Old Provençal

Old Occitan (Modern Occitan: occitan ancian, Catalan: occità antic), also called Old Provençal, was the earliest form of the Occitano-Romance languages, as attested in writings dating from the eighth through the fourteenth centuries.^[1][2] Old Occitan generally includes Early and Old Occitan. Middle Occitan is sometimes included in Old Occitan, sometimes in Modern Occitan.^[3] As the term occitanus appeared around the year 1300,^[4] Old Occitan is referred to as "Romance" (Occitan: romans) or "Provençal" (Occitan: proensals) in medieval texts.

History

Among the earliest records of Occitan are the Tomida femina, the Boecis, and the Cançó de Santa Fe. The Catalan language diverged from Old Occitan between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries.^[5] Early texts in the Catalan dialect are the Homilies d'Organyà and the Greuges de Guitard Isarn. Old Occitan, the language used by the troubadours, was the first Romance language with a literary corpus and had an enormous influence on the development of lyric poetry in other European languages. The interpunct was a feature of the language, and survives today in Catalan and Gascon.

Phonology

Old Occitan changed and evolved somewhat during its history, but the basic sound system can be summarised as follows:^[6]

Consonants

Notes:

• Written is believed to have represented the affricate [tʃ]; but, since the spelling often alternates with , it may also have represented [k].
• Word-final may sometimes represent [tʃ], as in gaug "joy" (also spelled gauch).
• Intervocalic could represent either [z] or [dz].
• Written could represent either [dʒ] or [j].

Vowels

Monophthongs

Notes:

• [o] apparently raised to [u] during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; but the spelling was unaffected, hence flor /fluɾ/ "flower".^[7]
• The open-mid vowels [ɛ] and [ɔ] appear as allophones of /e/ and /u/ respectively under certain circumstances in stressed syllables.

Diphthongs and triphthongs

Extracts

• From Bertran de Born's Ab joi mou lo vers e·l comens (ca. 1200, translated by James H. Donalson):

See also

• Occitan conjugation
• Occitan phonology

Further reading

• Nathaniel B. Smith, Thomas Goddard Bergin, An Old Provençal primer, Garland, 1984, ISBN 0-8240-9030-6
• Paden, William D. 1998. An Introduction to Old Occitan. Modern Language Association of America. ISBN 0-87352-293-1.
• Povl Skårup, Morphologie élémentaire de l'ancien occitan, Museum Tusculanum Press, 1997, ISBN 87-7289-428-8

References

External links

• A site with a presentation of Old Occitan