cases. An ancient sprachbund involving these two languages is deemed likely by some linguists. But as Trask notes, Basque has been of no help in translating Iberian inscriptions. Influences on other languages External relations Iberian and Basque Whether Iberian and Basque are two languages of the same language family is still a much-debated question. Many experts on Iberian suspect that there is a relationship of some sort between Iberian and Aquitanian, a precursor of the Basque language. But there is not enough evidence to date to ascertain whether the two languages belong to the same language family or whether the relationship is due to linguistic borrowing. Lexical and onomastic coincidences could be due to borrowing, while the similarities in the phonological structures of the two languages could be due to linguistic areal phenomena (cf. the similarities between Basque and Old Spanish in spite of being languages of two different families). More scientific studies on Iberian language are needed to shed light on this question. From a historical perspective, the first features where a relationship between Basque and Iberian was claimed were: the suffixes / on Iberian coins (which were compared to the genitive plural on similar ancient coins) with the Basque plural (-k) and genitive (-en) endings Iberian town names containing (particularly ), where parallels were drawn with Basque ("town") and ("new"). Although other pairs have been proposed (such as , , , ), the meanings of these Iberian morphs are still controversial. The main arguments today which relate to coinciding surface forms between Basque and Iberian are: Phonetics: Proto-Basque phonology, first proposed by Michelena, appears to be very similar to what is known about the Iberian phonological system. It has been claimed that the lack of /m/, common to both Proto-Basque and Iberian, is especially significant). Onomastics: Aquitanian-Latin inscriptions contain personal and deity names which can clearly be related to modern Basque words, but also show structural and lexical resemblances with Iberian personal names. But Iberian influence on the Aquitanian name system, rather than a genetic link, cannot be dismissed either. In Iberian and , is read "city". Modern Basque , "city", is derived from the very similar Proto-Basque root * The Iberian genitive ending and maybe the genitive plural , compared to the Basque genitive and the Basque genitive plural * as reconstructed by Michelena. But Michelena himself was sceptical about this comparison. An Iberian formula which frequently