Euskal azentu-ereduen atlaserakozenbait isoglosa

Abstract

In this paper, we study a number of accentual isoglosses in Basque, with particular attention to the western area. The ultimate goal of this work is to obtain a more precise knowledge of accentual variation within the Basque-speaking territory. An important feature in the classification of Basque accentual types is the presence vs. absence of contrastive accentuation. In the first section of this paper, we study the main distributional facts pertaining to this feature. In the second section, we examine four important accentual facts in the central and western area: the directionality of the rule of stress assignment, the geographical extension of the 'pitch-accent' type, the accentuation of plural forms and the distribution of certain accentually marked roots. Finally, in the fourth section, we make an attempt at classifying the Biscayan varieties in a number of specific types according to their accentual characteristics.