Analysis of the morphological variation of Basque

Abstract

Abstract The lack of homogeneous data recorded by similar methodologies has been a handicap to the development of more advanced studies on the dialectal variation of Basque. Now that the first five volumes of the Linguistic Atlas of the Basque Language have been published, researchers have access to a great amount of data and the possibility to use more sophisticated procedures to analyze the variation of the Basque language from a geolinguistic point of view. In this contribution, we use data taken from the fifth volume of this atlas, which is devoted to noun morphology. First, these data will be analyzed linguistically, and instead of using the phonetic representation, we will use the phonological or underlying representation. In order to do this, we will analyze the inventory of the morphological suffixes used in nominal inflexion cases and the phonological rules which appear in these cases (mainly assimilation, dissimilation, insertion and deletion), using the classical view of generative phonology. As far as the cartography of the data is concerned, we will use the recently created Diatech tool, instead of other dialectometrical tools, because of the multiple responses (MR) which that data show. In effect, the Diatech tool provides a more accurate processing of the MR than other tools. As well as conceptual maps, synthetic maps will be presented; these maps will show different geographical organizations of the suffixes and phonological rules.