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Investigating Language Isolates: Typological and diachronic perspectives
Edited by Iker Salaberri, Dorota Krajewska, Ekaitz Santazilia and Eneko Zuloaga
[Typological Studies in Language 135] 2025
► pp. 104–141

Etymologies in a language isolate

Methodological aspects and a proposal to evaluate their quality

ORCID logo | University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU
This paper presents an introduction to Basque etymological studies from a variety of perspectives. It emphasizes the importance of lexical families and introduces the notion of lexical isolate, exploring its relevance for both etymological endeavors and hypotheses of genetic relationship. Subsequent sections inventory some guidelines for etymological inquiries, addressing the formal and semantic aspects of etymologies and delving into the specificities of loanwords. They do so while paying special attention to the particularities of language isolates and illustrating all this with novel etymologies. The paper concludes with a proposal for assessing the quality of etymologies in language isolates.
Keywords: Basque etymography, lexical isolates, genetic relatedness hypotheses, loanwords, quality of etymologies
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The position of etymology in language reconstruction
    • 2.1The importance of lexical families
      • 2.1.1A lexical family for esne ‘milk’
      • 2.1.2The family of *bil ‘round’
    • 2.2Lexical isolates
  • 3.What counts as a valid phonetic, semantic, or morphological derivation
    • 3.1Formal criteria: Phonology and morphology
    • 3.2Some guidelines for a valid semantic derivation
  • 4.Specific criteria for borrowings
    • 4.1Derivation and compounding as a test
    • 4.2Basic guidelines for developing the etymology of a loanword
    • 4.3Dialectally restricted items as borrowings
    • 4.4Establishing the exact source of loanwords
      • 4.4.1Kausitu ‘to find’
      • 4.4.2Amorratu ‘to enrage, infuriate’
  • 5.Testing the quality of etymologies in a language isolate
    • 5.1Category A: Hazi ‘breed’ as a word derived from hatz ‘toe, finger’
    • 5.2Category B: Sator ‘mole’ as a member of the sagu ‘mouse’ family
    • 5.3Category C: Is garratz ‘bitter’ derived from gar ‘flame’?
    • 5.4Category D etymologies
    • 5.5Category E etymologies
    • 5.6Category zero etymologies
  • 6.Summary
  • Author queries
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
References (72)
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