Manual of Catalan Linguistics

Joan A. Argenter, Jens Lüdtke

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9783110448313
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Historical & Comparative Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This manual is intended to fill a gap in the area of Romance studies. There is no introduction available so far that broadly covers the field of Catalan linguistics, neither in Catalan nor in any other language. The work deals with the language spoken in Catalonia and Andorra, the Balearic Islands, the region of Valencia, Northern Catalonia and the town of l'Alguer in Sardinia. Besides introducing the ideologies of language and nation and the history of Catalan linguistics, the manual is divided into separate parts embracing the description – grammar, lexicon, variation and varieties – and the history of the language since the early medieval period to the present day. It also covers its current social and political situation in the new local and global contexts. The main emphasis is placed on modern Catalan.

The manual is designed as a companion for students of Catalan, while also introducing specialists of other languages into this field, in particular scholars of Romance languages.

1 Languages, Cultures, Nations: A History of Europe

Joan F. Mira

Institut d'Estudis Catalans, Philosophy and Social Sciences, Carme 47, 08001, Barcelona, Spain

Abstract

In modern and contemporary history, languages in Europe cannot be dissociated from peoples or nations, and nations and peoples cannot be easily dissociated from languages. This association has certain aspects and effects that are currently affecting the sociolinguistic reality, ideological debates as well as social and political life in the Catalan Countries. In modern times, many peoples or societies have become national communities – and ultimately states – primarily because of their survival as linguistic communities and of the consciousness of unity and distinction gained therefrom. Establishing a standard or an accepted codification of the language is usually a strategic objective in affirming a society’s national culture and, because of its very existence and projection, it may also be a decisive factor in the formation of that society. In the Catalan-language territories throughout the Middle Ages, the language community also exhibited a number of shared cultural traits, but it would be a mistake to identify the particular scope of a language and the framework of a culture in overly general terms; the issue is more complex than it seems. However, sharing a basic written-language model means sharing a body of literature and the same pantheon of renowned writers. Many other things go hand in hand with a national literature, including a sense of assumed common identity among the readers and speakers of that language, of belonging to the same mental space and of shared references to the same “moral territory”.

Keywords: nationality, national ideology, national identity, national language, name of the language, people, spirit, language community, state, nation, literature, literary language, Castilian,

1 A people without a language of its own

“A people without a language of its own is only half a nation. A nation should guard its language more than its territories – ‘tis a surer barrier, a more important frontier than fortress or river” (Davis 1914, 173).¹ These are the words of an Irish patriot, cited by Carl D. Buck in a classic article on language and the sense of nationality, published in 1916 in the American Political Science Review (1916, 48). Note the date and place: 1916, Ireland, a country in which a true war of independence was unable to restore life – active social life – to a language that was practically extinct. In the same article, Buck (1916, 49) goes on to cite the scholar Mahaffy, who had little sympathy with the cause, who stated: “It seems to be a profound mistake that distinct nationality can only be sustained by a distinct language”. Curiously, a few years later, the president of the Republic of Ireland, Éamon de Valera, said that if he had had to choose between the language and independence, he would have gone for the language. It is not hard to guess why. In any event, the patriot’s and the scholar’s statements seem to express, without further qualification, two sides of an age-old debate. Should references to more authoritative figures from bygone eras be required, I would be remiss not to mention, on the one hand, the claims of an English prelate at the Council of Constance in 1414, at the time of the Great Schism of Western Christianity, a time of confusion and of pre-national affirmations, demanding their own separate representation by invoking “diversitatem linguarum, quæ maximam & verissimam probant nationem, & ipsius essentiam, iure divino pariter & humano” (Mansi ²1784; 1065); “by difference of language, – which is the chief and surest proof of being a nation, and its very essence, either by divine or human law” (Crowder 1977, 120). It would be difficult to find a more robust declaration on the language-nation identification than that made by these conciliar fathers. On the other hand, at the opposite extreme we find the statement from Antoine Meillet, one of the fathers of sociolinguistics: “Une nation n’est pas liée à tel ou tel soutien matériel, et pas même à la langue. Appartenir à une nation est affaire de sentiment et de volonté”. As a linguist, Meillet was influenced by Ferdinand de Saussure, but in these statements the teachings of Ernest Renan are clear to see (i.e. the nation as a “plébiscite quotidien” or ‘daily plebiscite’, an uncertain and fraudulent concept), as is Meillet’s faithful adherence to French national ideology, which, at that moment in history – these statements were published in 1918 – went to great pains to demonstrate that Alsace and Lorraine were part of France because of ‘feeling and will’, ignoring the past or present diversitas linguarum as a potential barrier to national unity.

This chapter is not concerned with discovering the true foundation of these concepts or determining whether the 15th-century bishops, early 20th-century linguists or the Irish patriots were right. This is because, among other reasons, on this issue of language and national identity – in the modern and contemporary history of Europe at least – all participants in the debate have tended to act as committed patriots rather than as methodical, dispassionate observers. When I say “all participants”, I mean politicians and governments, practical and theoretical nationalists, military personnel, teachers and lecturers, journalists and the general public. In other words, in reality it is not a question of knowing whether a language, in and of itself, is or is not a defining trait of national identity, but of knowing whether there is some substantial link between this criterion and certain others when it comes to framing the space of a national culture and, ultimately, the space of identities considered national. This is the question that needs to be answered, and it is a question that has certain aspects and effects that are currently having a very obvious impact on the sociolinguistic reality, the ideological debates and civilian and political life in the Catalan-language territories. Here, as in so many other spaces and countries in Europe, the current language conditions are the outcome of a long history – which can often be traced back to the Middle Ages – of certain ideologies that are not always explicit, and of political power games and border changes or continuities.

In the case of the Catalan language, the establishment and spread of the language was clearly a process that went hand in hand with the territorial expansion of the monarchs of the House of Barcelona, the kings of Aragon, which is synonymous with the protracted process (in parallel with the other Hispanic kingdoms) that we often somewhat inaccurately refer to as the “Reconquest”. In the case of Catalonia, unlike that of Portugal or Castile, this was not a straightforward expansion of existing kingdoms, but instead the creation of new, politically autonomous spaces: the short-lived Kingdom of Majorca, the duration of which was ephemeral, and above all, the Kingdom of Valencia, a political structure that remained unchanged until the 18th century. Thus, when the population of the new kingdom (the new Christian population, of course, which was largely descended from immigrants from Catalonia and who gradually became the majority, and not the pre-existing Muslim Arabic-speaking population, who were finally expelled in 1609) began using a name for the language they spoke, they chose the name of the political territory, that is to say, the “Valencian language”. Though the Catalan resettlers obviously brought the language they spoke in their country of origin with them, at the time – from the 13th century to the first half of the 14th century – the language spoken by these immigrants still did not have its own name. They spoke forms of Old Catalan known as pla or romanç, and with this new language yet to be called “Catalan”, these immigrants spread throughout the new kingdom. The name of the new kingdom would ultimately provide the name for its inhabitants and the language they spoke: “Valencian” was, therefore, the name for the language of the Valencians. Initially, the name was not presented in opposition to the original “Catalan”, but rather to designate the identity of a new political space, the Kingdom of Valencia, which was institutionally (laws, parliament, currency, etc.) different to Catalonia. In this case, these foundations historically conditioned, and still condition, certain phenomena of association between the politico-institutional territory, the demonym, the language and the name of the language, which continue to form the basis, even now, of much confusion, confrontation and conflict in Valencia. In the case of the Catalan language in the Valencian Country, this very specific “question of names” is not primarily a question of Romance philology or of dialectology, or even a sociolinguistic issue; it is an example or manifestation of a deep-rooted phenomenon, of an explicit or implicit ideology, that is present throughout Europe.

2 Is “speaking” “being”?

The issue that concerns us here, then, is not simply an academic debate about language or about “this” language, but about something else instead. This is because, in the history of Europe, “recognising” the distinct and separate reality of a language – especially if it is a language “of culture” – is actually also a matter of recognising, in a more or less explicit way, that there is a people, country or nation, or set of countries, for whom this language serves as the national language. It is a relationship in which both high-ranking politicians and ordinary people believe, be they naïve or ideologists. They believe in it because, explicitly or otherwise, they believe that speaking is being. They may believe this in a tolerant, polite way, or in a categorical way such as that seen in the official, oral and written instructions circulated throughout the Catalan Countries in the 1940s and 1950s, which, depending on how you look at it, still seem to be circulating: “Si eres español, ¡habla español!” An instruction or demand implying that whoever is must speak, and whoever does not speak is not; or, at least, is not in a way that is as genuine and complete as those who speak. Today still, as always, in their hearts – a law unto itself: “le cœur a ses raisons...” – most Spaniards do not believe that the Catalans, who do not speak like the others, are really Spaniards like the others. The Romantic poet Alfred de Musset expressed this thought very succinctly, stating that “celui-là seul est vraiment français du cœur à l’âme et de la tête aux pieds qui sait, parle et lit la langue française” (apud Monzie 1925, 336–337).

The nation-language ideology is unmistakeable in the political thought of the French Revolution, and one of its most distinguished intellectual heroes, Abbé Henri Grégoire, formally proposed the “annihilation” not only of patois but also of the languages of minority communities, such as Yiddish or Creole, as a way of “fondre tous les citoyens dans la masse nationale” and of “créer un peuple”. At the National Convention in 1794, Abbé Grégoire presented the famous Rapport sur la nécessité et les moyens d’anéantir les patois et d’universaliser l’usage de la langue française, an explicit proposal to “uniformiser le langage d’une grande nation”, a glorious undertaking that no other people had yet fully executed, but which “est digne du peuple français, [... ] qui doit être jaloux de consacrer au plus tôt, dans une République une et indivisible, l’usage unique et invariable de la langue de la liberté” (Grégoire 1975, 302). However, there was obviously no liberté in it at all. Thus, in the two centuries following the Revolution, the dogma of the Trinity, “La France, les Français, le français”, three concepts and a single substance, would be the immutable doctrine of faith (albeit a secular faith). In 1925, the Minister of Education Anatole de Monzie, in a circular prohibiting the teaching of any regional language, presented this lovely idea: “L’École laïque, pas plus que l’Église concordataire, ne saurait arbitrer des parlers concurrents d’une langue française dont le culte jaloux n’aura jamais assez d’autels” (Monzie 1925, 210). A secular ideal, with all the cults and altars to an implacable, jealous divinity that does not tolerate rivals. And this is how things have continued in the early 21st century in gentle France, the birthplace of human rights and freedoms. It is not at all odd, therefore, for any French government to have little sympathy for the formal presence of Catalan, either in its own territory or in the institutions of the European Union; who knows whether an official stateless language (and, according to them, a nationless language, too) might trigger uncomfortable comparisons with the Bretons and the Alsatians, for example? It is worth mentioning in passing that it was in this 1925 ministerial circular that the words of Musset were cited as an authoritative argument in support of the idea that the language and the essence of the French are one and the same thing; a metaphysical and poetic idea that, if expressed by a French (or Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, Swedish or Portuguese) minister, is unquestionable and beautiful, but if it is expressed by a Catalan intellectual or politician, triggers accusations of essentialist nationalism or, indeed, of something much worse. Ideas, on this issue in particular, are usually valued positively or negatively depending on which ideological perspective they are seen and considered from. “La sangre de mi espíritu es mi lengua / y mi patria es allí donde resuene / soberano su verbo, que no amengua / su voz por mucho que ambos mundos llene. / Ya Séneca la preludió aun no nacida, / y en su austero latín ella se encierra.” These well-known verses by Miguel de Unamuno, for example, distil – in a few sentences – an entire ideology comprising images, concepts and explicit references connected with language: blood, spirit, homeland, the extent of a powerful space and distinguished antiquity that dates back to Latin... from a Basque author who defines himself as profoundly Spanish. It would be impossible to distil so much in fewer words. And patriotism, however one wishes to define it, including political patriotism, can be perfectly reduced to or distilled in language: “Nâo tenho sentimento nenhum político ou social” (‘I don’t have any political or social feeling’), said Pessoa. “Tenho, porém, num sentido, um alto sentimento patriótico. Minha pátria é a língua portuguesa” (Pessoa/Soares 2010, vol. 1, 326). (‘I do however have a strong patriotic feeling. My homeland is the Portuguese language’). In any event, it is obvious that if the beliefs and the concepts of the French ideologists, of the Spanish philosopher and of the great Portuguese writer were indeed applied universally, the blurring of limits, boundaries, languages, homelands or nations would be indescribable.

But concepts and metaphors like those we have just mentioned are not just products of Romantic or the most extreme political nationalism. They were already circulating during the Enlightenment, and are a very ancient and reputed resource: ‘Our human language is created, as it were, more for the heart than for reason’, said Herder (1989, 352: “ja gewissermaße [sic] ist unsre menschliche Sprache mehr für das Herz, als für die Vernunft geschaffen”). And it is a well-known fact that a people has, normally exclusively, a more or less pure and powerful, more or less great or indestructible spirit. This is obviously a phenomenon that is difficult to subject to empirical verification, but this does not usually take away any of its weight or efficacy. Faith in the existence of such a spirit (Volksgeist as the German Enlightened and Romantics call it, a word that is now widely used) serves as part of the basis of the European and non-European national and nationalist ideologies of the last one-and-a-half to two centuries. From here, it is only a small step to the belief that, for each people ‘their language is their spirit, and their spirit is their language’, as Wilhelm von Humboldt wrote (“ihre Sprache ist ihr Geist und ihr Geist ihre Sprache”, 1963, 414–415; written between 1830 and 1835). Let’s leave aside the habitual stereotypes, among which we cannot fail to find the elegant precision of French, the musicality of Italian or the energy of Spanish. Let’s also leave aside the idea that different languages can be better or worse suited to certain intellectual or aesthetic endeavours. There is the central idea, an explicit, powerful metaphor that peoples have a soul or spirit, and language is the organ that exposes and expresses it. When considered calmly and rationally, the things we come to believe are very surprising. The reality is that those supposed virtues of language as a manifestation of a collective spirit are precisely those that serve to oppose (that is to say, to distinguish) one “spirit” from another, one people from another. Could it be that the French spirit is logical and precise, and that the French therefore speak in a logical and precise language? And is it possible that the Catalans are a relatively straightforward people, who get down to work... and that their language is therefore efficient, with short words, allowing them to say things in far fewer syllables than in Castilian? Saint Vicent Ferrer, a Valencian preacher who was very popular throughout Western Europe, explained this in the early 15th century: “Los castellans són molt parlers: Ferran Ferrandeç de los Arcos de los Mayores...” (‘Castilians are very talkative: Ferran Ferrandeç de los Arcos de los Mayores...’). And, in the 18th century, our language apologists busied themselves with giving demonstrations along similar lines. As did some erudite, Enlightenment or Romantic Valencian “apologists”, for whom the “gentleness” and “sweetness” of Valencian was evident, as opposed to the roughness and coarseness of Catalan. What matters above all is that the generalised belief in the correlation between the language of a people or country and its hypothetical spirit – regardless of the dubious objectiveness or grounds on which it could eventually be based – usually has a real effectiveness for collective consciousness, which is the function of contr...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Manuals of Romance Linguistics
• Acknowledgements
• 0 Introduction
• 1 Languages, Cultures, Nations: A History of Europe
• 2 History of Catalan Linguistics
• Language Description
• 5 Morphosyntax
• 7 Lexicon
• 8 Variation and Varieties
• Language History
• 14 Towards Language Institutionalization
• Catalan Today
• List of Contributors
• Index