Glottolog None | ||
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Geographic
distribution France, Spain, Andorra, Monaco, parts of Italy Linguistic classification Indo-European
Italic
Romance
Western Romance
Gallo-Romance
Occitano-Romance Subdivisions Occitan
Navarro-Aragonese (extinct)
Catalan
Gascon (separate distinction?)
Provençal (separate distinction?) | ||
The Occitano-Romance or Gallo-Narbonnese (Catalan: llengües occitanoromàniques, Occitan: lengas occitanoromanicas) is a branch of the Romance language group that encompasses the Occitan language, the Catalan language, and the now extinct Navarro-Aragonese (original form of Aragonese).
Contents
Extent
The group covers the languages of the southern part of France (Occitania including Northern Catalonia), and, in Spain, Catalonia, Valencian Community, Balearic Islands, La Franja, Carche), 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
According to some linguists both Occitan and Catalan should be considered Gallo-Romance languages. Other linguists concur as regarding Occitan but consider Catalan 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 thus 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, while from a long time ago others such as Wilhelm Meyer-Lubke (Das Katalanische, Heidelberg, 1925) have supported the kinship of Occitan and Catalan.
During the Middle Ages, for five centuries (8th to 13th) of political and social convergence of these territories, there was no clear distinction or separation between Occitan and Catalan. 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." In Marseille, a typical Provençal song is called 'Catalan song'. (M. Milà i Fontanals, De los Trobadores en España, p. 487)
Internal variation
Even though most linguists do separate Catalan and Occitan, both languages have been treated as one in studies by Occitan linguists attempting to classify the dialects of Occitan in supradialectal groups. This is the case of Pierre Bec and, more recently, of Domergue Sumien. Both join together in an Aquitano-Pyrenean or Preiberian group 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).