Koldo Mitxelena: Selected Writings of a Basque Scholar (Hardcover)

Edited by Pello Salaburu (2008).

This work brings together a number of texts by Koldo Mitxelena (also known as Luis Michelena) concerning the Basque language, its history, and its literature. The Basque language is used on both sides of the Pyrenees, along the Bay of Biscay, in the borderlands between Spain and France. It is a non–Indo-European language of unknown origins and with no known relatives; it is an ergative language, with a very different syntactic structure from Spanish, French, English, or German. Some of the texts in the present work are more general or informative, while others require a degree of familiarity with linguistics. The reader will find a clear explanation of the Basque language, together with a systematic account of the theories surrounding its relationship with other languages, its dialects, and its literature.

Furthermore, there is ample information about certain central features associated with the history of the language, about its phonetic and phonological system, and about the first writings in Basque. Also included is the text of his unification proposal that, since 1968, has made the written unification of the language possible. As a general criterion, the texts selected here have not been previously
published in English.

Hardcover, $39.95 (ISBN 978-1-877802-81-2).