Basque Word Order
0. Introduction
The Euskara or most commonly known as the Basque language is often seen as a fascinating controversial topic because of its numerous hypothesis of its language origins. As a language isolate it is said that it is the last remaining remnant of the pre-Indo-European era of Western Europe. Not only is Basque unique in its past history, but it is also unique in the word order properties. The typical average word order is Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) like in English; however, Basque word order is Subject-Object-Verb (SOV). As a fluent speaker of both Basque and English it is clearly obvious of the SOV and SVO notion, which is why I chose this topic. The main focus of this paper will be on how a natural and ergative language like Basque has a free word order of SOV.
1. Subject-Object-Verb (SOV)
Because Basque is a language that has a free word order, it can create constituents in almost any order. So an example of a standard sentence of SOV is:
(a) Emakumea iskusi du gizonak
Woman-S see has man-O
‘The woman has seen the man.’
(b) Lucia Anna iskusi rau
Lucy-ERG Anne-O see has
‘Lucy saw Anne.’
Basque can also use the object-subject-verb word order when the subject can be the focused as it is left-adjacent to the verb, and the object is out to the left. The sentence, however, will not be examined neutrally or with the focus of the object as the examples show below:
(c) Lucia senek iskusi rau?
Lucy-ABS who-ERG see has
‘Who saw Lucy?’
(d) Emakumea gizona iskusi du
Woman-ABS man-ERG see has-aux
‘The man has seen the woman.”
Studies have shown that, “Basque has postpositions, in declarative sentences adverbs appear to the left of verbs appear to the left of verbs and adjectives, and auxiliary verbs ...
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...e transitive verb. In syntax, Basque is accusative and superficial, while in morphology it is ergative. “Basque represents the rather rare type of both nominal and verbal egrativity without any split” Bossong, 1984). So in syntax Basque function as an ergative that goes as far that overt marking can aim towards grammatical relations.
(a) Emakume-a etorri di
Woman-the arrived is
‘The woman arrived.’
(b) Gizon-a-k emakume-a ikuski du
Man-the-ERG woman-the seen has
‘The man has seen the woman’
The examples show a set of features that are grammatical, if the constituent emakumea “the woman” is first stated in the front of the utterance than three things happen: (1) the subject in (a) is a subject-verb intransitive sentence; (2) the object is like an OSV word order; (3) like the subject is pro-dropped like in (a&b) and the object of an object-verb transitive sentence.
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