Basque Studies

L’usage pluriel des langues dans la littérature populaire basque est étroitement lié à la situation sociolinguistique du pays. Tandis qu’au Sud il existe une tradition de poésie bilingue basque-castillan, au Nord, la province de Soule témoigne de la présence du plurilinguisme dans le théâtre populaire, avec des passages qui peuvent combiner jusqu’à cinq langues. D’abord nous ébaucherons une contextualisation du sujet, en présentant une vue générale de la situation de la langue basque et de l’évolution de sa position sociolinguistique, et nous dresserons un bref aperçu de sa littérature populaire. Ensuite, en nous centrant sur le cas souletin, nous montrerons que cette utilisation de langues autres que le basque doit être mise en relation avec le langage formulaire, sous la forme de salutations, présentations, malédictions, prières, jurons ou insultes. Nous considérerons enfin les différents types d’alternance de langues comme une ressource stylistique.

"Hastapenean Euskara izan zen. Eta Euskara gizaki batetan aragi egin izan da. Holan sortu zen Euskalduna…
Orain, berriz, Euskalduna hilik da, mamua bilakatu zaigu eta guk, euskaltzaleok, mamuaren gorpuztea deseatzen dugu. Heriotza honek aurpegi ilun eta desatsegina duen arren, desertua eta larrimina areagotzen baditu ere, badu bestelako aurpegi atseginagoa, ortzemuga berriak argitzen dizkigun krisia eta noraeza baita.
Zergatik eta zertarako gorpuztu behar dugu mamua, ordea? Zertan lagun diezaguke mamuaren konjurak? Nola gorpuztu dezakegu? Zeintzuk dira hartu beharreko bide berriak? Nola konjuratu gaitezke? Nola eman diezaiokegu zentzua aniztasunari? Non bilatu behar dugu oinarria edo fundamentua? Zergatik produzitu behar dugu zentzua? Funtsik behar al dugu? Horixe bera da euskaltzalearen eginbeharra, galdera hauei erantzunen bat bilatzea: Ekitea, zentzu soziala sortzea, Euskomunitatea gauzatzea.
Herrialde guztietako euskaltzaleak, Euskomunitatean bildu zaitezte!
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The purpose of this paper is to study the linguistic documentation regarding the Basque language in antiquity, in order to establish its geographical boundaries, investigate its most characteristic linguistic features, and determine its possible relations with other neighboring languages.

"The science should be able to explain why the given freak theory is incorrect and unacceptable.

G.Forni (the same JIES issue) suggests that Basque is an Indo-European language, specifically close to the Celtic branch.

I evaluate the hypothesis that Basque is one of the Narrow IE languages from three points of view: traditional, lexicostatistical and probabilistic. In all the cases, the negative results have been obtained. "

"Preface
Throughout all of Europe we find examples of folk-belief assigning special qualities to the seventh-born son or daughter of a family. At times these attributes were positive, at times negative. However, they always had a magical aura about them (Bloch [1924] 1983). For the most part, these beliefs have been written off as superstitious residue from times past and as a result little attention has been paid to documenting the concrete social practices associated with them. An exception to this tendency is the work of Marc Bloch, who in 1924, called attention to the supernatural powers attributed to the seventh son and at times, to the seventh daughter, born after an uninterrupted series of the same sex, remarking that seventh-born children were credited with a “particular supernatural power” (Bloch [1924] 1983: 293, 296). Writing in 1924, Bloch observed that “La croyance sous cette forme a été et est sans doute encore très largement répandue dans l’Europe occidentale et centrale: on l’a signalée en Allemagne, en Biscaye, en Catalogne, dans presque toute la France, dans les Pays-Bas, en Angleterre, en Escosse, en Irlande […]”  (Bloch [1924] 1983: 294-295).

Specifically, Bloch noted that from at least the 16th century onwards, children born into a seventh position in their family supposedly had the power to heal by touch. Such extraordinary people, often deemed sorcerers, even devils, were also referred to by a variety of expressions such as mahr (German) or murawa (Polish) and consequently they had the ambivalent privilege of tapping into powers that were inaccessible to normal humans. Specifically, they were viewed as having healing and divinatory powers, which could entail shape-shifting (Vaz da Silva 2003). That is, those individuals were endowed with the ability to take the form of an animal. From the point of view of modern Western thought this belief causes the dividing line between humans and animals to become blurred. Nonetheless, that blurring or fusion of two natures would be in accordance with the cosmology of native peoples in other parts of the world, especially contemporary hunter-gatherers, where such animistic beliefs also prevail (Bird-David 1999; Brightman 2002; Ingold 2000; Willerslev 2007).

It is quite clear that the qualities assigned to the seventh-son or daughter harken back to an earlier animistic mindset, notions of nonhuman personhood and social practices that in turn connect back to shamanic modes of healing. At the same time, as noted in the earlier chapters of this study, the fused nature of the Bear Son, the half-human, half-bear being known as Hamalau “Fourteen” in Basque, reflects a similar blurring of the Western human-animal divide and related cultural conceptualizations.

And as Bertolotti has demonstrated in his detailed and extraordinarily well researched study Carnevale di Massa 1950 (1992), European versions of the Bear Son folktales, e.g., Giovanni l’Orso, may well reproduce much earlier beliefs, more in consonance with the cosmovision of hunter-gatherers who inhabited these zones in times past. More concretely, the fact that the figure of Hamalau is grounded in the belief that humans descended from bears allows us to consider the significance and symbolism of this character’s own genesis: he is born of a human female, but his father is a bear. In this sense, he is a double-natured intermediary occupying the ontological ground between humans and bears.
"

Chapter 6 (by Santazilia) is a study of the Basque noun morphology, which sets out the noun paradigm of historical Basque and the structure of its NP, and then goes on to list the explanations proposed so far for every aspect concerning the formation of that paradigm: first the number/definiteness axis, and then the individual cases, classifying these into primary cases (grammatical and local), secondary cases (those built upon the allative and the genitive), and pseudo-flectional morphemes or non-cases.

"Facebooken (bidez) gazteek euskal identitatea nola eraikitzen duten aztergai dudan Doktorego
Tesian atzerriak paper nagusia izan du. Etnografia digitalaren bidez Euskal Herritik kanpo epe
motz baterako dauden gazteek nazio identitatea nola eraikitzen duten ezagutzeaz gain, online
sare sozialen bidez sortzen duten territorio komuna irudikatzeko aukera izan dut: atzerrietan
dauden gazteek muga geografikoak gaindituz online espazio horretan sortzen duten nazio
digitala."

"Full citation:  Frank, Roslyn M. and Marianna Ridderstad (2013) Conflicts over masks, museums and tourism: Comparing European and Native American Traditions and Solutions. Presentation at the 34h Annual American Indian Workshop: Art of Indians – Indians of Art, May 14-17, 2013, University of Helsinki, Finland.

Abstract
Roslyn M. Frank
Marianna Ridderstad

Conflicts over masks, museums and tourism: Comparing European and Native American Traditions and Solutions

The presentation begins by comparing certain contemporary conflicts and debates that have arisen in both Europe and N. America concerning the way that traditional masks worn by performers are carved and cared for, or, better stated, should be carved and cared for. The discussion will examine the impact of tourism and subsequent commercialization of the artifacts on the performances themselves and the way these pressures have impacted the production and sale of the masks, giving special attention to the ongoing debates over whether these masks should be commercialized at all and/or kept in a museum. The two study groups consist primarily, although not exclusively, of the masks and performances associated with the False Face Society of the Iroquois, on the one hand, and a kind of Alpine equivalent, the Tschäggättä performers of Switzerland, or stated more explicitly, the masked performers from the Löchtental of the Canton Valais in the Rhône Valley whose ritual activities are understood to bring good luck and health to those visited. Interviews with traditional carvers and performers will be discussed.

In the second part of the presentation other contemporary masking traditions in Europe and N. America will be examined, specifically, the masks and costumes of ‘bear performers’, including variants such as the Finnish Nuutti/Kekripukki. The accoutrements of these European 'bear maskers' will be compared to those found in N. America. At the same time, the comparative approach will serve to bring into focus the archaic pan-European belief that humans descended from bears since in many locations in Europe we still find a wide variety of bear-human performers, actors who dress as bears or bear-men and whose function is prophylactic, to confer good luck and health on those visited, masking traditions that have striking parallels among N. American indigenous peoples.

Roslyn M. Frank, Professor Emeritus at the University of Iowa, has done extensive fieldwork in the Basque Country, studying the language and beliefs of the Basque people, including the folk belief that holds Basques descended from bears. This led to subsequent investigations into circumpolar bear ceremonialism and to documenting residual evidence of the same in European traditional performance art. Her publications are in the area of Basque studies, cultural cognitive linguistics, and anthropology. For further information, cf. http://uiowa.academia.edu/RoslynMFrank.

Marianna Ridderstad has a Lic.Phil. in astrophysics and M.Sc. in theoretical physics, and is currently preparing her Ph.D. at the University of Finland on the archaeoastronomy of Neolithic stone monuments in Finland. Her research explores the archaeoastronomy of Finnish monuments from the Bronze Age to the Early Middle Ages, as well as ancient Finnish and Finno-Ugric folklore and traditions related to astronomical subjects, including the calendrical and ritual significance of the Bear. For further information, cf. http://helsinki.academia.edu/MariannaRidderstad.
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