LINGUIST List 5.485

Wed 27 Apr 1994

Sum: Basque, Kolami gender

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1. Steven Schaufele, Sum: Basque
2. Ann Lindvall, Summary Kolami gender

A little over a week ago, i posted the following query in LINGUIST 5-445.

I'm passing on to the List a request from one of my students who has expressed
an interest in studying Basque. He would like to know about any good
descriptive grammars of the language. I have a few references i could give
him, but i want to cast the net wider, partly because i myself know next to
nothing about Basque and therefore don't know what would be a *good* (i.e.
reliable) descriptive grammar of the language, and partly because i'm concerned
 about what he might be able to get his hands on here in Budapest (he's
Hungarian; his English is good. Don't know whether he can handle Spanish). So
 any suggestions of good descriptive grammars of Basque would be appreciated.
Send them to me and i will pass them on to him, and if there's interest i'll
post a summary to the List.

First of all, i would like to thank the following linguists for their helpful
responses:
Jon Aske <jaskeabacus.bates.edu>,
Ursula Doleschal <ursula.doleschalwu-wien.ac.at>,
Steve Helmreich <shelmreicrl.nmsu.edu>,
Maitena Garcia Iragorri <maitenalingua.cltr.uq.oz.au>,
J. Carlos Ruiz <ruizvents.uji.es>,
Raphael Salkie <rms3vms.brighton.ac.uk>,
Larry Trask <larrytcogs.susx.ac.uk>, and
Henk Wolf <H.A.Y.Wolfstud.let.ruu.nl>

The books i and my student were referred to:

Aprenda el Vasco: metodo sencillo y agradable para iniciarse en el aprendizaje
de la lengua mas antigua de occidente. Zarauz: Icharopena (1969).

Campion, Arturo. 1884. Gramatica Bascongada. Tolosa: Eusebio Lopez.

Grammaire basque pour tous. (2 vols.) Hendaye: Haize Garbia (1981).

King, Alan R. 1994? Basque Grammar. Reno: University of Nevada Press.

Lafitte, Pierre. 1944. Grammaire basque, reprinted 1979 San Sebastian: ELKAR.

Saltarelli, Mario. 1988. Basque. London: Croom Helm/Routledge.

More theoretical and focussed items:

Lueders, Ulrich. ???? The Souletin Verbal Complex: New Approaches to Basque
Morphophonology. Munchen: LINCOM.

Martin-Callejo, Esmerelda M. 1984. Some Aspects of Basque Morphology and
Syntax. Ph. D. dissertation, University of Arizona.

Ortiz de Urbina, Jon. 1989. Parameters in the Grammar of Basque. Dordrecht:
 Foris.

Comments:
>From Larry Trask: 'Good grammars of Basque are rare ... [Saltarelli's] has the
usual format for [the Croom Helm Descriptive Grammars] series, with its chief
weakness being that it's practically impossible to look up any particular
topic. [King's is] a textbook with a descriptive orientation about to be
published by the University of Nevada Press. The book has been forthcoming for
 years; the last i heard, it was to come out this month. Both of these
describe the central dialect of Guipuzcoa, on the Spanish side. For French
Basque the main source is still [Lafitte's]. This book is very traditional,
linguistically uninformed, extremely detailed, and confined to literary
varieties of French Basque.'

>From Jon Aske: 'University of Nevada Press has a 2-vol. Basque-English-Basque
dictionary which i highly recommend, and a $15 paperback abridged version which
 is quite good too. The E-B dictionary has a short grammar summary. Of
course, the best grammars are the ones published in the last 10 years by the
Basque Academy, but those are in Basque.'

Henk Wolf gave me the addresses of the Spanish language bureau, which have a
Basque department:
 Secretaria General de Politica Linguistica
 Duque de Wellington 2
 E-01011 Vitoria-Gasteiz (Alava)
 Spain

and of the Spanish contact of the European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages:

 Aureli Argemi i Roca
 Pau Claris, 106 1er, 1a
 Barcelona,
 Spain.

Once again, thanks to all respondents from me and my student!

Sincerely,
Steven
--
Dr. Steven Schaufele fcoswsnytud.hu
Room 119
Research Institute for Linguistics (Department of Theoretical Linguistics)
Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Eotvos Lorand University)
P. O. Box 19
1250 Budapest
Hungary

*** O syntagmata linguarum liberemini humanarum! ***
*** Nihil vestris privari nisi obicibus potestis! ***

To the Linglist readers

Some weeks ago I posted a query about Kolami gender. I received some helpful
answers and was asked to publish a summary.

The references I got was:
 - Corbett, Greville. 1991. Gender. Cambridge University Press 1991
 - Emeneau, M.B. 1955. Kolami: a Dravidian Language. University of California
Publications in linguistics, 12, University of California Press, Berkley and Los
Angeles

I also had information about two other related languages, Telugu and Tamil, as
well as about Finnish, which is of typological interest.

Thank you for your kind help and comments:

 Roy H Ogawa
 Edmund Grimley
 Will Fitzgerald
 Deborah D K Ruuskanen
 Maronoff Datalab
 Greville G Corbett
 Prathima Christdas

 Yours

 Ann Lindvall