John Bengtson (Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory;
[email protected]) Some notes on Euskaro-Caucasian phonology This paper explores a few features of the proposed reconstruction of Euskaro-Caucasian, the putative ancestor of Basque and the North Caucasian languages, as put forth in a recent monograph. Here some features of the consonantal system are discussed, namely (I) the de- velopment of proto-Euskaro-Caucasian *m in Basque, (II) the non-initial Basque reflexes of Euskaro-Caucasian laryngeals, and (III) the Basque noun stem allomorphs involving an al- ternation between /rc/ and /śt/. It is shown how these details of Euskaro-Caucasian compara- tive phonology illuminate important unsolved problems of historical phonology on both the Basque and North Caucasian sides. Keywords: Basque language, North Caucasian languages, comparative linguistics, Euskaro- Caucasian language family, Proto-Euskaro-Caucasian, labial nasals, laryngeals, ‘best expla- nation’ hypothesis In a recent monograph (Bengtson 2017: henceforth BCR) I have undertaken to outline a com- prehensive scheme of comparative and historical phonology of the Euskaro-Caucasian lan- guages, based on the comparison of my version of Proto-Basque, which relies heavily on Michelena’s Fonética histórica vasca (1961, 1990, hereafter FHV), with Proto-North Caucasian and subsidiary proto-languages, according to the North Caucasian Etymological Dictionary by Nikolaev & Starostin (1994, hereafter NCED). Since the complete discussion of historical pho- nology comprises