La Langue d'oc telle qu'elle se parle. Atlas linguistique de la Provence by Jean-Claude Bouvier et Claude Martel (review)

This fourth volume on the speech varieties of Provence completes publication of the lexical material gathered for the Atlas linguistique et ethnographique de la Provence (ALP). The volume is authored by Jean-Claude Bouvier and Claude Martel (authors and fieldworkers for the three previous volumes); cartography is by Guylaine Brun-Trigaud, and the volume is illustrated with images provided by the cultural association Les Alpes de Lumière.

The data presented in this volume cover the same geographical area as the first three volumes, and for the most part were elicited during the same fieldwork interviews, conducted for 170 survey points between 1960 and 1990 using the technique of bilingual elicitation. For each survey point, the atlas records the local terms for over 300 questionnaire items, grouped into the following lexical areas: "la maison," "les meubles," "la cuisine et le ménage," "le linge," "les vêtements," "la famille et l'enfance," "le corps humain, la maladie et la mort," and "la religion." The original ALP material has been supplemented by additional fieldwork conducted in 2015(iii); this fieldwork is presumably the source of data for a number of lexical items presented in list rather than map format, without an ALP question number. Information on the fieldworkers, the informants and the dates of fieldwork is not provided in the atlas volume, but is to be made available online via the Thesoc portal (iv).

While aiming for continuity between this volume and its predecessors, the authors have made a number of welcome innovations in presentation, designed to facilitate access to the data. The A4 softcover is more manoeuvrable than the traditional atlas format, while the provision of an alphabetical index of questionnaire items, in addition to the usual list by order of map number, allows more efficient consultation. The data are transcribed according to the International Phonetic Alphabet (as opposed to the Rousselot-Gilliéron alphabet used for the first three ALP volumes and for other atlases covering the Occitan-speaking area), a choice which aligns this atlas with current practice in descriptive linguistics, and makes it readily accessible to a wider audience. Indeed, the chart listing the IPA symbols and their Rousselot-Gilliéron equivalents (viii) serves as a useful aide-mémoire for those familiar with one alphabet who wish to consult materials written in the other.

The maps, too, have been designed for ease of consultation and thus minimise the potential for reading errors such as overlooking information. Contrasts in colour and font are judiciously used to give greatest prominence to the linguistic data while facilitating localisation of individual survey points and reference to geographical features. No isoglosses are drawn in, leaving readers free to make their own analysis; however, where a given form occurs across many survey points, without variation, a system of symbols and defaults is used to create a sharper visual impression of the distribution than would be gained by simply reproducing the transcription at each point (see, e.g., items 1141 huile and 1142 poivre, 97). Symbols are also used to flag survey points for which additional lexical information (e.g., concurrent forms, gender, semantic specialisation) is listed in a corner of the map.

In addition to the maps showing linguistic forms, the atlas includes twelve schematic maps illustrating the geographical distribution of different etyma, expressions, or derivational strategies for a single concept (e.g., reflexes of hospitale(m), mansione(m), casa(m) for 'house, home,' 4; deverbal suffixes used to form 'drawer' from tira, 62), or the distribution of different lexical meanings found for reflexes of a single etymon (e.g., 'vault' and 'cellar' for croto, 10). A map of the physical geography of the area is also given (vi), allowing comparison of linguistic distributions with geographical features potentially relevant to...