Confirmation de l’ancienne extension des Basques par l’étude des dialectes de l’Europe de l’Ouest romane

Florent Dieterlen (Université de Lausanne); John Bengtson (Evolution of Human Languages Project, Santa Fe Institute)

Journal of Language Relationship, № 14/1-2, 2016 - p.1-27

Abstract: The paper is a study of ancient Basque (Vasconic) substratal words remaining in the Romance dialects of France, Spain, Italy and Romance-speaking parts of Belgium and Switzerland. The demonstration begins with an illustrative presentation of three Basque words that have widespread coverage: marro for ‘ram’, suge for ‘snake’ and ‘lizard’, and gapar for ‘wild rose’. They span an area extending from Spain and France into Switzerland and Italy. It is noted that there are many Vasconic words in Romance dialects spoken near the actual Basque Country: the best-known are in Gascony where Vasconic was spoken at the beginning of our era, but some are also found to the South, West, and East, in Southern Navarre, Aragon and Rioja. These gradients without discontinuities are sufficient proof of the ancient presence of Vasconic languages in a large part of our proposed Vasconic territory. Linguistic evidence is followed by a discussion of recent results from population genetics in the molecular school: these are represented by maps of MtDNA H1 and H3; Y-chromosome S116; and haplogroup XV (Taq1), which are the main haplogroups among the Basques and cover most of the proposed Vasconic territory. Finally, we discuss the presence of Vasconic words in large parts of the proposed Vasconic territory in conjunction with the various migrations that occurred in prehistoric and historic times. Our main conclusion is that Vasconic languages were widespread in large parts of Southern and Western France, in Iberia, and in some parts of Italy, especially in Sardinia; a historical scenario for the last 3000 years is proposed.

Keywords: History of Basque language, Vasconic, Romance dialects, linguistic substrates, dialectology, etymology, geographical linguistics, genetics of European populations

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