The rise of the different Romance languages after the fall of the western Roman Empire is a long-debated topic of historical linguistics.1 Since the sixteenth century and until the present day, scholars have wondered how it was possible that a highly standardized imperial language such as Latin evolved into so many Romance languages in different parts of Europe . Certainly, Latin had a uniform vocabulary , spelling and grammar , to such an extent that, for example , the Latin grammars written by Donatus (fourth century C.E.) and Priscian (sixth century C.E.) became the models for the grammars of other languages in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period .2 Furthermore, the Latin alphabet is widely used in the writing systems of many languages, and Latin vocabulary has had a considerable influence because of its prestige . This uniform and prestigious language has been called Classical Latin . However, the uniformity of Classical Latin was a mirage, since the vast majority of the population of the Empire spoke different varieties of the Latin language. These different varieties have been grouped together with the name Vulgar Latin or Proto-Romance , which never had a uniform vocabulary , spelling system , or grammar . Once Rome ceased to be an imperial political center at the end of the fifth century C.E., the different varieties of spoken Latin were open to different interpretations . On the one hand, they could have been interpreted as part of a unified language called Latin , as had been the case during the Roman Empire. On the other hand, the interpretation of linguistic difference throughout the western Roman Empire could follow the political remapping of Europe after the Fall of Rome.
Clearly, the latter interpretation prevailed in the course of history, and an ideologically unified Vulgar Latin or Proto-Romance was transformed into politically independent languages with their own distinctive writing systems beginning mainly in the thirteenth century.3 Had the Proto-Romance area been unified politically, these Romance languages may have never been delineated and people would have continued to refer to their respective regional varieties as Latin . Furthermore, had the political history of Medieval Europe been different, we could today be witness to the existence of a different number of Romance languages, with different names, and with a quite different geographical and social distribution . In fact, as Ralph Penny indicates, the creation of a Romance language was intimately connected to a central political entity powerful enough to invest considerable energy and resources into constructing a language that would represent that political power (1999, 51–52).
We must bear in mind that a fundamental aspect of this linguistic construction was the naturalization of the process by which Latin had been transformed into particular Romance languages. It was important to demonstrate and convince the population that Latin had evolved according to the characteristic or unique features of a given territory or society , in such a way that language had essentially followed a natural process that respected the natural divisions of humanity . By naturalizing the transformation of Latin into particular Romance languages, some of the concrete historical circumstances that made possible the construction of different languages must be disregarded or effectively erased. While this process of naturalization occurred principally during the nineteenth century, one can observe instances of “linguistic nationalism ” of social elites already during the thirteenth century, when some of the Romance languages were given a specific written name for the first time.4 Linguistic differentiation was not always easy to establish in the Romance world , especially in those areas where boundaries had been imposed quite abruptly due to political circumstances. One of those areas was the Catalan-Occitan area.
Nowadays, most language historians agree that Catalan is a unique and clearly differentiated Romance language. According to August Rafanell , there may be some disagreements as to the name that Catalan should have received as a language, but its separate identity is rarely questioned. The use of Catalan extends from a few kilometers north of Perpignan in France to a few kilometers south of Alicante in Spain , and from the west of Lleida to the Sardinian city of Alguer . The Corbières plateau in present-day France is considered the geographical feature that separates Catalan to the south from Occitan to the north, with an invisible line of isoglosses found i...