The History of Basque

Basque is the sole survivor of the very ancient languages of Western Europe. This book, written by an internationally renowned specialist in Basque provides a comprehensive survey of all that is known about the prehistory of the language.
Basque is the sole survivor of the very ancient languages of Western Europe. Due to its unusual structure and its seeming lack of relatives, the language has long been the object of curiosity and speculation. More than a century of specialist work has succeeded in shedding a great deal of light on the history and especially the prehistory of Basque, but this work has up till now been almost entirely confined to the specialist literature, and has not been available to the general historical linguists. This volume, written by a specialist in Basque, provides a comprehensive survey of the prehistory of the language, including pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. It also provides a long critical evaluation of the search for its relatives, as well as a thumbnail sketch of the language, a summary of its typological features, an external history and an extensive bibliography. This text should be of particular interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of historical linguistics, and to specialists in Romance Languages.