Occitano-Romance languages

The Occitano-Romance or Gallo-Narbonnese (Catalan: llengües occitanoromàniques; Occitan: lengas occitanoromanicas), or rarely East Iberian,[2] is a branch of the Romance language group that encompasses the Catalan/Valencian and Occitan languages spoken in parts of southern France and northeastern Spain.[3][4]

Occitano-Romance
Gallo-Narbonnese
East Iberian
Geographic
distribution
France, Spain, Andorra, Monaco, Italy
Linguistic classificationIndo-European
Early forms
Subdivisions
GlottologNone
Occitan in shades of Purple, Catalan in shades of Red and Aragonese in shades of Yellow

Extent

The group covers the languages of the southern part of France (Occitania including Northern Catalonia), eastern Spain (Catalonia, Valencian Community, Balearic Islands, La Franja, Carche, Northern Aragon), together with Andorra, Monaco, parts of Italy (Occitan Valleys, Alghero, Guardia Piemontese), and historically in the County of Tripoli and the possessions of the Crown of Aragon. The existence of this group of languages is discussed on both linguistic and political bases.

Classification of Catalan

According to some linguists both Occitan and Catalan/Valencian should be considered Gallo-Romance languages. Other linguists concur as regarding Occitan but consider Catalan and Aragonese to be part of the Ibero-Romance languages.

The issue at debate is as political as it is linguistic because the division into Gallo-Romance and Ibero-Romance languages stems from the current nation states of France and Spain and so is based more on territorial criteria than historic and linguistic criteria. One of the main proponents of the unity of the languages of the Iberian Peninsula was Spanish philologist Ramón Menéndez Pidal, and for a long time, others such as Swiss linguist Wilhelm Meyer-Lübke (Das Katalanische, Heidelberg, 1925) have supported the kinship of Occitan and Catalan. Also, due to Aragonese not having been studied as much as both Catalan and Occitan, many people still label it as a Spanish dialect.[5]

From the 8th century to the 13th century, there was no clear sociolinguistic distinction between Occitania and Catalonia. For instance, the Provençal troubadour, Albertet de Sestaró, says: "Monks, tell me which according to your knowledge are better: the French or the Catalans? And here I shall put Gascony, Provence, Limousin, Auvergne and Viennois while there shall be the land of the two kings."[6] In Marseille, a typical Provençal song is called 'Catalan song'.[7]

Classification of Aragonese

Aragonese is a language that hasn't been studied as much as Catalan and Occitan. In many occasions throughout history, people have disregarded it and label it as a Spanish dialect, mainly because of extralinguistic reasons such as its small extension and the fact that it's spoken in a rural areas.

The language has been minoritized for centuries and labelled as either a broken dialect or as a second class language. Spanish became the language of prestige right away after the union of Aragon with Castile and the use of Aragonese started to decline. Even though it had been used by the government and administration for many years, it rapidly became a language that was used informally and looked down upon.

Territorial lost of the Aragonese language in favour of Spanish

This situation of diglossia meant the beginning of a period (that still lasts) of a strong Spanish influence. Many Spanish loanwords entered Aragonese and its evolution from that moment on was tied to Spanish. Some grammatical features documented in medieval Aragonese were lost, such at the usage of the Latin ending -ŪTUM for the creation of the participle verb forms such as in perduto (lost) instead of -ĪTUM that ended up being perdito, which later became perdiu in many dialects due to Spanish influence as well. Many of the loanwords that entered Aragonese were names of new concepts, but many others were basic words of the everyday life such as numbers or the days of the week. Aragonese morphology could have been affected as well. One example of the morphological influence of Spanish is the treatment of the terminal Latin vowels , (later -e, -o). Aragonese tends to lose the final unstressed -e that Spanish preserves (compare the word for milk in Aragonese leit and in Spanish leche), while the final -o is maintained more depending on the dialect and the degree of Spanish influence. Some dialects, such as Belsetan, a central dialect, tend to have the apocope of -o when the word ends with -n, -r and -l, such as in camín (path), rar (rare) and pel (hair). However this apocope of -o but also the apocope of -e have been receding in territory and usage, and the final vowels have been reintroduced in many dialects.[8][9]

On the other hand, the recent studies have allowed us to get a better insight into the core of the Aragonese language. Despite the previously mentioned influence, there are still many features that bring Aragonese closer to both Occitan and Catalan. The lexicon of everyday life is harder to change after being influenced by other languages. The lexicon of plants, animals and the rural life pose a great example of this:[10]

EnglishOccitanCatalanAragoneseSpanish
oatcivadacivadacibada ~ cebadaavena
barleyòrdiordiordiocebadal
acornglanglàglanbellota
rose hipgabarrièr ~ gardavèragavarrera ~ gavarrógarrabera ~ gabarderaescaramujo
acornmilgranamagrana ~ mangranaminglana ~ mengranagranada
fernfalguièra ~ feusefalguerafeleguera ~ felzehelecho
squirrelesquiròl ~ esquiròuesquirolesquirol ~ esquirueloardilla

Another example would be the use of the verb "to be". Aragonese and Occitan use one verb for what Catalan and the Ibero-Romance languages use two:

  1. Occitan: èsser (depending on the dialect they can use other forms such as èstre, estar and èster)
    Èster vielha. (to be old, in Aranese Occitan)
  2. Aragonese: estar
    Estar viella (to be old)
  3. Catalan, just as in Spanish: ser and estar:
    Ser vella (to be old. In this case ser and estar can't be used indistinctly without altering the meaning)

The conjugation of the Aragonese and Occitan forms come close to the conjugation of ser in Catalan, and this sets the three languages apart from the Ibero-Romance languages with the kind of uses that the verb "to be" has. For example with the sentence "We are here" we can see the difference in use of the verb "to be" when used to talk about a location:

  1. Occitan: sem aici!
  2. Aragonese: som aquí!
  3. Catalan: som aquí!
  4. Spanish: estamos aquí!

The ribagorçan dialect

Romance languages form what it is called a linguistic continuum. Each language within this continuum tends to be linked to another via a dialect that shares many traits with the other language. Usually these dialects are far enough from the standard forms of the two languages they link, and sometimes they can be difficult to classify as a dialect of language X or language Y. Between Aragonese and Catalan there is a linguistic variety called Ribagorçan. This constitutive dialect makes a clean transition between Aragonese and Catalan. Some linguists consider that it belongs to the Aragonese language, some others that it belongs to the Catalan language and some others that it constitutes a micro-language on its own.[11] Nowadays, most of the dialect is considered to be Aragonese and it is recognized as such by the regional governments. The matter is that the Ribgorçan variety has more characteristics that take it closer to Catalan than other Aragonese dialects. Therfore some of the people that argue that Ribagorçan is Catalan, could argue that it should be classified alongside Catalan.

It's important to note that, unlike between Aragonese and Catalan, there isn't a constitutive dialect between Aragonese and Spanish. There was during the medieval times two linguistic varieties (Riojan and Navarrese respectively) between old Spanish and old Aragonese. However these two varieties were replaced by Spanish and the dialect continuum was broken between the Ibero-Romance languages and Aragonese plus the other romance languages.

Internal variation

Most linguists separate Catalan and Occitan, but both languages have been treated as one in studies by Occitan linguists attempting to classify the dialects of Occitan in supradialectal groups, such is the case of Pierre Bec[12] and, more recently, of Domergue Sumien.[13]

Both join together in an Aquitano-Pyrenean or Pre-Iberian group including Catalan, Gascon and a part of Languedocien, leaving the rest of Occitan in one (Sumien: Arverno-Mediterranean) or two groups (Bec: Arverno-Mediterranean, Central Occitan).

The answer to the question of whether Gascon or Catalan should be considered dialects of Occitan or separate languages has long been a matter of opinion or convention, rather than based on scientific ground. However, two recent studies support Gascon's being considered a distinct language. For the very first time, a quantifiable, statistics-based approach was applied by Stephan Koppelberg in attempt to solve this issue.[14] Based on the results he obtained, he concludes that Catalan, Occitan, and Gascon should all be considered three distinct languages. More recently, Y. Greub and J.P. Chambon (Sorbonne University, Paris) demonstrated that the formation of Proto-Gascon was already complete at the eve of the 7th century, whereas Proto-Occitan was not yet formed at that time.[15] These results induced linguists to do away with the conventional classification of Gascon, favoring the "distinct language" alternative.[citation needed] Both studies supported the early intuition of late Kurt Baldinger, a specialist of both medieval Occitan and medieval Gascon, who recommended that Occitan and Gascon be classified as separate languages.[16][17]

Linguistic variation

Similarities between Catalan, Occitan and Aragonese

  • Both Catalan and Occitan have apocope on terminal latin vowels , (later -e, -o). Aragonese however has apocope of and in some cases, depending on the dialect, of :
    LatinCatalanOccitanAragoneseSpanish
    OrthographyIPAOrthographyIPAOrthographyIPAOrthographyIPA
    TRÚNCU(M)[ˈt̪rʊŋ.kʊ̃ˑ]tronc[tɾoŋ(k)]tronc[tɾuŋ(k)]tronco[tɾoŋ'ko]tronco
    MANUS[ˈmänʊs̠][ma]man[ma]man[man]mano

    This evolution does not occur when the ellision of -e or -o results in a terminal consonant cluster.

    LatinOld OccitanCatalanOccitanAragonese
    ÁRBORE(M)ARBREarbrearbrearbol*
    QUÁTTORQUÁTROquatrequatrequatre
    Due to the evolution of the word ÁRBORE(M) in Aragonese, this example doesn't show the conservation of -e or -o that prevents a terminal consonant cluster.
  • Another shared trait is the conservation of the Latin initial consonantic groups FL-/CL-/PL-:
    EnglishLatinOccitanCatalanAragonese
    keyCLAVIS)clauclauclau
    flameFLAMMA)flamaflamaflama
    fullPLĒNUS)plenpleplen ~ pleno
    Some dialects of both Occitan and aragonese palatalize these groups into FLL-/CLL-/PLL-.
  • A large part of the lexicon is shared, and in general written words in Catalan, Aragonese and Occitan are mutually intelligible. Similar to the differences in lexicon between Portuguese and Spanish (although this is not always the case with spoken language and varies from dialect to dialect). There are also notable cognates between Catalan, Occitan and Aragonese.
    EnglishLatinOccitanCatalanAragonese
    oldVÉCLA(M)vielhavellaviella
    nightNOCTEMnuèit ~ nuèchnitnueit ~ nit
    to risePODIŌpujarpujarpuyar
    to eatMANDŪCĀREmanjarmenjarminchar
    to takePRĒNDŌpréner ~ prendreprendreprener ~ prenre
    middle / halfMÉDIU(M)miègmigmeyo
    enoughPRŌDEpro ~ pronprouprou ~ pro
    IÉGOieu ~ jojoyo
    to followSÉQUEREseguir ~ siegereseguirseguir(e)
    leafFÓLIA(M)fuòlha ~ fuèlhafullafuella ~ fulla
    morningMĀTŪTĪNUSmaitinmatímaitín

Differences between Catalan, Occitan and Aragonese

Most of the differences of the vowel system stem from neutralizations that take place on unstressed syllables.In both languages a stressed syllable has a great number of possible different vowels,while phonologically different vowels end up being articulated in the same way in an unstressed syllable.Although this neutralization is common to both languages, the details differ markedly. In Occitan the form of neutralization depends on whether a vowel is pretonic (before the stressed syllable) or posttonic (after the stressed syllable). For example /ɔ/ articulates as [u] in pretonic position and as [o] in posttonic position, and only as [ɔ] in stressed position.In contrast neutralization in Catalan is the same regardless of the position of the unstressed syllable (although it differs from dialect to dialect). Many of these changes happened in the 14th or late 13th century.

Slightly older are the palatalizations present in Occitan before a palatal or velar consonant:

OccitanCatalanEnglish
vielhavellaOld
miègmigMiddle/Half
ieu/jojoI
seguirseguirTo follow
fuèlhafullaLeaf

The diphthongs and also set all these three languages apart, having each language different patterns and systems. Most of these come from the diphthongisation of Latin words with monophthongs, such as the descendants of the words like FĒSTA (party) or OCULUS (eye), or the monophthongization of Latin words that already had a diphthong, like CAUSA (thing). Some examples:

EnglishCatalanOccitanAragonese
eyeulluelhuello
leaffullafuèlhafuella
bridgepontpontpuent
partyfestafèstafiesta
thingcosacausacosa
few, littlepocpaucpoco

Shared traits between Catalan and Aragonese

A noticeable difference heard by speakers of Catalan and Aragonese is the use of rounded vowels in Occitan. Both Catalan and Aragonese lack rounded vowels. However Occitan has /y/ and /œ/ in words like luna and fuèlha respectively.

The treatment of the Latin geminate -nn- also differs in Occitan. While Catalan and Aragonese tend to reduce the -nn- into a [ɲ] while in Occitan it turned into a [n]:

EnglishCatalanAragoneseOccitan
yearanyanyoan

On another page, while Occitan uses exclusively the simple past tense, Catalan (most dialects) and Aragonese (Eastern dialects) use another past tense called the periphrastic past. This tense is made of the sum of the conjugation of the verb to go plus the verb performing the action in infinitive form:

EnglishCatalanAragoneseOccitan
I boughtvaig comprarva crompar ~ voi cromparcrompèri
you boughtvas comprarvas crompar~ vas cromparcrompères
he/she boughtva comprarva crompar ~ va cromparcrompèt
we boughtvam comprarvam crompar ~ vom cromparcrompèrem
you boughtvau comprarvaz crompar ~ voz cromparcrompèretz
they boughtvan comprarvan crompar ~ van cromparcrompèron

Shared traits between Catalan and Occitan

Something that sets apart Aragonese and some Catalan dialects (such as central Valencian or Ribagorçan Catalan) from Occitan and most of the Catalan dialects is the devoicing or desonorization that happened in the former group. Phonemes such as /dʒ/ and /z/, which were replaced by /tʃ/ and /θ/.

Aragonese is the only of the three languages to have the -mbr- consonant cluster between vowels. Note that Ribagorçan tend to lose them as well:

EnglishCatalanOccitanAragonese
hungerfamfamfambre
manhomeòmehombre

Shared traits between Occitan and Aragonese

Catalan also has some things that sets it apart from the other two is the palatalization of the initial L. From /l/ to /ʎ/.[18]

EnglishCatalanOccitanAragonese
tonguellengualenga ~ lengua ~ lingaluenga ~ lengua
to readllegirlegir ~ légerleyer

It is important to note those dialects of Aragonese that palatalize the consonant clusters mentioned before, also palatalize the initial L:

EnglishCatalanRibagorçan
Tonguellengualluenga ~ llengua
to readllegirllechir ~ lleyer

Another trait is the use of the descendants of the pronoun EGO when used as the object of a preposition. Most Catalan dialects and the Iberro-Romance languages distinguish between the pronoun used as a subject EGO and the object of a preposition MIHĪ̆, while both Aragonese and Occitan use the descendant of EGO:

EnglishCatalanOccitanAragonese
Ijoieu ~ joyo
(with) meamb midamb ieu ~ amb jocon yo

Lexical comparison

Variations in the spellings and pronunciations of numbers in several Occitano-Romance dialects:[19][20]

NumeralOccitanCatalanAragonese[21]PROTO-
OcRm
Northern OccitanWestern OccitanEastern OccitanEastern CatalanNorthwestern Catalan
AuvergnatLimousinGasconLanguedocienProvençal
1vyn / vynɐ
vun / vunå
/ ynɔ
un / una
y / yo
un / ua
/ yno
un / una
/ yno
un / una
un / unə
un / una
un / una
un / una
un~uno / una
un~uno / una
*un / *una
2du / dua
dou / duas
du / dua
dos / doas
dys / dyos
dus / duas
dus / duos
dos / doas
dus / duas
dous / douas
dos / duəs
dos / dues
dos/dues
dos / dues
dos / duas
dos / duas
*dos~dus / *duas
3tʀei
trei
trei
tres
tres
tres
tres
tres
tʀes
tres
trɛs
tres
trɛs
tres
tɾes
tres
*tres
4katʀə
catre
katre
quatre
kwatə
quatre
katre
quatre
katʀə
quatre
kwatrə
quatre
kwatre
quatre
kwatre~kwatro
quatre / quatro
*kwatre
5ʃin
sin
ʃin
cinc
siŋk
cinq
siŋk
cinq
siŋ
cinq
siŋ / siŋk
cinc
siŋ / siŋk
cinc
θiŋko~θiŋk
cinco / cinc
*siŋk
6ʃei
siei
ʃiei
sieis
ʃeis
sheis
siɛis
sièis
siei
sieis
sis
sis
sis
sis
seis~sieis
seis / sieis
*sieis
7se
ʃe
sèt
sɛt
sèt
sɛt
sèt

sèt
sɛt
set
sɛt
set
siet~sɛt
siet / set
*sɛt
8
veu
jɥe
uèch
weit
ueit
ɥet͡ʃ
uèch
vɥe
vue
buit / vuit
vuit
vuit / wit
vuit / huit
weito~weit
ueito / ueit
*weit
9niø~nou
nieu~nou
nɔu
nòu
nau
nau
nɔu
nòu
nu
nòu
nɔu
nou
nɔu
nou
nweu~nɔu
nueu / nou
*nɔu
10die~de
dié~
diɛ~de
detz
dɛt͡s
dètz
dɛt͡s
dèts
dɛs
dès
dɛu
deu
dɛu
deu
dieθ~deu
diez / deu
*dɛt͡s

The numbers 1 and 2 have both feminine and masculine forms agreeing with the object they modify.

References