Verbs of falling and throwing in Basque

The present article analyses verbs of falling and throwing in Basque. The frame-based approach is used to find out the relevant semantic oppositions. Both elicitation and corpus data are used in the study. The dominant Basque verbs of falling are erori ‘to fall’ and its Bizcayan counterpart jautsi, which can be used in most of the frames. Another verb, isuri ‘flow’, can refer to liquids, as well as the dominant verb. The verb etorri ‘to come’ refers to liquids moving horizontally, rather than vertically. Falling of hair and teeth can be expressed with the verb galdu ‘to lose’. The only frame where the dominant verb erori is hardly ever used is falling of rain and snow. The predicate ari izan with progressive meaning and the verbs egin ‘to do’ and bota ‘to throw’ can be used instead.

The dominant verb of throwing in Basque is bota ‘to throw’ taking both allative and locative arguments. Intensive throwing is expressed by verbs jaurti, jaurtiki, aurtiki ‘throw, toss, cast’. Some verbs of throwing, such as lurreratu ‘to throw to the ground’ < lur ‘ground’, ureratu ‘to throw to water’ < ur ‘water’, airatu ‘to throw to air’ < aire ‘air’ incorporate the Orienter. The incorporation of a typical Trajector is possible as well, cf. harrikatu ‘to throw stones’ < harri ‘stone’ and dardatu ‘to throw an arrow, a spear’ < dardo ‘arrow, spear’.

Metaphorical meanings of verbs of falling and throwing in Basque often have their counterparts in the neighbouring Romance languages — Spanish and French. Thus, the verb erori ‘to fall’, as well as its Spanish counterpart caer can refer to winning something in lottery. The Basque verb bota ‘to throw’, as well as Spanish echar can refer to firing an employee, getting rid of an object or showing a film.