Paul Meyer

“ In the middle ages the idiom was spoken of under various appellations: Romans or lenga romana was that most generally used. The name was employed by the authors of the Leys d'amors, a treatise on grammar, poetry and rhetoric, composed at Toulouse in the 14th century. But while it is capable of being applied and in fact, has been applied, to each of the Romanic languages individually, the term is too general to be retained in a particular case ”

“ Nevertheless, even if we get quit of the illusion which makes us at first sight suppose differences of sound where there are merely different ways of spelling the same sound, we find that between the 14th and 16th centuries the language underwent everywhere, Béarn excepted, great modifications both in vocabulary and grammar. ”

“ Nimes and Montpellier are in Languedoc, and Arles and Tarascon are in Provence; nevertheless the dialect of Nimes resembles that of Arles and Tarascon more than that of Montpellier. Texts.-For the history of the Provengal in all its varieties there are many more materials than for any other Romanic language, not excepting even Italian or French. ”

“ In Béarn it appears to have been completely unknown, the nouns and adjectives having only one form, usually that of the objective case. In Catalan poetry its application is often laid down in the 13th century, but as the charters and documents free from literary influence show no trace of it, its introduction into the poetry of this country may be assumed to be an artificial fact. In the region where it is best observed, i.e. in the centre and north of the Provencal territory, it tends to disappear from ordinary use already in the 13th century. ”

“ In French the only vowel which can stand after the accented syllable is “e feminine, ” otherwise called “ e mute." In Prov. a and e are the most frequent vowels in this position, but i and 0 also occur. In French the first of the two post tonic vowels of a Latin proparoxytone always disappears; in Prov. it tends to be preserved, when followed by one of the consonants n, r, l, d: t e-rm i n u m, te-rmen, h o-m i n e m, 0-men, a-n gel u m, a-ngel, s e-c ale m, se-guel, c r e-s c e r e, crei-sser, t e-p i d u m, te-be. ”

“ As in the other Romanic languages, it has welcomed a large number of German verbs, and has attracted several verbs which etymologically ought to have belonged to the conjugations in -ér and -re: emplir im-plére) , jauzir (gaudére) , cosir (consuére) , erebir (eri-pére) , fugir (fugére) , seguir (*sequére=sequ i) also segre.
Except in the -ar conjugation, the ending of the infinitive does not determine in a regular manner the mode of forming the different tenses. The present participles are divided into two series: those in -an (obj. sing.) ”

“ General Characters of the Language in its Ancient State.-The Provengal language, within the limits above indicated, cannot be said to have any general characters really peculiar to it. Such of its characters as are found in all the varieties of the language are met with also in neighbouring idioms; such as are not found elsewhere are not general characters, that is to say, are manifested onlyin certain varieties of Provencal. In reality “ Provencal language ” does not designate, properly speaking, a linguistic unity ”

“ It is in the verbs that the individuality of the different Romanic idioms manifests itself most distinctly. At a very early date the etymological data were crossed, in various directions and divers manners according to the country, by analogical tendencies. The local varieties became little by little so numerous in the Romanic conjugation that it is not easy to discover any very characteristic features observed over a territory so vast as that of which the limits have been indicated at the commencement of this article. ”

“ It is perha s in conjugation that the greatest changes from the older form ofpthe language are seen. Analogy, basing itself upon one or another much used form, has acted with immense force, tending to make general in the whole conjugation, without any regard to the original classes to which the various verbs belonged, certain terminations, chiefly those which were accented, and thus appeared to the popular instinct to have more significance. ”

“ The language has developed locally tendencies which certainly already existed during the flourishing period, although the ancient orthography did not recognize them. Of the vowels, a tonic is generally preserved; an in an open syllable becomes 6 (open) in part of the departments of Aveyron, Lot, Dordogne, Correze, Cantal and south of Haute Loire: gm (g ran u m) , mo (m a n u m) , po (p a n e m) . This nasalized a must have had a particular sound already in O. Pr., for it is qualified in the Donatz Praensals (ed. Stengel, p. 49) as a estreit (= close or narrow a) . ”

“ In this the Pr. distinguishes itself very clearly from the French, in which all present participles have -ant. There is also 'in Pr. a participial form or verbal adjective which is not met with in any other Romanic language, except Rumanian, where, moreover, it is employed in a different sense; this is a form in -do-r, -dai-ra, which supposes a Latin type - t 6 r i u s, or - t fi r i u s; the sense is that of a future participle, active for the intransitive verbs, passive for the transitive: endevenido-r, -dai-ra, “ that is to happen ”

“ By this feature, the northern limits of which are not yet well determined, the Provencal attaches itself to the Romanic of the southern countries. N final, or standing in Latin between two vowels of which the second is to be dropped, disappears in the whole central part of the Pr. domain: gran gra, ben be, en e, 'van ve, fin fi, un u (g ra n u m, be n e, in, v e n i t, fi n e m, u n-u m) . The forms with n belong to the eastern part (left of the Rhone) , the western part (Gascony, but not Béarn) , and the region of the Pyrenees. ”

“ Others, which appear only within a more limited area, are perhaps more curious on account of their strangeness. It will suffice to mention a few which belong to the district bounded on the west and south by the Atlantic, the Basque provinces and the Pyrenees, and which extends northward and eastward towards the Garonne and its affluents, as far as the Gironde. (This includes Béarn, Bigorre and Gasconyr) Here the sound v no longer exists, being replaced generally by b; between two vowels, in Gascony, by u with the sound of English w. ”

“ Still, in a large number of nouns the original difference of accentuation between the nominative singular and the other cases has been maintained, whence there result two very distinct forms for the subjunctive and objective cases. ”

“ In addition to its being in some sort consecrated by the use made of it by the Italians, who were the first after the Renaissance to study the Works of the troubadours, it must not be forgotten that, just as the Roman provincial, in which the name originated, extended across the south of Gaul from the Alps to Toulouse and the Pyrenees, so still in the middle ages provincial, provincial er, were understood in a very wide sense to designate not only Provence strictly so called, i.e. ”

“ Azais, Dictionnaire des idiomes romans du midi de la France (3 vols. 8vo, Montpellier,1877) , taking for its basis the dialect of Béziers; Chabrand and De Rochas d'Aiglun, Patois des Alpes Cotliennes el en parliculier du Queyras (Grenoble and Paris, 1877) ; Couzinié, Diclionnaire de la langue romane-cast raise (Castres, 1850) ; Garcin, Nouveau dictionnaire provengal-français (2 vols., Draguignan, 1841) ; Honnorat, Dictionnaire provençal-française (2 vols. 4to, Digne, 1846–1847) , De Sauvages, Dictionnaire languedocien-français (new ed., 2 vols., Alais, 1820) ”