Phonological history of Gallo Romance

[Sol717]

My question is how did it end up in English, right here in Wisconsin, surrounded by English-speakers with typically postalveolar /r/'s.

It's probably a independent innovation, as it's not exactly difficult for historic */r/ to change to something like /ʀ~ʁ/. This change is stereotypically associated with western Europe, but it's well-attested in non-European languages, like as Sesotho and some varieties of Arabic and Malay.

[Zju]

This is more a legend than a established historical fact.

Care to provide a source for that statement?

I'd be interested to know where Otto learned that Franks spoke Catalan.

So no source then? That previous statement of yours does sound more like an opinion than an established fact.

I would pay real money for a podcast in which Talskubilos and Otto reconstruct Proto-World together.

You're also on my ignore list.

Probably that's why you're quoting him.

[Raholeun]

I would pay real money for a podcast in which Talskubilos and Otto reconstruct Proto-World together.

I would too, without any caustic irony. It seems like a lot of fun in fact.

[Linguoboy]

That said, in the 9th century the differences in the local vernacular were probably minimum.

What does that mean exactly? Old Catalan is clearly distinct from Mozarabic even from the earliest attestations.

[Ketsuban]

Probably that's why you're quoting him.

You can pop open a post by someone on your ignore list and reply to them. It's only on the compose-post page itself you can't since it doesn't provide a "show ignored message" option in the box at the bottom.

[Zju]

Oh, I don't doubt the state of his ignore list. Whether he actually ignores the people in that list, on the other hand, I'm not so sure about.

[Znex]

Care to provide a source for that statement?

I'd be interested to know where Otto learned that Franks spoke Catalan.

So no source then? That previous statement of yours does sound more like an opinion than an established fact.

What evidence is there that the Franks spoke Catalan?? This is the first I've heard of it.

[Travis B.]

What evidence is there that the Franks spoke Catalan?? This is the first I've heard of it.

Umm, Catalan groups most closely with Occitan, one of the languages spoken in Francia, and not with the Ibero-Romance languages...

[Moose-tache]

I would pay real money for a podcast in which Talskubilos and Otto reconstruct Proto-World together.

You're also on my ignore list.

The answer is still no. Stop asking.

[Talskubilos]

Umm, Catalan groups most closely with Occitan, one of the languages spoken in Francia, and not with the Ibero-Romance languages...

In fact, Catalan can be included within Occitan, although in the outskirts.

[Znex]

Actually, languages with penultimate stress normally keep endings better than languages with initial stress (see Romance vs. Germanic).

Germanic ends up losing case endings later than/around the same time as Romance though (in the case of Oïl Romance at least); Old Saxon, Old English and Old Norse still all have at least four distinct nominal case endings before 1000CE in contrast to Old French's two. Though by modern times of course, many Romance languages still have vocalic endings while most Germanic languages don't.

And Celtic had two-syllable case endings like Gaulish Dative pl. -V-bo, Old Irish -(V)ib, so the loss of case must have had additional causes.

But ultimately, I think you're right. There is reason to suppose that British Celtic was quickly adopted as a second language by many Romano-British migrants during the Anglo-Saxon expansion, while Irish Celtic was still mainly spoken as a first language for some time. This may help explain the differing and contrasting developments between the two branches.

I can't say for certain in the other cases, but sociolinguistic evidence can be suggested regarding the evolution of the Romance languages and the Germanic languages as well.

What evidence is there that the Franks spoke Catalan?? This is the first I've heard of it.

Umm, Catalan groups most closely with Occitan, one of the languages spoken in Francia, and not with the Ibero-Romance languages...

Catalan also fits into a continuum of Romance languages spoken from France to Portugal. I'm not disputing that it's closely related, but we have a range of different albeit closely-related peoples spread across Western Europe who all spoke Romance languages.

The most obvious candidate for the language of the Franks is Old French, an Oïl language, and then we look at the langues d'oc, Franco-Provençal, etc. I mean, we have the Frankish monarchs and emperors writing in Old French in historical texts.

So who wrote Old Occitan? Do we know that Frankish people wrote and spoke it? Or some other people?

[hwhatting]

Germanic ends up losing case endings later than/around the same time as Romance though (in the case of Oïl Romance at least); Old Saxon, Old English and Old Norse still all have at least four distinct nominal case endings before 1000CE in contrast to Old French's two. Though by modern times of course, many Romance languages still have vocalic endings while most Germanic languages don't.

But ultimately, I think you're right. There is reason to suppose that British Celtic was quickly adopted as a second language by many Romano-British migrants during the Anglo-Saxon expansion, while Irish Celtic was still mainly spoken as a first language for some time. This may help explain the differing and contrasting developments between the two branches.

Yes, let's keep in mind that losing cases doesn't have to be due to losing final vowels. Most Romance languages lost case without losing vocalic endings, and although they use vocalic endings as inflections for other categories - if you look at the verbal system or plural formation e.g. in Italian, a lot hangs on different vowels being used for differentiating functions. It works better the other way round - the loss of final vowels is conducive to lowering the functional load on them, and while case held up better in Germanic for some time than in Romance (and Icelandic and (Standard) German still have four-case systems), the loss of final vowels also had consequences for plural formation and for verbal inflection in Germanic, in contrast to Romance.

[Talskubilos]

Most Romance languages lost case without losing vocalic endings, and although they use vocalic endings as inflections for other categories - if you look at the verbal system or plural formation e.g. in Italian, a lot hangs on different vowels being used for differentiating functions. It works better the other way round - the loss of final vowels is conducive to lowering the functional load on them, and while case held up better in Germanic for some time than in Romance (and Icelandic and (Standard) German still have four-case systems), the loss of final vowels also had consequences for plural formation and for verbal inflection in Germanic, in contrast to Romance.

AFAIK, the case system of Classical Latin was simplified to only two in Vulgar Latin: nominative and accusative.

[Ares Land]

That said, in the 9th century the differences in the local vernacular were probably minimum.

What does that mean exactly? Old Catalan is clearly distinct from Mozarabic even from the earliest attestations.

Oh, sure, but the earliest attestations are, IIRC, from the 11th century. I don't know how different these were in the 9th century, or if Mozarabic was ever spoken that far north.

(...)
The most obvious candidate for the language of the Franks is Old French, an Oïl language, and then we look at the langues d'oc, Franco-Provençal, etc. I mean, we have the Frankish monarchs and emperors writing in Old French in historical texts.
(...)
So who wrote Old Occitan? Do we know that Frankish people wrote and spoke it? Or some other people?

The area that would speak Old Occitan were part of the Frankish kingdom and had Frankish nobility; some nobles were Wisigoths (in the county of Toulouse, part of the Wisigothic kingdom until the 8th century).

In Western Francia, the royalty and the upper crusts of the nobility probably still spoke Frankish, but most everyone else was speaking a Romance language.

[Talskubilos]

That said, in the 9th century the differences in the local vernacular were probably minimum.

What does that mean exactly? Old Catalan is clearly distinct from Mozarabic even from the earliest attestations.

Oh, sure, but the earliest attestations are, IIRC, from the 11th century. I don't know how different these were in the 9th century, or if Mozarabic was ever spoken that far north.

NW Catalonia (Pallars, Ribagorça) has plenty of toponyms from a Romance language quite different from Catalan, so Mozarabic was spoken in the Pyrenaic area outside the homeland of Catalan.

[MacAnDàil]

The switch to uvular r was much later (around the 18th century.) I thought it originated in Germany too, but it turns out to be the other way around. The change started in France and diffused to Germany. (IIRC the change began in 17th century Parisian popular speech.)

This is very interesting.

My question is how did it end up in English, right here in Wisconsin, surrounded by English-speakers with typically postalveolar /r/'s. Note that what's here isn't quite a uvular /r/ in the French or German sense, as it's pharyngealized except when following non-dental coronals and also non-syllabic, labialized initially except when syllabic, and doubly-articulated postalveolar-uvular after non-dental coronals except when syllabic.

I suspect the German immigrants would have already had the uvular r, and many Germans emigrated to the US, and more so to Wisconsin.

[Dē Graut Bʉr]

What does that mean exactly? Old Catalan is clearly distinct from Mozarabic even from the earliest attestations.

Oh, sure, but the earliest attestations are, IIRC, from the 11th century. I don't know how different these were in the 9th century, or if Mozarabic was ever spoken that far north.

NW Catalonia (Pallars, Ribagorça) has plenty of toponyms from a Romance language quite different from Catalan, so Mozarabic was spoken in the Pyrenaic area outside the homeland of Catalan.

What evidence is there that this "Romance language quite different from Catalan" is Mozarabic?

[Linguoboy]

That said, in the 9th century the differences in the local vernacular were probably minimum.

What does that mean exactly? Old Catalan is clearly distinct from Mozarabic even from the earliest attestations.

Oh, sure, but the earliest attestations are, IIRC, from the 11th century. I don't know how different these were in the 9th century, or if Mozarabic was ever spoken that far north.

The earliest full texts are from the 11th century; there are sporadic Old Catalan attestations going back to the 8th (mostly proper names) and they show most if not all defining characteristics of Catalan (e.g. simplilfication of -mb-, loss of -u(m), lack of diphthongisation, etc.).

Moreover, you just can't get both Mozarabic and Old Catalan from a recent common ancestor. One has /tʃ/ as the outcome of palatalised /k/ and the other has /ʦ/.

[Travis B.]

Oh, sure, but the earliest attestations are, IIRC, from the 11th century. I don't know how different these were in the 9th century, or if Mozarabic was ever spoken that far north.

NW Catalonia (Pallars, Ribagorça) has plenty of toponyms from a Romance language quite different from Catalan, so Mozarabic was spoken in the Pyrenaic area outside the homeland of Catalan.

What evidence is there that this "Romance language quite different from Catalan" is Mozarabic?

My initial assumption for a "Romance language quite different from Catalan" spoken in what is NW present-day Catalonia would be Aragonese...

[Linguoboy]

My initial assumption for a "Romance language quite different from Catalan" spoken in what is NW present-day Catalonia would be Aragonese...

Except it isn't. At a glance, can you tell which is which?

Té com a origen el dialecte llatí que es va formar a les valls pirinenques aragoneses durant els segles vii i viii sobre un substrat acusadament vascó. Entre els lingüistes, l'aragonès també rep, en el seu període medieval, la denominació de navarroaragonès per la inicial dependència aragonesa del Regne de Navarra.

L'aragonés naixió alredol d'o sieglo VIII como uno d'os muitos dialectos d'o latín desembolicatos en os Pireneus centrals y norte, y este d'a val d'Ebro en os actuals Riocha, sud y este de Navarra y Alto Aragón. Se considera que entre os substratos, o vasco yera muito important.