Noun_classification in Basque

Gender

Basque has no grammatical gender, i.e. the morphological sex-marking is not indicated in the noun phrases. Thus for example, in Spanish the same word can have two forms: one for masculine and the other for feminine:

Spanish: niño / niña - ‘boy / girl’

perro / perra - ‘dog(masc) / dog (fem)

Basque in contrast to Spanish uses the same word for masculine and for feminine not distinguishing gender:

Basque: ume - ‘boy / girl’

txakur - ‘dog (masc / fem)

At the same time in order to distinguish natural gender different lexical items are used for masculine and for feminine (Ilari Zubiri 1991: 30)

In addition, in order to express a mixed group including both genders the two lexical items (of feminine and masculine) are compounded in one word that is marked for plural (Ilari Zubiri 1991: 30):

aitona-amon-ak - ‘grandparents’

seme-alab-ak - ‘children’

senar-emaste-ak - ‘husband and wife’

There are practically no gender distinctions made within the system of free personal pronouns, except that the sex of an addressee addressed with the intimate second-person singular pronoun is sometimes (not always) marked in the verb. Let’s consider this interesting case in detail.

The personal pronouns are ni `I`, hi `you' (singular intimate), zu `you' (singular formal), gu `we', zuek `you' (plural). The intimate hi is of extraordinarily restricted use: it is regularly used only between siblings and between close friends of the same sex and roughly the same age. It may optionally be used in addressing children. It is not normally used between adults of opposite sex, not even between man and wife, except when teasing or abusing. In general, there are no third-person pronouns, and demonstratives are used instead when required. Western varieties, however, have recently created third-person pronouns bera `he/she' and berak (or eurak) `they'.

The analysis of verb agreement in Basque also reveals that finite verbs are marked to agree obligatorily with the person and number of the subject, direct object and indirect object. And it is on the verb agreement marking of the verb with the 2^nd person singular informal personal pronouns that we find the distinction in gender. Thus we find out that with respect to informal second person, verbal morphology indicates gender distinction shown in the following paradigms of Ergative and Dative markers (Saltarelli, M 1988: 240-241):

Therefore, the lack of distinction in gender in 3 person singular and the presence of distinction in gender in 2 person singular informal is exemplified in the following examples respectfully (Saltarelli, M 1988: 245; 241):

Bost liburu irakurr-i d-it-u

‘He/she has read five books.’

Pello, hi-k esa-n al d-u-k hala-ko astakeria?

‘Pello, have you said such a stupid thing?’

Miren, hi-k esa-n al d-u-n hala-ko astakeria?

‘Miren, have you said such a stupid thing?’

There are no noun classes, noun classifiers or numeral classifiers in Basque.

1, 2, 3 – person marker

sg. - singular number

pl. - plural number

prs - present tense

pst - past tense

fut - future

prf - perfective

aux1 - intransitive auxiliary

aux2 - transitive auxiliary

Erg - ergative

Abs - absolutive

Dat - dative

gen - genetive

loc - locative

abl - ablative

all - allative

det - determiner

inform - informal

form - formal

Q - question particle

fem - feminine

masc - masculine

1. M, Saltarelli "Basque"; Croom Helm, 1988.
2. Ilari Zubiri "Gramatica didactica del auskera", HABE, 1991
3. J. I. Hualde & J.Ortiz de Urbina (eds.) "Generative Studies in Basque Linguistics". Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 105;1993.
4. World Wide Web Page: http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/larryt/basque.sketch.html

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Revised April 20, 1999