Re: Indo-European Origins and Geography

On 3 Sep 2005 02:51:44 -0700, "Darkstar"
<darkstar100@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

>To Brian M. Scott:
>
>> But you have a problem here, because there isn't a sharp
>> dialect boundary at the Pyrenees. In particular, Catalan
>> originally developed on both sides of the mountains, if I'm
>> not mistaken, and it's closer to Occitan than to Castilian.
>
>I'm not an expert on Catalan, but judging just from geography, it could
>be seen as a later invasion to Spain from Gaul.

Not really. There were some Frankish influences on the
political structure (the "Spanish Mark"), and some Occitan
influences on early literature (as in Northern Gaul, Italy
and León-Castille), but the Catalan language is the
indigenous development of Vulgar Latin in North-Eastern
Tarraconensis.

>If it's close to
>Provencal/Occitan fine, this is the way it ought to be. The passage to
>Spain (near Barcelona) must have split the Proto-Catalan into two
>dialectical branches: the southern one which survived up to these days
>as Catalan, and the northern one in France which seems to have died off
>because of French influence. If it had survived, we'd have Catalan A in
>Spain and Catalan B in France. I see no problem here.

Catalan hasn't died off in France. Rossellonès has a few
peculiarities of its own, mostly transitional to
Languedocien, but it's basically an East Catalan dialect.

The major split is between East Catalan (Rossellò, Girona,
Barcelona, parts of Tarragona, Balearic, Alguerès [in
Sardinia, Italy]) and West Catalan (Lleida, parts of Eastern
Huesca [Aragón], parts of Tarragona, Castellò, València,
Alacant).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@xxxxxx
.

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