THE AINU LANGUAGES: TRADITIONAL RECONSTRUCTION, EURASIAN AREAL LINGUISTICS, AND DIACHRONIC (HOLISTIC) TYPOLOGY

El objetivo principal de esta tesis doctoral es, en primer lugar, ofrecer una reconstrucción alternativa del protoainu para, en segundo lugar, aplicar conceptos de tipología diacrónicaholística con el fin de discernir algún patrón evolutivo que ayude a responder a la pregunta:¿por qué la lengua ainu es como es en su contexto geolingüístico (lengua AOV con prefijos),cuando en la región euroasiática lo normal es encontrar el perfil 'lengua AOV con sufijos'? En suma, se trata de explorar las posibilidades que ofrece la tipología diacrónica holística,combinada con métodos más tradicionales, en la investigación de las etapas prehistóricas delenguas aisladas, es decir, sin parientes conocidos, como el ainu, el vasco, el zuñi o elburushaski. Este trabajo se divide en tres grandes bloques con un total de ocho capítulos, unapéndice con las nuevas reconstrucciones protoainúes y la bibliografía.El primer bloque se abre con el capítulo 1, donde se hace una breve presentación delas lenguas ainus y su filología. El capítulo 2 está dedicado a la reconstrucción de la fonologíaprotoainu. La reconstrucción pionera pertenece a A. Vovin (1992), que de hecho sirve comobase sobre la que ampliar, corregir o modificar nuevos elementos. En el capítulo 3 se describela morfología histórica de las lenguas ainus. En el capítulo 4 se investiga esta opción dentrode un marco más amplio que tiene como objetivo analizar los patrones elementales deformación de palabras. El capítulo 5, con el que se inicia el segundo bloque, da cabida a lapresentación de una hipótesis tipológica diacrónica, a cargo de P. Donegan y D. Stampe, conla que especialistas en lenguas munda y mon-khmer han sido capaces de alcanzar unreconstrucción del protoaustroasiático según la cual el tipo aglutinante de las lenguas mundasería secundario, frente al original monosilábico de las lenguas mon-khmer. En el capítulo 6se retoma la perspectiva tradicional de la lingüística geográfica, pero no se olvidan algunas delas consideraciones tipológicas apuntadas en el capítulo anterior (el hecho de que la hipótesisde Donegan y Stampe no funcione con el ainu no significa que la tipología diacrónica nopueda ser todavía de utilidad). En el capítulo 7 se presentan algunas incongruencias queresultan tras combinar las supuestas evidencias arqueológicas con el escenario lingüísticodescrito en capítulos anteriores. Las conclusiones generales se presentan en el capítulo 8. Elapéndice es una tabla comparativa con las dos reconstrucciones disponibles a fecha de hoypara la lengua protoainu, es decir, las propuestas por A. Vovin en su estudio seminal de 1992y en el capítulo 3 de la presente tesis. Dicha tabla incluye 686 reconstrucciones (puedehacerse una sencilla referencia cruzada con Vovin, puesto que ambas están ordenadasalfabéticamente).

Astarloaren sintaxia eta hitz ordena naturala

[EN] This paper examines the syntactic ideas of Pablo Pedro Astarloa (1752-1806) as he explained in his Discursos filosóficos sobre la lengua primitiva (1805), and tries to put them in the context of the debate between rationalists and sensualists, who argued whether there is a «natural order» of words. Astarloa developed a system for accounting the word order in the primitive language of mankind (and hence in the Basque language) founded in three types of «nobleness», and in the principle that the noblest element precedes the less noble one. The first type (nobleza de origen) orders words according to their meaning. The second type (nobleza de ministerio) orders words according to the part of speech they belong to, or the semantic function they have. Finally, the third type (nobleza de mérito or de movilidad) considers the will for communication and, as a result, word order reflects the information structure. Moreover Astarloa ’s three types of nobleness are arranged in a hierarchy of superiority: movilidad > ministerio > origen. So Astarloa ’s syntax appears near to sensualists ’ conceptions on word order because it did not appeal for a fixed natural order of words; instead he proposed a variable word order based mainly on the communicative process.

Atraso e innovación tecnológicos en la siderurgia guipuzcoana durante el antiguo régimen

[ES]Durante décadas la historiografía ha considerado que la siderurgia vasca, y dentro de ella la guipuzcoana, sufrió un claro «atraso tecnológico», anclada en los métodos directos, en un momento de expansión mundial de los sistemas indirectos. El presente artículo hace un análisis diacrónico de la evolución tecnológica de la mencionada actividad entre los siglos XIII y XIX, centrando su discurso, tanto en los intentos e iniciativas innovadoras, tratando de desentrañar las verdaderas razones que llevaron dichos proyectos innovadores al éxito o al fracaso, como en las continuidades. En definitiva, se trata de matizar y relativizar el mencionado concepto.

Language distance and non-native syntactic processing: Evidence from event-related potentials

[EN] In this study, we explore native and non-native syntactic processing, paying special attention to the language distance factor. To this end, we compared how native speakers of Basque and highly proficient non-native speakers of Basque who are native speakers of Spanish process certain core aspects of Basque syntax. Our results suggest that differences in native versus non-native language processing strongly correlate with language distance: native/non-native processing differences obtain if a syntactic parameter of the non-native grammar diverges from the native grammar. Otherwise, non-native processing will approximate native processing as levels of proficiency increase. We focus on three syntactic parameters: (i) the head parameter, (ii) argument alignment (ergative/accusative), and (iii) verb agreement. The first two diverge in Basque and Spanish, but the third is the same in both languages. Our results reveal that native and non-native processing differs for the diverging syntactic parameters, but not for the convergent one. These findings indicate that language distance has a significant impact in non-native language processing.

Sentence comprehension before and after 1970: Topics, debates and techniques

[EN] Language Down the Garden Path traces the lines of research that grew out of Bever's classic paper. Leading scientists review over 40 years of debates on the factors at play in language comprehension, production, and acquisition (the role of prediction, grammar, working memory, prosody, abstractness, syntax and semantics mapping); the current status of universals and narrow syntax; and virtually every topic relevant in psycholinguistics since 1970. Written in an accessible and engaging style, the book will appeal to all those interested in understanding the questions that shaped, and are still shaping, this field and the ways in which linguists, cognitive scientists, psychologists, and neuroscientists are seeking to answer them.

I edo adikzio baten anatomia

[EN] This paper is devoted to i, the Basque dative case marker. In part I, the paper aims at presenting a general approach the locus of syntactic variation within Universal Grammar (sections 1.1 to 1.3). After an excursus on the use of minorized languages in science (1.4), a discussion on parameters is provided. In (1.5), the notion of macroparameter from the 80’s is critically discussed mainly but not along the lines of Newmeyer (2005). The last section (1.6)supports to focus on microparameters, along the lines of Kayne (2000, 2005), as the right way to properly understand and explain variation. Part II provides an analysis of the main properties of Basque datives (sections 2.1 and 2.2). Sections 2.3 and 2.4 are devoted to the nature of Basque inflectional morpheme (k)i, interpreted asan applicative morpheme which ‘applies’ dative object arguments to the structure. Finally, microcomparative analyses on Basque Differential Object Marking and Dative Displacement are presented in sections (2.6) and (2.7) respectively.

A Brief Grammar of Euskara, the Basque Language

This is a short grammar of the Basque language, or Euskara as it is called by its speakers. What follows is a partial description of the syntax of Euskara. The text has been arranged in the following fashion: there is an index where you can find the distribution of topics. Within each of the topics, an effort has been made to arrange information from general to specific, so that as you read into a given section, you will get into more details about the topic being under discussion. This grammar hopes to be useful to a wide variety of users. Therefore, it will probably not satisfy anyone completely: Those who want a quick 'feel' for the language will be disappointed by the slow and messy details the text dives into. Those who want a detailed, professional description will be disappointed by the lack of depth in the discussion. The text hopes to sit somewhere in the middle, and if it tells too much to those who want to know a little, and too little to those who want to know a lot, then it will have done its job.

¿Reemplazo demográfico en el Neolítico europeo? El punto de vista de la Genética

[ES] El trabajo realiza una aproximación a la situación actual de los estudios de ADN antiguo humano en Europa, recopilando los datos de los individuos analizados hasta 2013 (n=700), a modo de síntesis interpretativa continental y regional de los territorios para los cuales se han obtenido resultados significativos (Centroeuropa, Cornisa Cantábrica, Mediterráneo occidental, Escandinavia-Báltico-Rusia y Alpes orientales). Las hipótesis se expresan en términos de continuidad o discontinuidad genética entre los grupos humanos habitantes de un territorio, centradas en la problemática de la neolitización, en una horquilla cronocultural del Paleolítico superior a la Edad del Bronce. Los resultados se resumen en (1) una preponderancia del clado mitocondrial U para muestras preneolíticas; (2) la posibilidad de una intrusión démica en una fase inicial de la neolitización centroeuropea -tipo N1a, con pérdida posterior de ese haplogrupo mitocondrial-; (3) la evidencia del proceso neolitizador como heterogéneo y con diferente impacto a escala regional; (4) una estabilización del acervo genético europeo actual como resultado de eventos postneolíticos; y (5) las posibilidades analíticas de la genética aplicada a las poblaciones antiguas como un instrumento de gran interés, observándose la necesidad de realizar más analíticas con recorrido diacrónico.

Automatically exposing OpenLifeData via SADI semantic Web Services

Background: Two distinct trends are emerging with respect to how data is shared, collected, and analyzed within the bioinformatics community. First, Linked Data, exposed as SPARQL endpoints, promises to make data easier to collect and integrate by moving towards the harmonization of data syntax, descriptive vocabularies, and identifiers, as well as providing a standardized mechanism for data access. Second, Web Services, often linked together into workflows, normalize data access and create transparent, reproducible scientific methodologies that can, in principle, be re-used and customized to suit new scientific questions. Constructing queries that traverse semantically-rich Linked Data requires substantial expertise, yet traditional RESTful or SOAP Web Services cannot adequately describe the content of a SPARQL endpoint. We propose that content-driven Semantic Web Services can enable facile discovery of Linked Data, independent of their location. Results: We use a well-curated Linked Dataset - OpenLifeData - and utilize its descriptive metadata to automatically configure a series of more than 22,000 Semantic Web Services that expose all of its content via the SADI set of design principles. The OpenLifeData SADI services are discoverable via queries to the SHARE registry and easy to integrate into new or existing bioinformatics workflows and analytical pipelines. We demonstrate the utility of this system through comparison of Web Service-mediated data access with traditional SPARQL, and note that this approach not only simplifies data retrieval, but simultaneously provides protection against resource-intensive queries. Conclusions: We show, through a variety of different clients and examples of varying complexity, that data from the myriad OpenLifeData can be recovered without any need for prior-knowledge of the content or structure of the SPARQL endpoints. We also demonstrate that, via clients such as SHARE, the complexity of federated SPARQL queries is dramatically reduced.

Breaking verbs. From event structure to syntactic categories in Basque

445 p.

La sintaxis del pasivo en irlandés antiguo

[ES] Con la intención de dilucidar el modo en el que el patrón sintáctico del pasivo del irlandés antiguo se ha establecido en un momento del proto-celta insular, se pasa revista en este trabajo al orden obligatorio VSO (§4), a las condiciones de aparición y la forma de los pronombres personales (§§5-7), a la oración relativa (§§8-9) y a la construcción "ceft", (§§10-11) del irlandés antiguo en tanto que factores determinantes en la constitución (§§12-14) de dicho pasivo.

Etymological notes on Aleut (III). With methodological notes on (Eskimo-Aleut) historical linguistics

[EN] The goal of this contribution is twofold: on the one hand, to review two relatively recent contributions in the field of Eskimo-Aleut historical linguistics in which it is proposed that Eskimo-Aleut languages are related genealogically to Wakashan (Holst 2004) and?/or Nostratic (Krougly-Enke 2008). These contributions can be characterized by saying that their authors have taken little care to be diligent and responsible in the application of the comparative method, and that their familiarity with the languages involved is insufficient. Eskimo-Aleut languages belong to a very exclusive group of language families that have been (and still are) used, sometimes compulsively, in the business of so-called “long-range comparisons”. Those carrying out such studies are very often unaware of the most basic facts regarding the philological and linguistic traditions of those languages, as a result of what mountains of very low quality works with almost no-relevancy for the specialist grow every year to the desperation of the scientific community, whose attitude toward them ranges from the most profound indifference to the toughest (and most explicit) critical tone. Since Basque also belongs to this group of “compare-with-everything-you-come- across” languages, it is my intention to provide the Basque readership with a sort of “pedagogical case” to show that little known languages, far from underrepresented in the field, already have a very long tradition in historical and comparative linguistics, i.e. nobody can approach them without previous acquaintance with the materials. Studies dealing with the methodological inappropriateness of the Moscow School’s Nostratic hypothesis or the incorrectness of many of the proposed new taxonomic Amerindian subfamilies (several of them involving the aforementioned Wakashan languages), that is to say, the frameworks on which Krougly-Enke and Holst work, respectively, are plenty (i.a. Campbell 1997: 260-329, Campbell & Poser 2008: 234-96), therefore there is no reason to insist once more on the very same point. This is the reason why I will not discuss per se Eskimo-Aleut–Wakashan or Eskimo-Aleut–Nostratic. On the contrary, I will focus attention upon very concrete aspects of Krougly-Enke and Holst´s proposals, i.e. when they work on “less ambitious” problems, for example, dealing with the minutiae of internal facts or analyzing certain words from the sole perspective of Eskimo-Aleut materials (in other words, those cases in which even they do not invoke the ad hoc help of Nostratic stuff). I will try to explain why some of their proposals are wrong, demonstrate where the problem lies, and fix it if possible. In doing so, I will propose new etymologies in an attempt at showing how we may proceed. The main difference between this and handbook examples lies in the reality of what we are doing: this is a pure etymological exercise from beginning to end. I will try to throw a bit of light on a couple of problematic questions regarding Aleut historical phonology, demonstrating how much work should be done at the lowest level of the Eskimo-Aleut pyramid; it is technically impossible to reach the peak of the pyramid without having completed the base. As far as Aleut is regarded, I will mainly profit not only from the use of the traditional philological analysis of Aleut (and, eventually, of Eskimo) materials, but also of diachronic typology, bringing into discussion what in my opinion seems useful, and in some cases I think decisive, parallels. It is worth noting that this paper makes up yet another part of a series of exploratory works dealing with etymological aspects of the reconstruction of Proto-Eskimo-Aleut, with special emphasis on Aleut (vid. i.a. Alonso de la Fuente 2006/2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2010a), whose main goal is to become the solid basis for an etymological dictionary of the Aleut language, currently in progress.

"Erran nahi baita" birformulatzaile esplikatiboa gaurko euskaran

[EN] This article presents a detailed study of the present-day use of the Basque discourse marker "erran/esan nahi baita" (‘that is to say’). This is an explanatory reformulator by means of which the speaker presents a reformulation of something said in the previous utterance (either a clause that forms part of the current sentence, or the preceding sentence) in order to express it more clearly or explain it. In the article I will examine the marker’s values; literary tradition; form and origin; present-day variants; equivalent expressions; position; punctuation; syntax; frequency, medium (written or spoken), register and text type; equivalents in other languages; and discourse value.

Extraposition in English and Spanish: A comparative study

451 p.

Europeanization beyond the EU: The case of Georgia.

320 p.