The Occitano-Romance or Gallo-Narbonnese, or rarely East Iberian, is a branch of the Romance language group that encompasses the Catalan/Valencian, Occitan languages and Aragonese spoken in parts of southern France and northeastern Spain.
Extent
The group covers the languages of the southern part of France, eastern Spain, together with Andorra, Monaco, parts of Italy, 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/Valencian should be considered Gallo-Romance languages. Other linguists concur as regarding Occitan but consider Catalan and Aragonese 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 so 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, and for a long time, others such as Swiss linguist Wilhelm Meyer-Lübke have supported the kinship of Occitan and Catalan. Moreover, the fact that Aragonese hasn't been studied as much as both Catalan and Occitan, many people label it as a Spanish dialect. From the 8th century to the 13th century, there was no clear linguistic distinction between Occitania and Catalonia. For instance, the Provençaltroubadour, 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'.
Internal variation
Most linguists separate Catalan and Occitan, but both languages have been treated as one in studies by Occitan linguists attempting to classify the dialects of Occitan in supradialectal groups, such is the case of Pierre Bec and, more recently, of Domergue Sumien. Both join together in an Aquitano-Pyrenean or Pre-Iberian group including Catalan, Gascon and a part of Languedocian, leaving the rest of Occitan in one or two groups (Bec: Arverno-Mediterranean, Central Occitan
Linguistic variation
Similarities between Catalan, Occitan and Aragonese
Both Varieties of Catalan and Occitan have apocope on terminal latin vowels -Ĕ, -Ŭ :
A large part of the lexicon is shared, and in general written words in Catalan and Occitan are mutually intelligible. Similar to the differences in lexicon between Portuguese and Castilian. There are also notable cognates between Catalan, Valencian, Occitan and Aragonese.
Differences between Catalan and Occitan
Most of the differences of the vowel system stem from neutralizations that take place on unstressed syllables. In both languages a stressed syllable has a great number of possible different vowels, while phonologically different vowels end up being articulated in the same way in an unstressed syllable. Although this neutralization is common to both languages, the details of the differ markedly. In Occitan the form of neutralization depends on whether a vowel is pretonic or postonic. For example articulates as in pretonic position and as in postonic position, and only as in stressed position. In contrast neutralization in Catalan is the same regardless of the position of the unstressed syllable. Many of these changes happened in the 14th or late 13th century. Slightly older are the palatalizations present in Occitan before a palatal or velar consonant:
Occitan
Catalan
English
vielha
vella
Old
mièg
mig
Middle/Half
ieu/jo
jo
I
seguir
seguir
To follow
fuèlha
fulla
Leaf
Lexical comparison
Variations in the spellings and pronunciations of numbers in several Occitano-Romance dialects: The numbers 1 and 2 have both feminine and masculine forms agreeing with the object they modify.
