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On the historical link between accent and aspiration in Basque

ORCiD logo with link | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Published online: 9 February 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.24021.hua
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to advance our understanding of the diachronic development of Basque prosody and related segmental processes. The discovery of regular correspondences between the distribution of aspiration in northeastern varieties and accentual patterns in the dialect of Goizueta (in western Navarre) allows us to establish correspondences between accentual classes for the entire Basque territory for the first time. As a result, we are able to make progress in the reconstruction of the Common Basque prosodic system by using the comparative method. I show that the Goizueta system shares a class of accentual exceptions with western varieties of Basque and also shares a different class of marked words with an earlier stage of the eastern accentual system reflected in the distribution of aspirated and unaspirated voiceless stops, confirming a hypothesis first formulated by L. Michelena [K. Mitxelena] over sixty years ago. I also consider specific hypotheses regarding the chronology of changes in accentuation and several segmental changes that interact with accent rules. As a contribution to the larger field of historical linguistics, this paper offers a demonstration of the importance of establishing regular correspondences (in this case involving aspirated consonants and accentual patterns) in phonological reconstruction.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction and main accentual isoglosses in the Basque Country
  • 2.Reconstruction of accentual classes in Western-Central Basque
  • 3.On the origin of the low vs high accent contrast
  • 4.Correspondences between the distribution of aspiration in Northeastern Basque and accentual classes in Goizueta
  • 5.Reconstructing Common Basque prosody
  • 6.Chronology of accentual changes and accent-conditioned sound changes
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (78)
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