A Stylometric Glance at Novels in Euskara

Abstract

While Basque has been posited as possibly the oldest existing language on the European continent, it appears in written form only in the sixteenth century. The first Basque novel emerges over 300 years later and to this day the genre lacks exhaustive research. The article sets as its aim a stylometric analysis of selected twentieth- and twenty-first-century Basque novels, sourced from the online platforms Armiarma and Booktegi. These are analyzed based on the frequency of the most frequent words measured using cluster analysis and set against a backdrop of foreign novels translated into Euskara. The results show that the originals in Euskara remain distinct from translated works, pointing to the unique linguistic character of the Basque novel. Some linguistic patterns potentially responsible for this distinction are presented. The results are visualized on a map revealing the chronological evolution and the contribution of the Basque novel to the broader literary landscape.