1. The language here studied is, in the main, that used by the poets of
Southern France during the 12th and 13th centuries. The few works that
we have earlier than the 12th century must, of course, be utilized for
such information as they afford concerning the process of linguistic
change; and lacking words or forms must occasionally be sought in
writings later than the 13th. Prose literature, moreover, should not
be neglected, as it greatly enlarges our vocabulary and throws much
light on local divergences. The modern dialects need be cited only to
determine the geographical distribution of variations.
2. The extent of the Provençal territory is sufficiently indicated
by the map on p. viii. The upper black line separates Provençal
on the northwest and north from French, on the northeast from
Franco-Provençal; on the east are the Gallo-Italic dialects. The lower
black line divides Provençal on the southwest from Basque, on the south
from Spanish, on the southeast from Catalan. The boundary line between
French and Provençal must be determined somewhat arbitrarily, as there
is no distinct natural division; the several linguistic characteristics
of each idiom do not end at the same point, and thus one language
gradually shades into the other. The line shown on the map is based on
the development of free accented Latin a, which remains a in Provençal,
but is changed to e in French. The limits of other phonetic phenomena
may be found in Suchier’s maps at the back of Vol. I of Gröber’s
_Grundriss_. There may be seen also a large map showing the place of
Provençal among the Romance languages. Consult, furthermore, P. Meyer
in _Romania_, XXIV, 529.
3. The Spanish and Gallo-Italic frontiers are more clearly defined,
and Basque is entirely distinct. Franco-Provençal and Catalan, on
the other hand, are closely related to Provençal and not always easy
to divide from it. Catalan, in fact, is often classed as a Provençal
dialect; but it is sufficiently different to be studied separately.[2]
Franco-Provençal, rated by some philologists as an independent
language, has certain characteristics of Provençal and certain features
of French, but more of the latter; in some respects it is at variance
with both. The Gascon, or southwest, dialects of Provençal differ in
many ways from any of the others and present not a few similarities to
Spanish[3]; they will, however, be included in our study.
4. The Provençal domain embraces, then, the following old provinces:
Provence, Languedoc, Foix, part of Béarn, Gascony, Guyenne, Limousin,
most of Marche, Auvergne, the southwestern half of Lyonnais and the
southern half of Dauphiné. The native speech in this region varies
considerably from place to place, and the local dialects are, for
convenience, roughly grouped under the names of the provinces; it
should be remembered, however, that the political and the linguistic
boundaries rarely coincide. For some of the principal dialect
differences, see §§ 8 and 10-13.
5. The language of the poets was sometimes called _lemosí_; and, in
fact, the foundation of their literary idiom is the speech of the
province of Limousin and the adjacent territory on the north, west, and
southwest.[4] The supremacy of this dialect group is apparently due
to the fact that it was generally used for composition earlier than
any of the others: popular song, in all probability, had its home in
the borderland of Marche[5]; religious literature in the vulgar tongue
developed in the monasteries of this region; the artistic lyric was
cultivated, we know, at the court of Ventadour, and it must have found
favor at others. Furthermore, many of the leading troubadours belonged
by birth or residence to the Limousin district.
6. The troubadours’ verses, as we have them, seldom represent any one
dialect in its purity. The poet himself was doubtless influenced both
by literary tradition and by his particular local usage, as well as by
considerations of rhyme and metre. Moreover, his work, before reaching
us, passed through the hands of various intermediaries, who left upon
it traces of their own pronunciation. It should be said, also, that
the Limousin was not a single dialect, but a group of more or less
divergent types of speech. For these reasons we must not expect to find
in Provençal a uniform linguistic standard.
7. Neither was there a generally accepted system of orthography. When
the vulgar tongue was first written, the Roman letters were used with
approximately the same values that they had in Latin, as it was then
pronounced. As the Provençal sounds changed, there was a conflict
between the spellings first established and new notations based on
contemporary speech. Furthermore, many Provençal vowels and consonants
had no equivalents in Latin; for these we find a great variety of
representations. The signs are very often ambiguous: for instance, _c_
before _e_ or _i_ (as in _cen_, _cinc_) generally stands in the first
texts for ts, in the more recent ones for s, the pronunciation having
changed; _z_ between vowels in early times usually means dz (_plazer_),
but later z (_roza_); _i_ between vowels (_maiór_) indicates either y
or dž (English _j_), according to the dialect; a _g_ may signify “hard”
g (_gerra_), dž (“soft” _g_: _ges_), or tš (English _ch_: _mieg_). It
is probable that for a couple of centuries diphthongs were oftenest
written as simple vowels.
8. Some features of the mediæval pronunciation are still obscure. The
close ọ was transformed, either during or soon after the literary
epoch, into ụ (the sound of French _ou_); hence, when we meet in a
late text such a word as _flor_, we cannot be certain whether it is
to be sounded flọr or flụr. We do not know at what time Latin ū in
southern France took the sound ü (French _u_): some suppose that it
was during or shortly before the literary period; if this be true,
the letter _u_ (as in _tu_, _mur_) may represent in some texts ụ,
in others ü. In diphthongs and triphthongs whose first element is
written _u_ (_cuer_, _fuolha_, _nueu_, _buou_), this letter came to
be pronounced in most of the dialects like French _u_ in _huit_,
while in others it retained the sound of French _ou_ in _oui_; we
cannot tell exactly when or where, in ancient times, this development
occurred. In the diphthongs ue, uo (_luec_, _fuoc_), opinions disagree
as to which vowel originally bore the stress; subsequent changes
seem to indicate that in the 12th and 13th centuries the practice
varied in the different dialects. Old Provençal must have had in some
words a peculiar type of r, which was sufficiently palatal in its
articulation to call for an i-glide before it (_esclairar_); we do
not know precisely how it was formed; in most regions it probably was
assimilated to the more usual r as early as the 12th century. The š and
ž (palatal s and z) apparently ranged, in the several dialects, between
the sounds of French _ch_ and _j_ on the one hand, and those of German
_ch_ (in _ich_) and _j_ (in _ja_) on the other; the former types were
largely assimilated, doubtless by the 13th century, to s and z (_pois_,
_maisó_), the latter were not (_poih_, _maió_).
9. The following table comprises the Old Provençal sounds with their
usual spellings, the latter being arranged, as nearly as may be, in
the order of their frequency. Diphthongs and triphthongs are included
in the vowel list, compound consonants in the consonant table. For
an explanation of the phonetic symbols, see p. vii. The variant
pronunciations are discussed in § 8.