In my opinion, Gascon is the galloromanic
version of spanish, a latin dialect spoken by basques, some kind of patoise, not
in the pejorative french sense, but meaning it is a pidgin, a mix with practical
communicational purposes between the basque and latin communities in origin
which finally becomes a different linguistic system.
I think the difference between spanish and gascon
is that spanish is the result of basque on vulgar latin, while gascon is the
result on occitan. It makes sense as current gascon speaking areas in Aran
Valley in NW Catalonia, for instance, used to be basque(oid) speaking until
the XIV-XV centuries, so occitan was addopted much more lately that Spanish in
the original spanish speaking areas and thus its influence is made upon
occitan rather to latin itself. Anyway, the occitan filliation of gascon can't
be discussed, just because of that late influence, I mean just because they
addopted occitan so lately they haven't been able to develop a different
language, so Piotr was right when said Gascon was occitan.
About Aquitanian, in my opinion, the relationship
with euskera is the same as latin and romance, it is, just a matter of time, so
there's not such a "substratum" in euskera, but the language itself in a
previous stage.
There are lots of phonetic features as well as
grammar showing obvious basque influence, although some tried to demonstrate it
was not true, I don't know exactly how (was it you who mentioned a scholar
against this theories, Piotr? I'd like to go a little deeper on this subject,
I'm very fond of basque influence on romance discussions), being one of the most
famous the change of latin initial "f" > "h", like in spanish, or the
deletion of intervocalic "n". Grammar features include such an oddity like the
use of the emfatic and "probability" preffix "ba-" in certain
verbal tenses exactly as modern basque does (it's difficult to explain
without getting too long).
By the way, they gascons don't call it Gascon, but
Gascunh (may be "Gascunha" related to "Baskonia" > "Vaskonia" >
"Gasconia"? Just wondering)
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001 8:39
PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Anouilh
>>Remember gascon is quite different to regular
occitan dialects and has
>>many unique phonetic and grammar
features. <<
This has been confusing me ever since Piotr wrote
something that seemed to
equate Occitan and Gascon. I had always thought
Gascon was much more
influenced by Basque, as per the name. But on
reflection, endings like -itz
in trobaritz sure don't look Romance, and
sound more like Basque. What is
the story with these two: both have an
Aquitanian substrate, but Occitan
more romanized, or
what?
Max
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