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.

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.

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.

Breaking verbs. From event structure to syntactic categories in Basque

445 p.

Linguistic Polarization and Conflict in the Basque Country

This paper investigates the relationship between linguistic polarization and conflict in the Basque Country. During the 40 years of Franco’s dictatorship the use of the Basque language was banned. Therefore, there may be some linguistic roots underlying the conflict in the Basque Country. We show that at the municipality level, linguistic polarization reduces the level of conflict. This finding is robust to various ways of measuring linguistic and ideological polarization and the inclusion of other covariates. In addition, we find that a high level of the stock of human capital is beneficial for reducing conflict intensity.

Informe titulado "Basque Democracy". Se trata de un ensayo sobre la historia vasca.

Fecha: s.f. (>1970 copia) / Unidad de instalación: Carpeta 45 - Expediente 2-30 / Nº de pág.: 36 (mecanografiadas)

Shell midden people in northern Iberia. New data from the mesolithic rock shelter of J3 (Basque Country, Spain)

[EN]In the course of a sondage dug in the rock shelter of J3, in the Jaizkibel mountains (at the north-western tip of Guipúzcoa), the body of a adult man was located buried inside a shell midden. This shell midden had not been disturbed and presented internal stratigraphy features. In any case, the outer edge of the shell midden does show some interesting interdigitation with the adjacent habitational layers, with evidence of different stages of occupation. Within the shell midden itself, under the individual buried there, it was possible to observe layers without any ceramics, whereas the layers covering said individual included ceramic fragments. This individual has been dated to 8,300 BP and therefore corresponds to a Mesolithic context.

An Analysis of English, Spanish and Basque Demonstratives in Narrative: a Matter of Viewpoint

[EN]This paper undertakes the study of the occurrence of non-corresponding demonstrative forms in Spanish, Basque and English in exactly the same linguistic context. It is proposed that the differenccs in the choice of the demonstratives result from the differences in the kind of iniormation that must be coded in each of the languages. Thus, I will argue that in Spanish and Basque the obligatory coding of the aspectual categories of the imperfect and the preterit has the function of imposing specific viewing arrangements onto the situations they designate. By contrast, in English, where the aspectual distinction is not overtly coded, the demonstrativcs are proposed to fulfil this function.

Keys to success in an example of inter-competitor cooperation: The case of the "Big Seven" basque chefs

The case of the top chefs relates the two areas that are apparently most distant, nutrition and health technology. It is the element that binds[3] the four, making them into a single whole. The results achieved by our chefs, in terms of their individual and collective success and their international projection of the image of the Basque Country comprise a goal to which other industries in the region should aspire. It is therefore our plan to apply the keys to this successful inter-competitor cooperation to development of the health technology industry. At the same time, we want to fulfil one of the aims that have been established for the food area: to make use of the country’s gastronomy-related assets.

Guided pollards in the Basque Country (Spain) during the Early Modern Ages

Publicado en: "End of Tradition?.Part 1 : History of Commons and Commons Management (Cultural Severance and Commons Past)", edited by Ian D. Rotherham, Mauro Agnoletti and Christine Handley

A methodology for the semiautomatic annotation of EPEC-RolSem, a basque corpus labeled at predicative level following the PropBank-Verb Net model

In this article we describe the methodology developed for the semiautomatic annotation of EPEC-RolSem, a Basque corpus labeled at predicate level following the PropBank-VerbNet model. The methodology presented is the product of detailed theoretical study of the semantic nature of verbs in Basque and of their similarities and differences with verbs in other languages. As part of the proposed methodology, we are creating a Basque lexicon on the PropBank-VerbNet model that we have named the Basque Verb Index (BVI). Our work thus dovetails the general trend toward building lexicons from tagged corpora that is clear in work conducted for other languages. EPEC-RolSem and BVI are two important resources for the computational semantic processing of Basque; as far as the authors are aware, they are also the first resources of their kind developed for Basque. In addition, each entry in BVI is linked to the corresponding verb-entry in well-known resources like PropBank, VerbNet, WordNet, Levin’s Classification and FrameNet. We have also implemented several automatic processes to aid in creating and annotating the BVI, including processes designed to facilitate the task of manual annotation.

Basque nominalizations and the role of structural Case in the licensing of null arguments

[EN] This article investigates the question of the licensing of null arguments in the so-called pro-drop languages. By focusing on the licensing of null subjects in the different types of -T(Z)E nominalizations in Basque, it aims at defining in a precise way the crucial feature that makes pro-drop possible in a clause. The central claim is that what licenses subject-drop is the assignment of structural Case. That is, it is argued that a subject can be null if and only if it is assigned structural Case. Different aspects of T(Z)E nominalizations are also explored, which show that even if these clauses are similar in the surface, they can be syntactically very different and furthermore, that infinitive clauses marked with the same nominalizing morpheme can also have diverging structures.

Tracing the Basque presence in eastern Canada during the 16th and 17th centuries, through ceramic remains: the example of the glazed pottery produced in Bilbao

Poster presentado en Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology Conference, in St John's, Newfoundland,(Canadá)(June 2010)