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Article published In: From and Towards Demonstratives: Grammaticalization processes and beyond
Edited by Veronica Orqueda and Berta González Saavedra
[Journal of Historical Linguistics 15:2] 2025
► pp. 263–291

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The history of the Basque pronoun zuek ‘you all’ and the role of demonstratives as plural markers

ORCiD logo with link | University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU
ORCiD logo with link | Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour UPPA
ORCiD logo with link | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Published online: 29 July 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.24018.man
Abstract
This paper elucidates the role of internal and external factors in the semantic evolution of Basque zu from ‘you.pl’ to exclusively ‘you.sg’ and in the development of Basque zuek ‘you.pl’. Transparently, zuek involves suffixation of the demonstrative hek ‘those’ to zu. The neighboring Romance languages exhibit a parallel evolution that involves the adjectival collocation vōs alteros ‘you others’, but other similar constructions are recorded. This paper defends the premise that Basque zuek emerged through a pattern replication process in which the pivotal feature was the morphological expression of number. We argue that the grammaticalization of zuek as ‘you.pl’ started in eastern areas due to contact with Occitan, a language in which grammaticalized ‘you.pl’ forms appear earlier than in Castilian Spanish. We also address an innovation exclusive to Basque: a series of second plural verbal forms which exhibit a geographically spread pattern within the Basque Country similar to that of the Romance innovative pronouns in the Iberian Peninsula.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The Modern Basque pronominal system: Evidence in favor of its recentness
    • 2.1The expression of number in the Basque pronominal system
    • 2.2Innovative verbal indexing with the pronoun zuek
    • 2.3Diachronic stages of the change and similar evolutions in other European languages
  • 3.The innovative Basque plural pronouns with parallel Romance developments: Two critical topics
    • 3.1An ancient first person plural pronoun: guek
    • 3.2The morphological composition of zuek: Demonstratives in the pronominal domain
    • 3.3The emergence of morphologically plural pronouns in Basque: A pattern replication process
    • 3.4Basque and Romance innovative pronouns: A summary
  • 4.The east-to-west spread pattern of the Basque and Romance innovative pronouns
    • 4.1The spread of the Romance innovative pronouns in the Iberian Peninsula
    • 4.2Basque and Occitan in medieval Navarre: A historical scenario for the innovative pronouns
    • 4.3Evidence in favor of an east-to-west propagation pattern in Basque
  • 5.Summary and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
References (55)
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