Etudes de linguistique gallo-romane ed. by Mario Barra-Jover et al. (review)

Scholars in a hurry would be well advised to read the brilliant, allinclusive introduction to Etudes de linguistique gallo-romane (5-17, see <www.puv-editions.fr/media/ouvr_pdf/534_Intro_Gallo_rom.pdf>). Signed by all five co-editors, the introduction lays out in just 13 pages the basic concept and conceit of the volume: “pos[er] … les bases d’une linguistique complète des langues romanes.”

Etudes de linguistique gallo-romane is organized, perhaps not unexpectedly, into four parts: (i) concepts, démarches et problèmes méthodologiques; (ii) phonologie; (iii) morphosyntaxe; and (iv) étymologie, lexique, sémantique. Papers include mention of earlier language states (Old French as well as Old Occitan), the interplay between Italian and Franco-Provençal, and French-speaking Canada, but no mention of Catalan (pace Bec’s occitano-roman). While twelve of the 26 authors, including all five co-editors, handle Occitan in one or more of its aspects, only papers dealing wholly or significantly with Occitan are listed here:

Thomas T. Field, “Variation et diachronie: le témoignage du corpus électronique gascon” (21-32); Gabriele Giannini, “Évolution diachronique de l’occitan et textes littéraires médiévaux: problèmes et méthodes pour une analyse linguistique fiable” (33-43); Walter Meliga, “L’Étude des graphies des anciens textes littéraires gallo-romans” (45-54); Jean Sibille, “Parentés génétiques, affinités aréales et évolutions spécifiques dans les parlers occitans des vallées d’Oulx et du Haut-Cluson (Italie)”, (67-83); Daniela Müller and Sidney Martín, “A Preliminary Acoustic Study of the Occitan Vowel System” (149-59); and Patrick Sauzet and Guylaine Brun-Trigaud, “Structure syllabique et évolutions phonologiques en occitan” (161-181).

Many of the 20 chapters are available in full online through the University of Nice. The volume is meant, not as a general introduction to the admittedly vast field of Gallo-Romance linguistics, but rather as a direct immersion into the kind of detailed research that scholars are conducting nowadays, couched in terms of current approaches to dialectology, sociolinguistics, and theoretical linguistics—yet neglecting neither older studies of this corner of Romania nor future avenues of research. If additional volumes were to be planned, they might well explore the current linguistic analysis of other varieties of Romance or, alternatively, intersections of Gallo-Romance with the remainder of Romania.