Re: Indo-European Origins and Geography

Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@xxxxxx> writes:
>"John Atkinson" <johnacko@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>>"Darkstar" <darkstar100@xxxxxxxx> writes...

>>> Miguel:

>>>> 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.

>>> Before we run into a long debate on the origins of Catalan, I could
>>> point out the following

>>> 1) The southeastern Pyranees are not high enough to provide substantial
>>> barrier for the linguistic expansion. For this reason, a subdialect of
>>> Catalan (Rousillon) is spoken in French Catalonia
>>> (Pyrenees-Orientales).
>>> 2) The western Pyranees are indeed high, hence we have the Gascon
>>> dialect of Occitan in Gascony that is sometimes viewed as a separate
>>> language or a special dialect of Occitan.

>>But Gascon lies on thge *same* side of the Pyrenees as all other varieties
>>of Occitan!

>The frontier between Gascon and the rest of Occitan is
>ancient: Gallia omnis divisa est in partes tres.

>>OTOH, Basque does occur on both sides of the western Pyrenees, and has for
>>millenia, though during the last 2000 years its distribution seems to have
>>changed from largely north of the Pyrenees (Aquitania) to predominately
>>south of them. The mountains don't seem to have done much splitting there.

>The thing about the Pyrenees is, in the words of Miss Anne
>Elk, that they're thin at one end, thin again at the other
>end, but much much thicker in the middle.

>The Gascon area roughly corresponds to the area of the
>Garonne river, as can be seen from the fact that the Vall
>d'Aran in Catalonia, on the Garonne side of the watershed,
>is Gascon speaking.

Equally ancient.
In fact, it's the very next sentence in 'Bello Gallico':

Hi omnes lingua ... inter se differunt.
Gallos ab Aquitanis Garumna flumen ... dividit.

-John Lawler http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler U Michigan Linguistics Dept
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