Number in Basque

Basque exposes us to an extremely interesting pattern of number marking restricted in the language to the classes of nouns, personal pronouns and demonstratives. In addition, Basque double marks the number category on verbs. We are first going to consider the parts of speech that are distinguished for the number and then analyze the verb agreement phenomenon.

 1. There are several criteria that the marking of number in Basque depends on:

If the NP is indefinite then it is not marked for the number but if the NP is definite then it is marked for singular (clitic –a) or for plural where the latter has two way marking: ‘simple’ plural (clitic –ak) or "proximate plural" (clitic –ok). The ‘proximate plural’ indicates the proximity of the plural set where etymologically the ‘simple’ plural form –ak is the plural form of a third degree (distal) demonstrative (*ak ‘those’) while the proximate plural –ok derives from a first degree (proximate) demonstrative plural form (*auek ‘these’).

Example (from Saltarelli, M 1988 : 198):

auzo-ko etxe-etatik usain gozo-a d-a-tor

‘An appetizing aroma comes from the houses in the neighborhood’

auzo-ko etxe-otatik usain gozo-a d-a-tor

‘An appetizing aroma comes from these houses in the neighborhood’

Since we have shown that plurality marking depends on the definiteness of nouns it is important to specify that nouns always contain one (and only one) determiner: definite or indefinite.

• the definite article that is expressed by clitic attaching to the whole NP;
• a demonstrative that is expressed by a free morpheme following NP. They have number distinction that will be discussed later.

• quantifiers including indefinite article;
• enumerators.

The summary of the plurality marking of nouns is shown in the following scheme:

At the same time we should note that the marking system for plurality is complicated by the fact that it also depends on the case system where the case endings are juxtaposed with a number marker. Let’s consider the nominal paradigm below (Saltarelli, M 1988: 300):

Note: The paradigm introduces the allomorphs of the suffix by showing some parts in brackets depending on the type of the stem of the noun: if the stem ends in a vowel then there appears a linking consonant [r] in some suffice forms of the suffix for marking Indefinite but if the stem ends in a consonant then some suffixes add the linking vowel [e].

As we see from the paradigm the plurality marker fuses together with case marker for many cases. Thus using Anderson (1992) terminology we are dealing with portmanteau morphemes that signal at least three semantic categories: definiteness, number and case.

• Animate vs inanimate locative nouns

We should specify that for inanimate locative NPs, the indefinite and definite plural nouns are marked by the clitic –ta- that can be seen in the paradigms for locative cases (Locative, Ablative, Allative, Goal allative, Directional, Locative genetive, Destinative, Modal):

Example (from Saltarelli, M 1988 : 198):

zenbait mendi-tan elurr-a ez d-a inoiz ur-tzen

‘On some mountains the snow never melts’

mendi-a-n elurr-a d-a

‘There is snow in the mountain’

• Count vs mass nouns

There is a distinction between count and mass nouns in that the latter cannot occur with numerals or quantifiers such as asko ‘many/ much’. For example, diru asko ‘a lot of money’ is contraposed to *ke asko ‘a lot of smoke’ where ke haundi ‘a big smoke’ should be used instead.

There is no dual, trial or paucal number indicator in Basque.

The peculiarity of Basque system consists of the fact that nouns cannot be directly inflected: it is noun phrases, and only noun phrases, which are inflected in Basque.

Thus we find that when a noun is modified by an adjective it has a bare form where the plural marker, article and case marker appear only at the end of the phrase not on its individual parts.

Example using the word etxe ‘house’ (from internet: http://www.scs.unr.edu/~bstudies/)

The same is true for the cases when we are dealing with several modifiers where the article and plural marker are used only with the last word in the phrase.

Examples (from Saltarelli, M 1988: 81-82)

 Therefore, we have shown that the placement of plural marker is governed by a syntactic principle where the plural marker is restricted to the end of a noun phrase and cannot appear on its individual parts. Hence, we conclude that plurality marking is realized not by an affix but by a clitic in Basque.

3. Mismatch between semantic and morphological realization of plurality.

The analysis of data in Basque shows that there is a mismatch between semantic and morphological plurality when nouns are modified by quantifiers and enumerators. A noun phrase doesn’t have a plurality clitic when used with numbers in Basque. This is shown in the following examples (from http://www.scs.unr.edu/~bstudies/):

All examples are given with the noun etxe ‘house’:

• the indefinite article bat (has restricted use; commonly corresponds to English `a certain').

Example: etxe bat ‘one house/ a (certain) house’ (depending on the stress)

• quantifiers asko ‘many’, gutxi ‘few’, oro ‘every’:

Example: etxe asko ‘lots of houses’

etxe gutxi ‘few houses’

• comparative expressions gehiago ‘more (than)’ and gutxiago ‘less (than)’:

Example: etxe gehiago ‘more houses’

• the numerals:

Examples: 1 house - etxe bat
2 houses - bi etxe (there is a change in word order)
3 houses - hiru etxe
4 houses - lau etxe

• the specifically referring indefinite expressions such as zenbait "some/ several/ a certain few", heinbat ‘so many/ a certain amount’, honenbeste ‘this many’, horrenbeste ‘that many’, heinbeste ‘many’ and so on:

Example: zenbait etxe ‘a number of/ some houses’

It is also important to show that there is an ambiguous pattern where nouns are modified by demonstrative pronouns in Basque. Since demonstratives are marked for number it is hard to say if the noun phrases are not marked for plurality and fall into the same pattern with quantifiers and enumerators or they bear the plurality clitic that attaches to the whole NP and consequently can be found on the demonstrative:

Examples: etxe hau ‘this house’

etxe hura ‘that house’

etxe haiek ‘those houses’

In conclusion, I would like to mention that in many dialects (especially Guipuscoan, Biscayan, Gernika) number and case markers are fused to a greater degree than in Standard Basque: singular versus plural forms are segmentally identical for a number of cases (Ergative, Genative, Dative). In these dialects, however, singular and plural forms often show different suprasegmantal (tonal) patterns, as in the Gernika examples below (from Hualde, J.I. 1991: 19):

gixon-ak ‘the man’ vs gixon-ak ‘the men’

gixon-ari ‘to the man’ vs gixon-ari ‘to the men’

txakur-ren ‘of the dog’ vs txakur-ren ‘of the dogs’

There are only two subclasses of pronouns that have the distinction of number:

• Personal pronouns
• Demonstratives

Basque distinguishes first person, second person and third person pronouns with singular and plural for each person. They are shown in the table below (Saltareli, M 1988: 208):

Thus we find out that the personal pronouns are ni `I`, hi `you' (singular intimate), zu `you' (singular unmarked), 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.

In general, there are no third-person pronouns, and demonstratives are used instead when required. Western varieties of Basque, however, have recently created third-person pronouns bera `he/she' and berak (or eurak) `they'; these forms are historically intensive pronouns, `he himself' and so on.

In addition, we reveal the two more subcategories of personal pronouns such as intensive or emphatic and anaphoric. All free pronouns have normal and intensive (emphatic) forms where the latter forms occur in contexts with the emphasized pronoun sometimes in apposition to the non-intensive form of the pronoun. They are especially common when the relevant pronoun assumes the focus position. Emphatic pronouns are formed by substituting the diphthong –eu- for the root vowel of the pronoun in normal form.

Anaphoric pronouns are distinguished by some element introduced either in the same sentence or in a previous sentence. Thus for example, the absolute form of berau ‘this/ near the speaker’; ?berori ‘that/ near the addressee’; and bera ‘that over there’.

Summing up the information from the table about morphological realization of plurality marking we may say that the general pattern is to mark plural by the suffix ‘-ek’ except for the 1^st person singular where we are more likely to deal with a case of suplition.

There are three basic demonstrative pronouns in Basque that vary with respect to the distance of the object referred to from the speaker and addressee. Thus we find three way distinction within this class:

Demonstratives are marked for case and number as any other nouns. This is show in the paradigm below (from Saltarelli, M 1988: 214):

The table reveals that in spite of the apparent case of suffixation (-ek) for Absolutive the general pattern of morphological realization of plurality marking can be described as supplition.

The benefactive and comitative cases are formed by affixing the relevant case suffix to the genetive form of the demonstrative:

Example (from saltarelli, M 1988: 214):

hau-ekin ‘with these’

hori-ekin ‘with those’ (near by)

haien-ekin ‘with those’ (far off)

The remaining demonstrative forms are formulated by adding either the suffix -ta- for inanimate or the suffix –gan- for animates to the genetive form of the demonstratives and affixing the relevant case marker. (For more detail see Saltarelli, M 1988: 215)

Finite verbs in Basque are marked to agree obligatorily with the person and number of the Subject, Direct Object and Indirect Object. The verb markers can also be considered as portmanteau morphemes where the verb double markers bear the information about not only case but number and person as well.

Example (from Saltarelli, M 1988:238):

ni-k aita-ri diru-a eska-tu d-io-t

‘I have asked father for (some) money’.

Example (from Saltarelli, M 1988:197):

zu-entza-ko liburu-ak hemen eros-i d-it-u-t

‘You have bought the books for you here’.

The precise analysis of morphemes on the auxiliary verb reveals an interesting picture we have a split between person and number marker in Absolutive case where they are divided by tense and auxiliary markers. I haven’t found the explanation to the fact in any of the sources I was exposed to but I think that we are dealing with the case of infixes of auxiliary and tense markers.

Indefinite nominals are sometimes treated as singular and sometimes as plural by the verb agreement system highlighting the non-distinctive nature of indefinite nominals with respect to the number parameter.

Examples (from Saltarelli, M. 1988: 200):

gizon batzu etorr-i d-i-ra

‘Some men have come’.

bost liburu irakurr-i d-it-u-t

‘I have read five books’.

bost liburu irakurr-i d-u-t

‘I have read five books’.

According to the grammar (Saltarelli, M 1988:201), treating indefinite as a singular form is thought to be archaic while treating it as a plural is the contemporary usage.

 IV. Markedness of number category in Basque.

We have identified that the marking of plurality depends on 3 criteria: indefiniteness/ definiteness, animacy/ inanimacy (for locative NPs) and count/ mass distinction of the NP. Each of these criteria has unmarked/ marked relationship correspondingly. At the same time number marking distinction is realized within class of definite noun phrases where both singular and plural are marked by a clitic and within class of locative inanimate NPs where singular is not marked and plural is marked by an affix/ or clitic and within the class of count nouns that follow a pattern of one of the first two distinctions. In case of demonstrative pronouns and 1^st person pronouns we are more likely to be dealing with cases of suplition whereby in cases of other personal pronouns we have a common typological pattern where singular is not marked but plural is marked by means of a suffix.

Therefore, we can say that Basque in spite of its complicated system of plurality doesn’t represent a pattern of strong markedness typologically and falls within normal patterns where singular is either marked by the same number of morphemes as plural or unmarked.

1, 2, 3 – person marker

sg. - singular number

pl. - plural number

prs - present tense

pst - past tense

prf - perfective

hab - habitual

fut - future

aux1 - intransitive auxiliary

aux2 - transitive auxiliary

mod. - modal auxiliary

comp - complementizer

Erg - ergative

Abs - absolutive

Dat - dative

gen - genetive

com - comitative

loc - locative

abl - ablative

all - allative

dir - directional

dst - destinative

ptv - partative

mod - modal

rel - relative

emp - emphatic marker

det - determiner

prx - proximal

obv - obviative (distal)

quant - quantifier

anim - animate

inform - informal

form - formal

1. M, Saltarelli "Basque"; Croom Helm, 1988.

 

2. Ilari Zubiri "Gramatica didactica del auskera", HABE, 1991

 

3. J.Ortiz de Urbina "Parameters in the Grammar of Basque". Studies in Generative Grammar, 33; 1989.
4. J. I. Hualde "Basque Phonology". London and New York, 1991.

 

5. World Wide Web Pages:

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Revised April 2, 1999