euskalarien nazioarteko jardunaldiak IKER - 1 - Euskaltzaindia

ROBERT TRASK
(37) Nere ama hil da.
«My mother has died.»
(38) Nere gurasoak Ameriketan daude.
«My parents are in America. »
most Basques prefer
(39) Ama hil zait.
«My mother has died.»
(40) Gurasoak Ameriketan ditut/dauzkat.
«My parents are in America.»
and indeed, at least some speakers appear to have a clear contrast
between
(41) Ama hor zen.
«Somebody's mother was there.»
(42) Ama hor nuen.
«My mother was there.»
The conditions under which this promotion takes place are far from
clear; it cannot always be done. Thus, corresponding to
(43) Nere ama ikusiko duzu.
«You'll see my mother.»
there is no
(44) *Ama ikusiko didazu.
The chief importance of this promotion is that it enables certain relative
clauses to be constructed which would otherwise not be possible. Thus, to
render the English sentence «The man whose mother has died is coming», we
cannot say.
(45) *Bere ama hil den gizona dator.
which is quite incomprehensible, but instead
(46) Ama hil zaion gizona dator.
in which the genitive has been promoted to a dative and included in the
verb. See Rebuschi (1978, pp. 84-86) for a very interesting discussion of one
of the conditions on this promotion.
A further point is the so-called «passive» construction of Basque. There
is no doubt that Basque contains sentences like the following:
(47a) Etxe hori aitak egina da.
«That house was built by my father.»
(47b) Etxe hori aitak egindakoa da.
idem
Such sentences have been widely regarded as the equivalent of the
passive sentences of other European languages, especially those like (47a),
with sequences like egina da being regarded as verb forms [see, for example,
300
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