Hebetic ioan gabe ene buruya: some thoughts concerning the diachrony of anaphoric and reflexive uses of buru

This study argues for an external as well as internal motivation for the advent of the reflexive buru-construction in Basque: on the one hand, it is proposed that the Basque reflexive buru-construction arose by virtue of contact with medieval Latin, by means of the mechanism known as replica grammaticalization. According to this hypothesis, the process was triggered by anaphoric and reflexive uses of the word caput in medieval Latin. On the other hand, the word buru is argued to have developed new meaning as a result of semantic extension, that is to say, of metonymy. The potential implications are also addressed which these proposals may have for the history and reconstruction of Basque.