etxeahouse-ARTetxeahouse-ART'(the) house'etxeakhouse-ARTetxeakhouse-ART'(the) houses'etxehousehauthisetxe hauhouse this'this house'etxehousehoriekthoseetxe horiekhouse those'those houses'etxehousebatoneetxe bathouse one'one/a house'etxehousebatzuksomeetxe batzukhouse some'some houses'Other determiners and quantifiers, including beste 'other', the interrogatives and numerals above one or two (depending on dialect) precede the noun.
besteotheretxeahouse-ARTbeste etxeaother house-ART'the other house'besteotheretxehousebatonebeste etxe batother house one'another ("one other") house'etxehouseguztiakall-ARTetxe guztiakhouse all-ART'all (the) houses'The article -a, -ak acts as the default determiner, obligatory with a common noun in the absence of another determiner or quantifer (even in citation forms in popular usage).
French de), replaces -a, -ak in negative-polar contexts, especially with indefinite noun phrases in negative sentences.
The absence of any determiner or quantifier from a common-noun–head noun phrase is not possible except in certain specific contexts, such as in certain types of predicate or in some adverbial expressions.
etxehousegorriredbatoneetxe gorri bathouse red one'one red house'etxehousetxikiasmall-ARTetxe txikiahouse small-ART'(the) little house'etxehousezuriakwhite-ARTetxe zuriakhouse white-ART'(the) white houses'niremyetxehousetxikiasmall-ARTnire etxe txikiamy house small-ART'my little house'When adjectives, adjectivals or genitives are used as predicates, they usually take the article (singular -a, plural -ak).
Most quantifiers (except bat versus batzuk) do not show such morphological variation, but many (including the numerals above one, of course) have intrinsically plural lexical meanings.
Besides these ordinary personal pronouns, there are emphatic (or intensive) ones, whose forms vary considerably between dialects: the first-person singular is neu, nerau, neroni or nihaur.
It has often been noted that in traditional usage (but less so among modern speakers), there is often an explicit correlation between the three degrees of proximity in the demonstrative forms and the grammatical persons, such that hau is made to correspond to ni, hori to hi/zu and so on.
One manifestation of this (others lie beyond the scope of this sketch) is the now old-fashioned mode of addressing persons in social positions commanding special respect (such as a priest, for example) using third-person verb forms and, for the personal pronoun, the second-degree intensive demonstrative berori (see the above table).
The most basic cases are shown here, for convenience divided into three main groups: nuclear, local (or locative) and others.
The personal pronouns ni, hi, gu, zu form their possessive genitive by adding -re rather than -ren: nire, hire, gure, zure.
They are the pronominal possessives: nire 'my' hire 'your (very familiar)' zure 'your (polite or neutral)' haren, beraren 'his, her, its' bere 'his, her, its (reflexive)' gure 'our' zuen 'your' haien, beraien 'their' beren 'their (reflexive)' 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-).
hau 'this' hori 'that' hura 'that (distant)' bat 'one, a' honek, honi, honetan... horrek, horri, horretan... hark, hari, hartan... batek, bati, batean... hauek horiek haiek batzuk 'some' hauek, hauei, hauetan... horiek, horiei, horietan... haiek, haiei, haietan... batzuek, batzuei, batzuetan... 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'.
Basque postpositions are items of sufficient lexical substance and grammatical autonomy to be treated as separate words (unlike the case suffixes) and specifying relations.
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: mendiarenof.the.mountaingaineanon.topmendiaren gaineanof.the.mountain on.top'on top of the mountain'mendienof.the.mountainsgaineanon.topmendien gaineanof.the.mountains on.top'on top of the mountains'mendimountaintxikismallhonenof.thisgaineanon.topmendi txiki honen gaineanmountain small of.this on.top'on top of this small mountain'nireof.me/mygaineanon.topnire gaineanof.me/my on.top'on (top of) me'secondly, the complement can be an unsuffixed noun (not a noun phrase) in a relation resembling a lexical compound: mendimountaingaineanon.topmendi gaineanmountain on.top'on top of the mountain, on the mountain top'In these examples, the relational (gain-) takes the set 1 (singular) inessive case suffix (-(e)an), as in mendiaren gainean and these further examples, mahai(aren)(of.the).tableazpianat.bottommahai(aren) azpian(of.the).table at.bottom'under the table'etxe(aren)(of.the).housebarruanat.insideetxe(aren) barruan(of.the).house at.inside'inside the house'begienof.the.eyeserdianin.middlebegien erdianof.the.eyes in.middle'between the eyes'but other local case suffixes (glossed in capitals) may occur instead of the inessive as sense or usage conventions require, for example, etxe(aren)(of.the).housebarruraTO.insideetxe(aren) barrura(of.the).house TO.inside'into the house'nireof.me/myatzetikFROM/THROUGH.backnire atzetikof.me/my FROM/THROUGH.back'behind me, following me'mendi(aren)(of.the).mountaingainekoOF/PERTAINING TO.topgurutzeathe.crossmendi(aren) gaineko gurutzea(of.the).mountain {OF/PERTAINING TO.top} the.cross'the cross on top of the mountain'The relationals are often used in an adverbial function without a preceding complement (thus not as postpositions): 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.
Basque adjectives and adverbs similarly take such suffixes, but there are three morphologically derived degrees of comparison.
Other ways of comparing quality or manner, in both Basque and English, involve using a separate word, such as hain handi 'so big'.
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.
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.
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 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).
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.
Systematic exceptions apart, focus assignment (as defined in the preceding sections) is an obligatory feature of Basque clauses.
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.
'There is a strong tendency for other sentence constituents to follow a negated finite verb, except when topicalised.
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?
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.