Basque grammar

This article provides a grammar sketch of the Basque language, the language of the Basque people of the Basque Country or Euskal Herria, which borders the Bay of Biscay in western Europe. The verb is covered by a separate article.

Noun phrase

The Basque noun phrase is structured in a way quite different from noun phrases in most Indo-European languages.

Articles, determiners and quantifiers

Determiners and quantifiers play a central role in Basque noun phrase structure. The key elements we call "articles" are best treated as a subset of the determiners.

Adjectives

The function of third person personal pronouns may be filled by any of the demonstrative pronouns or their emphatic counterparts in "ber-".

Further forms

* All the demonstrative pronouns and adverbs may be extended by the suffix "-xe" ("-txe") which lends further emphasis, e.g. "hauxe, hementxe, honelaxe, oraintxe...".

* The pronouns can all be declined in any case (see below). The personal and demonstrative pronouns exhibit allomorphy between absolutive and non-zero cases. The adverbs can be adjectivalised by addition of "-ko" ("-go"), and some can also take other locative suffixes.

* There are two further series of indefinites, as illustrated by "edonor, edonon"... and "nornahi, zernahi...", respectively; both series may be translated as 'whoever, wherever...' or 'anyone, anywhere...'.

* Negative pronouns and adverbs consist of the negative polarity series together with "ez" 'no' or as part of a negative sentence: "inor ez" 'nobody', "Ez dut inor ezagutzen" 'I don't know anybody' = 'I know nobody'.

Declension

The cases

Except in the absolutive or zero case, characterised (in the singular at least) by the lack of a case ending, Basque noun phrases are followed by a case suffix which specifies the relation between the noun phrase and the clause it is in (i.e. playing roughly the role of prepositions in English). The most basic cases are shown here, for convenience divided into three main groups: nuclear, local (or locative) and others.

Case suffixes are attached to whatever element (noun, adjective, determiner...) comes last in the noun phrase according to the rules already given. The different forms or "declensions" of each case suffix given in the following tables are selected in accordance with the nature of the nominal element to which the case ending is attached, as will be explained below.

ets of case forms ("declensions")

The four sets of forms labelled 1 to 4 in the preceding tables have the following uses and characteristics:

As we have already seen, the demonstratives each have three stems: one for the absolutive singular ("hau, hori, hura"), another for all other singular cases ("hon-, horr-, har-"), and one for the plural, all cases ("haue-, horie-, haie-"). In the plural they take a "-k" suffix in the absolutive, as does "batzuk" 'some').

Any such adjectivalised forms may be used without an overt head noun, and in this case is likely to appear with a suffixed article, e.g. "haurrentzakoa" '(the) one for (the) children' [child-for.PLURAL.ART-"ko"-ART] , "haurrentzakoak" '(the) ones for (the) children' [child-for.PLURAL.ART-"ko"-PLURAL.ART] . Such nominalised adjectival forms may further take case suffixes of their own, e.g. "haurrentzakoarekin" 'with the one for children' [child-for.PLURAL.ART-"ko"-with.ART] , "euskarazkoentzat" 'for the ones in Basque' [Basque-INSTRUMENTAL-"ko"-for.PLURAL.ART] , etc. While the potential to generate and understand (in a reasonable context) such complex forms is built into Basque grammar and perfectly intelligible to speakers, in practice the use of very complex constructions of this type is not too common.

Local cases with adverbs

The fourth set of local case suffixes (etymologically the primary forms) are incorporated into the place adverbs, giving the following (partly irregular) forms:

The affirmative use of "ba-" (not to confused with the homophonous subordinating prefix meaning 'if') is normally used with synthetic finite forms, thus also "John badator" or "Badator John" 'John is coming' (as opposed to "John dator" " 'John" is coming'), "Badu dirua" (or in western Basque "Badauka dirua") 'She has money'. In most varieties of Basque, affirmative "ba-" is not so used with compound tenses or compound verbs, however.

To place a compound verb form (or its affirmation) in focus, it may be enough to place the main sentence stress (which normally goes on the focused item) on the first component of the verbal compound expression. Here it seems that the auxiliary part of the expression is treated as representing the "verb" in the general focus rule, thereby predictably throwing the focus onto the preceding component, which is now the main verb. In western dialects an alternative procedure used to emphasise the placement of focus on the verb is to make this a complement of the verb "egin" 'do'.

Negation

Word order in wh-questions (i.e. those with question words) is fully accounted for by the general rules of Basque word order, granted a further rule for Basque (shared by many other languages) which states that interrogative words and phrases (e.g. "nor" 'who?', "zein etxe zuritan?" 'in which white house?', "zenbat diru" 'how much money?', etc.) are obligatorily focused.

Bibliography

* Agirre Berezibar, J.M. (1991). "Euskal gramatika deskriptiboa." Bilbao: Labayru Ikastegia. (in Basque)
* Allières, Jacques (1979). "Manuel pratique de basque." Paris: Picard. (in French)
* Altube, S. (1929/1975). "Erderismos." Bilbao. (in Spanish)
* Azkue, R.M. (1905/1969). "Morfología vasca." Bilbao: La Gran Enciclopedia Vasca. (in Spanish)
* Campión, Arturo (1884). "Gramática de los cuatro dialectos literarios de la lengua euskara." Bilbao: La Gran Enciclopedia Vasca. (in Spanish)
* Goenaga, Patxi (1980). "Gramatika bideetan" (second edition). Donostia: Erein. (in Basque)
* Hualde, José Ignacio & Ortiz de Urbina, Jon, eds. (2003). "A grammar of Basque." Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2003. ISBN 3-11-017683-1.
* King, Alan R. (1994). "The Basque language: A practical introduction." University of Nevada Press. ISBN 0-874-17155-5.
* King, Alan R. & Olaizola Elordi, Begotxu (1996). "Colloquial Basque: A complete language course." London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-12109-4.
* Lafitte, Pierre (1944/1979). "Grammaire basque: navarro-labourdin littéraire." Donostia: Elkar. (in French)
* Saltarelli, M. (1988). "Basque." London: Croom Helm.
* Trask, R, Larry (1996). "The history of Basque." London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-13116-2.