does not seem to be willing, either, to pose any plausible question drawing on real Basque data - or from more or less likely reconstructions basing on those data; it rather seems that he tends to use, after an ad hoc manipulation, whatever (datum or theoretical argument) he finds useful for some goals which, I believe, are as grandiose as their foundations are weak, at least as far as (Proto)-Basque is concerned.