Els parlars del Priorat. Estudi geolingüístic

Identifier:  TDX:2852

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX2852

Authors:  Llamas Puig, Emili

Abstract:
One of the reasons why it is interesting to study the speeches of El Priorat is the fact that the region is situated in an intersection of linguistic characteristics which gives these speeches a heterogeneous character with a personality of its own different from the ones of the neighbouring regions (Ribera d’Ebre, Baix Camp and Garrigues). In this linguistic context, the question which was asked is whether it is possible to place El Priorat in one of the two big blocks of the Catalan language or whether the region has to be considered a transition zone between the two blocks, occidental and oriental. This particularity makes the study of these speeches even more attractive. The objective of this thesis is to make a detailed and exhaustive linguistic description of the speeches of the region of El Priorat and to map its results. This way, the work is double: on the one hand, it is a dialectological study which takes the colloquial register of the geographic variety of the Catalan of El Priorat as a basis; on the other hand, it is a work of geolinguistics, in the sense that it allows the elaboration of the Atles lingüístic del Priorat (ALPri), which includes a total of 966 colour maps. On the basis of the linguistic description made in this research, it can be concluded that the speeches of El Priorat have characteristics of both the occidental and the oriental blocks of the Catalan language; they also share linguistic characteristics with the sub-dialects of Tarragona, Lleida and Tortosa. Therefore, the speeches of El Priorat have to be considered speeches of transition between the occidental and the oriental. This study also shows that we cannot establish a clear border between the two dialectal blocks, and it allows us to observe that there are a great number of native forms, most of them coinciding with the occidental block, which have been ousted by variations which are considered more prestigious, coming from the oriental block.