Gramática vasca

Este artículo ofrece un esbozo gramatical del euskera . El euskera es la lengua del pueblo vasco del País Vasco o Euskal Herria , que limita con el Golfo de Vizcaya en Europa occidental .

El sintagma nominal vasco está estructurado de forma bastante diferente a la de la mayoría de las lenguas indoeuropeas .

Los determinantes y cuantificadores desempeñan un papel central en la estructura de los sintagmas nominales vascos. Los artículos se tratan mejor como un subconjunto de los determinantes.

Los artículos -a, -ak, -ok, -(r)ik , los demostrativos hau, hori, hura y algunos de los cuantificadores siguen al sustantivo que determinan o cuantifican.

Otros determinantes y cuantificadores, incluido beste 'otro', los interrogativos y los numerales superiores a uno o dos (dependiendo del dialecto ) preceden al sustantivo.

Una frase nominal normal con un sustantivo común como núcleo debe contener exactamente un determinante o exactamente un cuantificador, pero no ambos, como en los ejemplos anteriores. Sin embargo, los numerales pueden coexistir con un determinante.

Los elementos beste 'otros' y guzti 'todos' no 'llenan' la posición de determinante o cuantificador y, por lo tanto, requieren un artículo, otro determinante o cuantificador.

El artículo -a, -ak actúa como determinante predeterminado , obligatorio con un sustantivo común en ausencia de otro determinante o cuantificador (incluso en formas de cita de uso popular).

• Etxe una 'casa'
• Etxe ak 'casas'
• ¿Nola esaten da euskaraz "casa"? — "Etxe a ". '¿Cómo se dice "casa" en euskera? — "Etxe(a)".'

El artículo -(r)ik , tradicionalmente llamado sufijo partitivo (cf. francés de ), reemplaza a -a, -ak en contextos de polaridad negativa , especialmente en frases nominales indefinidas en oraciones negativas . Nunca se lo trata como plural gramatical.

• etxe rik 'cualquier casa(s)'
• Ba al daukazu etxe rik ? '¿Tienes una casa?'
• Aquí no hay casa . Aquí no hay casas .
• No: * Hemen ez daude etxerik. "Aquí no hay casas".

Una frase nominal con un nombre propio o un pronombre como núcleo generalmente no contiene ni un determinante ni un cuantificador.

• Andoni 'Antonio'
• Tokio 'Tokio'
• Wikipedia 'Wikipedia'
• ni 'yo, mí'
• ¿ni? ¿quién?

La ausencia de cualquier determinante o cuantificador de un sintagma nominal con núcleo nominal común no es posible excepto en ciertos contextos específicos, como en ciertos tipos de predicado o en algunas expresiones adverbiales .

• El lehendakari izendatuko dute. 'Lo nombrarán presidente ' .
• Bilbora joan zen irakasle . 'Se fue a Bilbao (a trabajar) como profesor.' [Se fue a Bilbao profesor .]
• eskuz 'a mano' [mano ( esku ) + por ( -z )]
• sutan 'en llamas' [fuego ( su ) + in ( -tan )]

Una frase nominal genitiva precede a su núcleo poseído para expresar relaciones posesivas o similares.

• Koldoren etxea 'La casa de Koldo'
• nire etxea 'mi casa'
• basoko etxea 'casa en ("de") el bosque'

El sintagma nominal poseído conserva las mismas características de determinación y cuantificación descritas anteriormente para los sintagmas nominales en general.

El sustantivo principal de una frase nominal poseída puede omitirse. En este caso, el artículo u otro determinante se conserva, pero ahora se adjunta al elemento genitivo.

Las frases nominales se convierten en genitivos mediante la adición de uno de los dos sufijos de casos genitivos, -(r)en o -ko (ver más abajo sobre los sufijos de declinación ).

• Koldo → Koldo ren
• París → París ko
• etxe-a 'casa' → etxea ren , etxe ko (no intercambiables)

La formación genitiva de los pronombres personales es irregular .

• ni 'yo, mí' → ni re 'mi'

-Ko (o -go ) se puede añadir como sufijo a una amplia gama de otras palabras y frases, muchas de ellas de función adverbial , para formar expresiones adjetivas que se comportan sintácticamente igual que las frases genitivas.

Los adjetivos léxicos , a diferencia de las expresiones adjetivales (ver arriba), siguen inmediatamente al sustantivo principal pero preceden a cualquier artículo, determinante o cuantificador.

Cuando se utilizan adjetivos, adjetivales o genitivos como predicados, normalmente llevan el artículo (singular -a , plural -ak ).

El euskera tiene tres números : singular, no marcado y plural . No marcado aparece en la declinación cuando no es necesario especificar singular o plural, por ejemplo porque es un nombre propio o está junto a un determinante o un cuantificador. Los marcadores de plural aparecen en dos partes de la gramática vasca: en algunos pronombres , determinantes y cuantificadores y en los índices de argumentos de los verbos (véase Verbos vascos ). En el caso de los sustantivos, depende de cómo se considere el artículo -a/-ak : como enclítico , los sustantivos serían neutrales en cuanto al número, como sufijo, los sustantivos serían trinumerados. Un sustantivo no articulado como etxe rara vez aparece solo y normalmente aparece dentro de un sintagma nominal que contiene un determinante o un cuantificador; es probable que su número se indique mediante este elemento:

Los verbos transitivos añaden un sufijo , por ejemplo -it-, cuando el objeto del verbo es plural.

La mayoría de los determinantes, incluido el artículo, tienen formas singulares y plurales diferenciadas (esta última termina en k en el caso absolutivo , citado aquí). La mayoría de los cuantificadores (excepto bat versus batzuk ) no muestran esa variación morfológica , pero muchos (incluidos los numerales superiores a uno, por supuesto) tienen significados léxicos intrínsecamente plurales .

A veces, el número gramatical de una frase nominal se puede deducir solo del contexto general o de la indexación verbal.

• zein etxe? '¿cuál casa?' o '¿cuáles casas?'

o del tipo de sustantivo léxico o semántico :

• ¿Cuánta leche hay ? ( esne es un sustantivo colectivo)
• zenbat etxe? '¿Cuántas casas?' ( etxe es un sustantivo cuantitativo)

Los pronombres personales diferencian a tres personas y dos números . Zu debe haber sido en algún momento el pronombre de segunda persona del plural, pero ahora es solo el singular cortés , habiendo desplazado parcialmente al pronombre original de segunda persona del singular hi , que ahora es una forma de tratamiento marcadamente familiar. Zuek representa un derivado repluralizado de zu y ahora es el único pronombre de segunda persona del plural.

La función de los pronombres personales de tercera persona puede ser desempeñada por cualquiera de los pronombres demostrativos o sus contrapartes enfáticas en ber- .

Además de estos pronombres personales ordinarios, existen los enfáticos (o intensivos ), cuyas formas varían considerablemente entre dialectos : la primera persona del singular es neu, nerau, neroni o nihaur .

Los determinantes demostrativos (ver arriba) pueden usarse pronominalmente (como también todos los determinantes excepto los artículos). También hay pronombres demostrativos enfáticos ( intensivos ) que comienzan con ber- .

Se ha observado a menudo que en el uso tradicional (pero menos entre los hablantes modernos), suele haber una correlación explícita entre los tres grados de proximidad en las formas demostrativas y las personas gramaticales, de modo que hau se corresponde con ni , hori con hi/zu , etc. Una manifestación de esto (hay otras que quedan fuera del alcance de este esbozo) es el modo, ahora anticuado, de dirigirse a personas en posiciones sociales que exigen un respeto especial (como un sacerdote, por ejemplo) utilizando formas verbales de tercera persona y, para el pronombre personal, el demostrativo intensivo de segundo grado berori (véase la tabla anterior).

• Todos los pronombres y adverbios demostrativos pueden extenderse con el sufijo -xe ( -txe ), que les confiere mayor énfasis: hauxe (esta misma cosa), hementxe (exactamente aquí), honelaxe (exactamente de esta manera), oraintxe (ahora mismo).
• Los pronombres pueden declinarse en cualquier caso (ver más abajo). Los pronombres personales y demostrativos presentan alomorfismo entre los casos absolutivos y los distintos de cero . Los adverbios pueden adjetivarse mediante la adición de -ko ( -go ), y algunos también pueden llevar otros sufijos locativos.
• Hay otras dos series de indefinidos, como lo ilustran edonor, edonon ... y nornahi, zernahi... respectivamente; ambas series pueden traducirse como 'quienquiera, dondequiera...' o 'cualquiera, en cualquier lugar...'.
• Los pronombres y adverbios negativos se componen de la serie de polaridad negativa junto con ez 'no' o como parte de una oración negativa: inor ez 'nadie', Ez dut inor ezagutzen 'no conozco a nadie' = 'no conozco a nadie'.

Los sintagmas nominales vascos van seguidos de un sufijo de caso, que especifica la relación entre el sintagma nominal y su cláusula (que desempeña aproximadamente el papel de las preposiciones en inglés). Aquí se muestran los casos más básicos, divididos para mayor comodidad en tres grupos principales: nuclear, local (o locativo ) y otros.

Los sufijos de caso se añaden al elemento (sustantivo, adjetivo, determinante, etc.) que aparece en último lugar en la frase nominal, según las reglas ya dadas. Las diferentes formas o " declinaciones " de cada sufijo de caso que se dan en las siguientes tablas se seleccionan de acuerdo con la naturaleza del elemento nominal al que se añade la terminación de caso, como se explicará a continuación.

Los cuatro conjuntos de formularios, denominados del 1 al 4 en las tablas anteriores, tienen los siguientes usos y características:

De lo anterior se deduce que las características formales esenciales de los casos vascos son las que se muestran en la siguiente tabla:

En general, la aplicación de los sufijos a cualquier palabra del idioma es muy habitual. En este apartado se encuentran las principales excepciones:

Los pronombres personales y demostrativos presentan algunas irregularidades en la declinación . Los pronombres personales ni, hi, gu, zu forman su genitivo posesivo añadiendo -re en lugar de -ren : nire, hire, gure, zure . Son los posesivos pronominales:

As has been seen, the demonstratives each have three stems: one for the absolutive singular (hau, hori, hura), another for all other singular cases (hon-, horr-, har-), and one for the plural, all cases (haue-, horie-, haie-). In the plural, they take a -k suffix in the absolutive, as does batzuk 'some').

As a rule, the local case suffixes given above are not used directly with noun phrases that refer to a person or an animal (called animate noun phrases). An inessive, allative or ablative relation affecting such noun phrases may be expressed by using the suffixes inessive -gan, allative -gana, and ablative -gandik, affixed to either the possessive genitive or the absolutive: nigan 'in me', irakaslearengana 'to(wards) the teacher' (irakasle 'teacher'), zaldiengandik 'from the horses' (zaldi 'horse'), haur horrengandik 'from that child', Koldorengana 'to(wards) Koldo'.

In addition to the basic case forms given above, further forms are found derived from them through the addition of further suffixes or extensions. Some of the additional forms provide for the expression of more nuanced relations; others have the same or similar meanings to the basic forms, with which they merely contrast stylistically or dialectally:

The -ko suffix (see above) may be added to some case forms to make their syntactic function adjectival.

Any such adjectivalised forms may be used without an overt head noun, then likely to appear with a suffixed article:

Such nominalised adjectival forms may further take case suffixes of their own:

While the potential to generate and understand (in a reasonable context) such complex forms is built into Basque grammar and perfectly intelligible to speakers, in practice, the use of such very complex constructions is not uncommon.

The fourth set is local case suffixes (etymologically the primary forms) incorporated into the place adverbs, which gives these following (partly irregular) forms:

Many other adverbs may be adjectivalised with -ko. Some may take certain other case suffixes (usually from set 4), particularly ablative -tik/-dik: atzotik 'since yesterday', urrundik 'from far away'.

Basque postpositions are items of sufficient lexical substance and grammatical autonomy to be treated as separate words (unlike the case suffixes) and specifying relations. They are so called because they follow the word or phrase whose relation they express (compare prepositions, which precede a word or phrase, but do not exist in Basque).

Most Basque postpositions require the complement after which they are placed to adopt a particular case form (such postpositions are sometimes said to govern a certain case). Postpositions in Basque furthermore often take a case suffix (or may take several different case suffixes) themselves. An English compound preposition is on top of, of being comparable to the case taken by a Basque noun preceding a postposition (in this case it would be the genitive) and on is like the case suffix (inessive, in this case) taken by the postposition (to which top corresponds). The examples on the right show how Basque expresses on top of and a few other postpositional notions.

The most typical Basque postpositions are built on nominal structures: -aren gainean 'on top of' centres on the word gain 'top', but not all postpositional nuclei consist of nouns that can be used independently of the postpositional construction in which they participate.

One subset of postpositions that express spatial relationships (again exemplified by gainean) have a lexical stem whose syntactic behaviour is roughly noun-like but is limited to a much narrower range of possible patterns (in the grammars of some non-European languages such elements are called relational nouns or relationals). Here are some Basque relationals:

Typical Basque relationals can enter into two possible relations with the preceding (governed) complement: firstly, the complement can be a noun phrase in a possessive genitive relation:

secondly, the complement can be an unsuffixed noun (not a noun phrase) in a relation resembling a lexical compound:

In these examples, the relational (gain-) takes the set 1 (singular) inessive case suffix (-(e)an), as in mendiaren gainean and these further examples,

but other local case suffixes (glossed in capitals) may occur instead of the inessive as sense or usage conventions require, for example,

The relationals are often used in an adverbial function without a preceding complement (thus not as postpositions):

• barruan dago 'he/she/it is inside' [at.inside]
• barrura doa 'he/she/it is going inside' [to.inside]
• Aurrera! 'Forwards! Onwards!' [to.front]
• atzetik aurrera 'backwards, back-to-front' [from.back to.front]

There are a few relationals, such as kanpo- 'outside', goi- 'up' and behe- 'down', that cannot be preceded by a complement of the kind described but have an adverbial uses resembling them: Kanpora noa 'I'm going outside', Goian dago 'It is above', etc. The irregular allative of goi is gora 'up(wards)'.

In English, the comparative and superlative of many adjectives and adverbs are formed by adding the suffixes -er and -est respectively (from big, for example, bigger and biggest are formed). Basque adjectives and adverbs similarly take such suffixes, but there are three morphologically derived degrees of comparison. From handi 'big' is handiago 'bigger', handien(a) '(the) biggest' (where -a is the article) and handiegi 'too big':

Comparative, superlative and excessive adjectives may be used in the same syntactic frames as adjectives in the positive (basic) degree: compare mendi altuak 'high mountains' [mountain high.PLURAL.ART] and mendi altuagoak 'higher mountains' [mountain higher.PLURAL.ART]. The noun preceding a superlative often takes the partitive suffix -(r)ik, either mendi altuenak or mendirik altuenak 'the highest mountains' is possible.

Occasionally, such suffixes may be added to other word forms: from gora 'up' (irregular allative of the relational goi-, hence literally 'to above') can be formed gorago (for gora + -ago), 'more up', i.e. 'higher'. Just as English has a few irregular forms of comparison such as better and best (from good or well), so does Basque: on 'good' but hobe 'better'. Other ways of comparing quality or manner, in both Basque and English, involve using a separate word, such as hain handi 'so big'.

Special words are used to compare quantities (how much or how many of something), such as gehiago 'more', gehien(a) '(the) most', gehiegi 'too much, too many'. They follow the noun quantified: liburu gehiago 'more books', gatz gehiegi 'too much salt', and hainbeste 'so much, so many', which precedes the noun: hainbeste diru 'so much money'. All of them can also be used adverbially (comparing the extent to which something occurs or is the case): Ez pentsatu hainbeste! 'Don't think so much!'.

Comparisons may involve reference to a standard (of comparison): compare English is easier (no standard mentioned) to English is easier than Basque (there, Basque is referred to as the standard of comparison). English puts the word than in front of the standard. In Fish is as expensive as meat, meat is the standard, indicated by the second as (compare Fish is as expensive or Fish is so expensive, where no standard is mentioned). Comparisons of the as...as type are called equative. With superlatives, as in Donostia is the prettiest city in the Basque Country, on the other hand, the Basque Country is not really a standard but a domain or range within which the superlative applies. The structures used in such comparisons in Basque are as follows (the second table shows examples); the word orders shown are the most common and considered basic, but certain variations are also possible.

Although several verbal categories are expressed morphologically, periphrastic tense formations predominate. Up to three arguments (subject, direct object and indirect object) can be indexed morphologically on single verb forms, and further sets of synthetic allocutive forms make for an even more complex morphology. The verb is also an area of the language subject to a fair amount of dialectal variation. Due to the complexity of this subject and its traditional centrality in descriptions of Basque grammar, it is the subject of a separate article.

Basque word order is largely determined by the notions of focus and topic which are employed to decide how to "package" or structure the propositional content (information) in utterances. Focus is a feature that attaches to a part of a sentence considered to contain the most important information, the "point" of the utterance. Thus in different discourse contexts, the focus of the same (basic) sentence can be on different parts, giving rise (in a language like Basque) to different grammatical forms. Topic, on the other hand, refers to a part of a sentence that serves to put the information it contains into context, i.e. to establish "what we are talking about". Basque word order involves in a very basic way two rules, the "focus rule" and the "topic rule", as follows:

• Focus rule: Whichever constituent of a sentence is in focus immediately precedes the verb.
• Topic rule: A topic is emphasised by placing it at the beginning of the sentence.

Compare, for example:

Basque is sometimes called an SOV (i.e. subject–object–verb) language, but as one can see, the order of elements in the Basque sentence is not rigidly determined by grammatical roles (such as subject and object) and has to do with other criteria (such as focus and topic). In Basque the SOV is more common and less marked than the OSV order, although each is appropriate in different contexts (as are other word orders). That is to say, it is more common and less marked (other things being equal) for the subject to be topic and for the object to be in focus than vice versa. This may be explained by intrinsic qualities of the concepts "subject" and "object". It is compatible with the cross-linguistic tendency for topichood to be a characteristic feature of prototypical subjects, for example.

A possibility seemingly not taken into account by the above focus rule, which states that the focused element precedes the verb, is the circumstance wherein the verb itself is in focus. One situation in which this occurs is a clause with no (or no focused) non-verbal constituents, only perhaps a topic-subject, as in 'He knows' or 'John is coming' (in contexts where 'he' or 'John' are not focused). Of course there may be other constituents, as long as none of them are focused, e.g. 'She has money' (where the point of the utterance is not to tell us what she has, but whether or not she has it). This type of sentence is sometimes described as one in which what is in focus is not so much the verb as the affirmation of the predicate; i.e. 'She has money' does not really stand in contrast to, say, 'She eats money', but only to 'She doesn't have money'. For the present practical purpose this distinction may be ignored and the term "verbal focus" will be applied to such cases.

The most notable verb-focusing strategy in Basque grammar is use of the affirmative prefix ba-. Attached to a synthetically conjugated finite verb, this has the effect of putting that verb (or its affirmation, if one prefers) in focus, thereby implying that whatever (if anything) precedes the verb is not in focus. Thus the use of ba- looks as if it blocks application of the general focus rule which assigns focus to an element in pre-verbal position.

The affirmative use of ba- (not to confused with the homophonous subordinating prefix meaning 'if') is normally used with synthetic finite forms, thus also John badator or Badator John 'John is coming' (as opposed to John dator 'John is coming'), Badu dirua (or in western Basque Badauka dirua) 'She has money'. In most varieties of Basque, however, affirmative ba- is not so common with compound tenses or compound verbs.

To place a compound verb form (or its affirmation) in focus, it may be enough to place the main sentence stress (which normally goes on the focused item) on the first component of the verbal compound expression. Here it seems that the auxiliary part of the expression is treated as representing the "verb" in the general focus rule, thereby predictably throwing the focus onto the preceding component, which is now the main verb. In western dialects an alternative procedure used to emphasise the placement of focus on the verb is to make this a complement of the verb egin 'do'.

There are certain exceptions to the general focus rule:

"Heavy" constituents may be placed after an unfocused verb even when they are (pragmatically) focused.

• Atzo ikusi nuen asto bat betaurrekoekin. 'Yesterday I saw a donkey with (i.e. wearing) glasses.'

Imperative verbs often precede other constituents (except for topics).

• Ekarri hona bi botila ardo mesedez! 'Bring two bottles of wine here please!'
• Bihar arratsaldean, zatoz nire etxera. 'Tomorrow afternoon, come to my house.'

Some subordinate clauses are exempt from certain rules. For example, an unfocused verb is allowed to occur without any focused clause constituent in such clauses.

• datorren astean 'next week' (lit. 'the week that is coming', 'the coming week')
• dakigunez 'as we know'

Systematic exceptions apart, focus assignment (as defined in the preceding sections) is an obligatory feature of Basque clauses. Because it is obligatory and automatic, such focus assignment need not be pragmatically marked and does not necessarily signify emphatic focusing or foregrounding. This observation is particularly applicable when focus is assigned in accordance with predictable or prototypical patterns, such as when the direct object takes the focus position in a transitive clause, or when the verb is formally focused in an intransitive clause.

In some varieties or styles of Basque, e.g. in poetic diction, one may achieve more emphatic focus (even on an object) by inverting the usual verb-auxiliary order: Txakurrek hezurrak dituzte jaten. In ordinary colloquial usage many speakers do not allow this, but some allow other such "inversions", e.g. with compound verbs (light-verb constructions), e.g. normal Irakaslearekin hitz egingo dut 'I'll speak to the teacher' (ordinary focus on irakaslearekin) versus more marked Irakaslearekin egingo dut hitz (emphatic focus on irakaslearekin).

A topic may be backgrounded (although arguably still remaining a topic) by placement at the end of a sentence rather than at the beginning, e.g. Hezurrak jaten dituzte txakurrek, roughly 'They eat bones, dogs'; so also Ez dakit, nik 'I don't know', where nik is no doubt a topic of sorts since if it weren't there would be no need to mention it at all (unmarked: Ez dakit).

Although the following restrictions on the placement of verbs within the clause are the outcome of the various rules already given, it may be useful to summarise those restrictions here.

A finite verb form (a synthetically conjugative verb or auxiliary) cannot stand in absolute clause-initial position unless:

1. it is preceded by affirmative (verb-focusing) ba-...

   Badakit. 'I know.'

2. it is preceded by negative ez (see below)...

   Ez dauka dirurik. 'She hasn't got any money.'

3. it is imperative (or optative)...

   Zatoz hona! 'Come here!'

   Datorrela bihar. 'Let him come tomorrow.'

4. certain subordinate clauses...

   datorren astean 'next week'

A compound verb form (a verb in a compound tense or a compound verb construction) may be clause-initial in cases of verbal focus:

• Ikusi (egin) du. 'He has seen it.'
• Maite nau. 'He loves me.'

Negation is expressed by ez preceding the finite verb form.

• John ez dator. (Or: Ez dator John.) 'John is not coming.'

If there is no finite verb in the clause, such as when the participle on its own is used as an imperative or in non-finite subordinate clauses, ez may precede a non-finite verb. (VN stands for verbal noun here.)

• Ez etorri! 'Do not come!'

There is a strong tendency for other sentence constituents to follow a negated finite verb, except when topicalised. Thus the general focus rule (see above) does not apply with negated finite verb forms (in the same way as it doesn't apply with verbs with the affirmative ba- prefix, see also above).

• cf. Dirurik ez dauka. 'Money she hasn't got.' (here 'money' is emphatically topicalised or foregrounded)

Compound tense forms of verbs, and also compound verbs, are negated by placing ez in front of the finite auxiliary (or light verb); the other components of the verbal construction are normally placed after the negated finite form.

In this construction the postposed verb component(s) may be separated from the finite auxiliary or light verb. Focused constituents, unless somewhat heavy, will be placed between the two.

An indefinite subject of an intransitive verb, or an indefinite direct object of a transitive verb, usually take the negative polarity article -(r)ik instead of the normal article -a, -ak in negative (or other negative-polar) sentences.

There are no true negative pronouns (or adverbs, etc.) as such. The negative-polar pronouns etc. are used in negative contexts (and other negative-polarity contexts too). All such words may be combined directly with ez (or gabe 'without', which also has an intrinsically negative meaning). Some speakers do accept uses of negative-polar words in isolation, with ez implicit.

Yes-no questions either take the same form as the corresponding statement, or incorporate a question marker.

• John ikusi duzu? or John ikusi al duzu? 'Have you seen John?'
  [John see.PARTICIPLE (al) AUXILIARY]
• Badaki? or Ba al daki? 'Does he know?' [ba (al) he.knows.it]

There are two question markers: al for straightforward yes–no questions, and ote for tentative questions of any kind (yes-no or not). Both al and ote are placed immediately in front of the finite verb form. The question marker al is not used pan-dialectally. In some dialects the same function is performed by a suffix -a attached to the finite verb form (thus the equivalents of the above examples are John ikusi duzu(i)a? and Badakia?). Still other dialects lack either interrogative al or interrogative -a.

See Negation above concerning the use of negative polarity items; these may occur in yes–no questions.

In choice questions, 'or' is either ala or edo, although the former is often taught as more correct.

• Zer nahiago duzu, beltza ala gorria? 'What do you prefer, red wine or rosé?' (lit. 'black or red')

Word order in wh-questions (i.e. those with question words) is fully accounted for by the general rules of Basque word order, granted a further rule for Basque (shared by many other languages) which states that interrogative words and phrases (e.g. nor 'who?', zein etxe zuritan? 'in which white house?', zenbat diru 'how much money?', etc.) are obligatorily focused.

Therefore, wh-expressions must immediately precede the verb, and none of the verb-focusing constructions are possible (since these would result in moving the focus away from the wh-expression).

• Zer da hau? 'What is this?'
• Nora zoaz? 'Where are you going?'
• Nora joango zara? 'Where will you go?'
• Non bizi da zure laguna? 'Where does your friend live?'
• Zenbat etxetan bizi izan zara zure bizitzan? 'How many houses have you lived in in your life?'
• NOT: *Nora bazoaz? 'Where are you going?' (because ba- focuses zoaz, the verb, but nora, the question word, needs to have the focus)

The interrogative phrase is often placed first, but as in other sentences, topics may be foregrounded through fronting and so precede the wh-expression; such constructions are fairly common in Basque.

• Hau zer da? 'What is this?'
• Eta zure laguna non bizi da? 'And your friend, where does she live?'
• Zure bizitzan zenbat etxetan bizi izan zara? 'In your life how many houses have you lived in?'

• Agirre Berezibar, J.M. (1991). Euskal gramatika deskriptiboa. Bilbao: Labayru Ikastegia. (in Basque)
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