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Article published In:
Diachronica
Vol. 40:1 (2023) ► pp.30–72

A history of the Basque prosodic systems

ORCID logo | Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-IKER UMR 5478
| University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)

This paper presents new proposals for the reconstruction of Proto-Basque accentuation, as well as the development and chronology of the main accentual systems of the modern dialects, grounded in phonetic, historical and typological evidence. It is the first attempt to reconstruct Basque accentuation from a pre-Roman stage to the dialectalization that followed Common Basque. We suggest that Old Proto-Basque had prosodic prominence in the root, i.e., [(C)V.'CVC]. This system evolved into phrase-level prominence in Modern Proto-Basque, giving rise to unaccentedness in non-phrase final positions, with marked stress only introduced later, through Latin loanwords (2nd–3rd century CE). This would become the common system, which still persists in the west. Not long after the dialectification, word-level systems developed in non-western areas, first as peninitial and then as penultimate stress (in eastern dialects). Finally, we propose that the Goizueta prosodic system can be derived from the Central system, which is an alternative view to Hualde (in press).

Keywords: historical phonology, Basque, reconstruction of accentuation, pitch accent, stress accent, sound change, relative chronology, prosodic reconstruction
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Reconstructed prosodic systems: Proto-Basque and Common Basque
    • 2.1Proto-Basque prosody
      • 2.1.1Characteristics of Old Proto-Basque prosody
      • 2.1.2From Old Proto-Basque to Modern Proto-Basque
    • 2.2Common Basque prosodic system
      • 2.2.1Phrase-level accentuation
      • 2.2.2Development of an accented class
  • 3.Modern Basque prosodies and how they developed
    • 3.1Western
      • 3.1.1The tonal realization of accent
      • 3.1.2Incorporation of more accented words
      • 3.1.3Development of a class of pre-accenting suffixes
      • 3.1.4Prosodic behavior of verbs
      • 3.1.5Historical geographic extension of the Western prosodic system
    • 3.2Central
      • 3.2.1The establishment of the phonological word as the minimal prosodic unit
      • 3.2.2The development of peninitial prominence
      • 3.2.3Phonotactic consequences of the word-initial prosodic domain
      • 3.2.4From accent to stress
      • 3.2.5Historical geographic extension of the Central prosodic system
    • 3.3Goizueta
      • 3.3.1Similarities between the Goizueta and the Central prosodic system
      • 3.3.2Development of Accent 2 (and accentual Classes 3–4)
      • 3.3.3Historical geographic extension of the Goizueta prosodic system
    • 3.4Eastern
      • 3.4.1Reinterpretation of the position of the stress
      • 3.4.2Reset of the common marked class and development of a new marked class
      • 3.4.3Historical geographic extension of the Eastern prosodic system
  • 4.Chronology of the Basque prosodic systems and dialect diversification
  • 5.Comparisons with earlier proposals
    • 5.1Differences regarding the prosodic proto-system
    • 5.2Differences regarding the prosodic evolution across dialects
    • 5.3Typological plausibility, naturalness, and degree of explanation of our approach
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 23 August 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.20066.egu
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