Selected category ◊ Books-Reports-Videos ◊

Billy Petersen: the Basque and the Baskeland

Workshop: Latin Influence on the syntax of the languages of Europe

Mikel Mtez Areta: Leiden.2015 (ingelesez)

Conclusions:

Pre-OCB had, along with a closed class which allowed onepiece verbs, an open periphrastic type of the structure ‘vbal. stem + din-gin-zan auxiliary’.

In around the 5th-6th centuries, OCB borrowed, from Late Latin / Common Romance, the periphrastic perfect construction of the structure ‘pfv. participle + izan/edun aux.’, which was the only verbal sector which allowed accomodation into Basque.

At a post-common period, Basque extended the periphrastic model of the perfect periphrasis, with intr./tr. opposition, to create an imperfective periphrasis and a prospective periphrasis which allowed massive borrowing.

To make up for the absence of a subjunctive, the old constructions of the type ‘vbal. stem + din-gin-zan auxiliary’ were relegated, by the more recent ‘pf./ipfv./prosp. participle + izan/edun aux.’ constructions, to subjunctive functions.

This book is defined like a “hand book”, to be of help for any etymology analysis based in the Basque language. It is the first in a series of books for the application of the theory described in it, born to be useful for disciplines such as Linguistics, Geography, Archaeology, Paleontology, History and prehistory, all kind of Technical Disciplines and Scientist Research in general.

The real substance that fills the DNA, comes from a kind of method of “internal reconstruction”, which is based on the lexical dictionaries available in Euskera, Italic and Germanic languages and the “euskalkis” or basque dialects and place names, a “resource” that has never been worked in a broad and deep way and comes to “recover” lost roots that are key in understanding the Basque itself, some european languages and even the evolution of humanity in the pre-documentary age.

Having been able to extract up to 1,524 morphemes to date, there is hope to still discover, refine and add several hundreds more to the list. Research has just only begun.

Basically, what this DNA suggests actually agrees and fits in with some theories already outlined (and rejected) in the sixteenth century which in the last decade are being confirmed by new disciplines now “at peak”, suggesting that in the endless pre-agrarian and nomadic culture, there was much more proximity between languages than now.

And this could have drive to the existence of a common substrate along territories of continental dimension, having many indications that such language could have been very similar to Basque, since not only the persistence of certain phonemes in place names or toponymy, but the exceptional coincidence with at least two deeply related Indo-European branches (Italic and Germanic) call for further study.

ISBN: 978-84-616-3693-8.
Paperean: 25 €. On line: 8 €

basaneses61@hotmail.com

Felix Zubiaga writes in his book “Zuzentza eta eskubidea euskararen oroitzan” about two similar stories: one comes from Sumer and the other one from Ancient Basque Folk. This Basque story has been collected in his book Sakana by the Navarran researcher Jose Mari Satrustegi.

Both stories are so similar that Zubiaga thinks that they have a common origin. The common topic is about lack of justice and a bad economic situation similar to that we are now living.