The puzzle of Romance languages (I): Sardinian

The origin of the so-called 'Romance languages' (French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Galician, etc.) can be summarized in a short sentence that seems obvious and quite simple to understand:

..............................Romance languages are those that derive from Latin.

The truth is, however, that underneath this simple statement lies one of the most elusive enigmas in historical linguistics. The problem is the word 'Latin'. What is the exact meaning of this word? Are we talking about the written standard used by Cicero, Vergil and other classical authors, which was kept as a lingua franca in the western world for centuries? Or was there some kind of popular form of 'Latin' spoken by the majority of the population, often referred to as 'Vulgar Latin', from which the Romance languages evolved? If so, was this 'Vulgar Latin' a more or less unified language, or were there different regional versions spoken all over the Empire? How different were these variants? We must also add to this the role of other languages in this process, as substrata, adstrata or superstrata. On the whole, the nature and characteristics of' 'Vulgar Latin' is far from clear, and the more I read about the subject of Romance languages, including for example József Herman's Le Latin Vulgaire (1975), the less clear it is.

I think a good place to test theories about Romance languages is the island of Sardinia, with a vast repertoire of archaeological remains and some linguistic peculiarities that make it specially interesting.

Sardinia is located in a strategic geographic position, and the archaeological record shows the influence of the various Mediterranean material cultures from the Paleolithic onwards. In some cases, there are local developments where the external elements were reinterpreted, as can be seen in the famous Bronze-Age megalithic monuments known as Nuraghe, which are a distinctive Sardinian feature. There are thousands of nuraghe all over the island, like the one you can see on the right (Nuraghe Ponte, near Dualchi). Needless to say, these unique archeological monuments have triggered the imagination of scholars for ages. Concepts like 'Nuraghic civilization' or 'the language of the Nuraghians' have been, and still are, the focus of lively debate.

The languages traditionally spoken in Sardinia can be divided into two main areas. In the north there are some dialects (Sassarese and Gallurese) associated with Corsican. In the rest of the island, the various dialects belong to what is generally referred to as 'Sardinian'. There are also some other linguistic areas, confined to very small territories, and often associated with historical developments, for example the Catalan spoken in the area of Alghero.

The Sardinian language is generally divided into two areas: the Logudorese-Nuorese dialects, occupying the central part of the island, and Campidanese, in the southern half. These dialects are often described as 'archaic', in comparison with other Romance languages. A classical example of this 'archaic' nature is found in Nuorese, where the classical pronunciation of 'c' as [k] is retained, as can be seen in the word chento, connected with Latin centum. In all the other Romance languages, this Latin [k] is rendered with other phonetic realizations, e.g. French cent, Spanish cien and Italian cento. It must be understood, however, that terms like 'archaic' are relative in themselves, and derive from the point of view of the observer rather than from the actual data, and in fact the 'archaic' nature of Nuorese and other Sardinian dialects has been questioned by some authors. In any case, we can still use the term 'archaic' for practical reasons, with the sense of 'similar to classical Latin'.

According to the traditional view, the language from which Sardinian derived was brought there by the Romans when they conquered the island in the 3rd c. BC. The question, also traditional, remains open: What languages were spoken in Sardinia before the Romans? As can be imagined, a wide variety of possible answers have been proposed, suggesting connections with Ligurian, Iberian, Phoenician or even Etruscan. The problem is that the evidence is scarce, and must be inferred from elusive elements such as place names, which are usually (or always) open to all kinds of interpretations. It is obvious that, whatever the languages spoken in the area in pre-Roman times, the influence of the various Mediterranean elites must have played an influential role, which can be traced in the remaining evidence, but the question is still unanswered: what language(s) did the ancient Sardinians actually speak? In a recent book (2010), prof. Blasco Ferrer has reelaborated the Basco-Iberian theory for Sardinian, already proposed many decades ago, with new analyses of the toponymic material. Blasco Ferrer's ideas, and even methodology, have been strongly criticised by other authors, for example Massimo Pittau (see here). It is obvious, however, that any other theory, including Pittau's Etrusco-Lydian connection, can also be criticised. They all have a common problem: their conclusions are based on very little evidence, and this evidence is open to all kinds of interpretations.

And then we have the Continuity Theory. In the second volume of his Origini delle Lingue d'Europa (2000), Mario Alinei proposes the idea that the populations of pre-Roman Sardinia spoke languages that belonged to the Italid group, like Latin. This proposal is obviously part and parcel of the major Continuity Paradigm, a theory that the readers of this blog are already familiar with. In order to prove the theory for Sardinia, Mario Alinei offers a series of examples from the vocabulary. One of the most complete studies is the one about the word for 'plough' and its related vocabulary, an example of what he calls 'Latin words before the Romans'. Some of his conclusions about this vocabulary are worth being taken into account. In other cases, his proposals do not seem so realistic, e.g. in his analysis ofg the word 'Nuraghe' itself, which he connects with the vocabulary of kinship. According to him, the word nuraghe derives from a word similar to 'nuora', with a meaning of 'daughter-in-law' in Italid languages. Alinei uses other arguments apart from the lexicon, for example the use of the 'ipse' article in Sardinia and in the Balearic islands or some phonetic peculiarities of the Sardinian dialects compared to other Italian dialects of today. Is Alinei's theory right? It's too early to say, but I personally like his proposals. The funny thing is that, apparently, he's not the first person to propose a continuity hypothesis for Sardinian. In a post written by Gigi Sanna, I have read about an eminent Sardinian scholar, called Vittorio Angius, who made similar proposals as early as the mid 19th c. Continuity Theory avant-la-lettre? Probably. In Sanna's post it is possible to read some excerpts from Angius's original writings, in Italian.

So definitely, an island full of archeological and linguistic mysteries, and also full of beauty. No doubt about it: one of my plans for the new year 2011 is to visit Sardinia. By the way, I wish a happy new year to all my readers!

The Franco-Iberian refuge

During the last glaciation, vast areas of northern Europe, including the British Isles, were uninhabited. This glaciation reached its peak at about 20,000 BC (Late Glacial Maximum, LGM), and it wasn't until the beginning of the Holocene (about 12,000 BP) with milder climatic conditions, that these territories started to be repopulated from southern refugia. Population genetics studies show that the Franco-Iberian LGM Refugium played a major role in this repopulation, with a series of relevant gene clusters that can be traced back to that original area. Some authors, e.g. Oppenheimer, have also suggested that this Mesolithic expansion from the various rrfugia is the most important component in today's European populations; other authors suggest that the role of later oppulation movements, e.g. during the Neolithic, has left a more significant mark. This is of course a matter of current debate, and one that has important implications for the study of European prehistoric languages. Now, what was this Franco-Iberian refuge exactly?

Sometimes, it is referred to simply as the Iberian refuge, but I prefer the other name (Franco-Iberian, or Franco-Cantabrian) because I think it's a more accurate term. In his book (Origins of the British), Stephen Oppenheimer defines it as follows: (p. 118): "The refuge for south-west Europe was spread either side of the Pyrenees in southern and eastern France, the Basque Country, and other northern coastal parts of Spain such as Galicia and Catalonia." I'm not so sure of that. If we take a look at a physical map of the Iberian Peninsula, we realize that it is in general composed of high lands and mountainous terrain. In fact, Spain is the second highest country in Europe, after Switzerland, and the area of Castilla-León, sorrounded by mountains, is the highest plateau in Europe (with cities like Burgos, at an altitude of 929 m.). In present-day climatic conditions, these natural features would impose some limitations to population or linguistic exchange. In the hard conditions of the LGM, and also in later cold spells, e.g. the Younger Dryass, they probably meant complete isolation. The Mediterranean areas of Iberia, including Catalonia, were probably cut off from the Cantabrian coast, so they probably did not participate in the repopulation of north-west Europe. As I see it, there is an axis dividing the Iberian Peninsula into two distinct prehistoric areas: on the one hand, the Atlantic Façade, comprising Portugal and some regions of northern and central Spain; on the other, a Mediterranean Façade, connected with southern France and Italy. This division, caused by climatic and geographic features, is also reflected in the distribution of languages in prehistory: Celtic in the west and Iberian on the Mediterranean, as can be seen in the map of the left (source: Arkeotavira). How old are these linguistic borders? What were the languages spoken by those people who repopulated the British Isles and other northern regions from the Franco-Iberian refuge? These are difficult questions to answer. Geographic features are an important factor in population movements, as they define the possible routes of communication and the chances for interaction. This can clearly be seen during the LGM, the most hostile environment that can be imagined for human populations in Europe, but also in other periods, with milder climatic conditions.

In some previous posts (e.g. here) I have suggested some possible scenarios for the languages of the Iberian Peninsula in pre-Roman times. One of the hypotheses, as stated by Xaverio Ballester and other authors, is that the speakers of Iberian languages arrived at a later period, settling over a territory where IE (possibly Italid) languages were spoken. But where did these Iberian-speakers come from? A possible candidate is Aquitaine, in south-west France, as some parallels can de drawn between the ancient languages of the Aquitani and Iberian. It has also been argued that Iberian is connected with Basque, and this idea was actually quite popular in the 20th century, leading to some simplistic equations of Basque and Iberian which were more enthusiastic than scientifically sound. In any case, it is reasonable to see some possible links between the languages of the Basques, the Aquitani and the Iberians. Now, what is the possible geographic connection between these territories? If we look at the first map again, we find that there is actually a natural corridor uniting those areas: the Garonne River Valley, situated between the Pyrenees and the French Massif Central; at its centre, the city of Toulouse, a strategic point in this route. Was this natural corridor shut off during LGM? It would be interesting to know.

Whenever one attempts to make sense of the languages of western Europe, one is forced to face a familiar mystery: the presence of an unexpected non-IE linguistic isolate: Basque. And to make matters worse, the Basque-speaking area is actually at the heart of the Franco-Iberian LGM refugium. According to the German linguist Theo Vennemann, the people in the Franco-Iberian refugium spoke languages related to Basque, and they spread them through vast areas of western and northern Europe. These languages were later superseded by Indo-European (except of course in the Basque Country) and their traces, as Vasconic Substratum, can be found in the vocabulary of some European languages, including toponymical terms. Vennemann's theory has not been accepted in general, and I personally think it's not tenable (I'll discuss it in a future post). However, it presents a coherent explanation in terms of prehistoric events. Now, is there an alternative explanation? Let's try.

The question is: why would a language, in this case Basque, be excluded from the opportunity of expanding to a new territory, in this case post-Ice-Age northern Europe, when the opportunity arose? First, it must be said that, in theory, there's no reason to believe that Basque was spoken in that area at such an early age (the Mesolithic), but in any case, for the purposes of this investigation, let's assume that this was the case. The Basque country of today occupies the coastal corner of land that connects Spain and France. At first sight, this would have been the natural route for any population transfer from the LGM refugium to the north. However, let's remember that at that precise moment the coastal line was different from the one we have today; the sea level was much lower, and the lowlands extended well into the Antlantic. At least in theory, it is possible that some populations along the Cantabrian coast, speakers of a non-Basque language, moved to the north, bypassing the highland areas where Basque-related languages were spoken and actually impeding any possible expansion of this language group into the new horizon created by the receding ice. And it can also be argued that these 'opportunists' from the Cantabrian refuge were speakers of some form of Indo-European, but that's of course a different discussion. In any case, is it reasonable to suppose that the Basque-speaking population just missed the chance for expansion? The situation is not impossible in itself. To illustrate the point, I will provide an example which bears some distant resemblance: the conquest and colonization of America.

The discovery of America opened a new horizon for European populations and languages, but who took the chance? Obviously, there is a geographic factor in this: it was the areas around the Atlantic that were involved in the whole process. First the Spanish and the Portuguese, then the English, the French and the Dutch. Let's take a look at the Spanish expansion: who took part in it? Basically, it involved people from the west side of the axis (see above), mainly from areas such as Extremadura or Andalusia. There was little or no involvement of people from the Mediteranean coast in the whole event. Consequently their language (Catalan) played no role in the story. This can be explained in geographic terms but also, more importantly, in socio-economic terms: the eastern regions of Spain are in a different context, one that connects them to other Mediterranean territories. In addition, the discovery of America coincided with a time of decadence for the Catalan language, with Spanish as the language of the new emerging power.

Romance languages before the Romans

It is generally accepted that, at around 1000 BC, the geographic distribution of Italic languages (among them Latin, Faliscan and Osco-Umbran) was restricted to some areas of central and southern Italy. Later on, the expansion of the Romans involved a massive process of language substitution whereby large populations, especially in western Europe, abandoned their languages (Celtic, Etruscan, Iberian, or in some cases obscure languages with no name) and adopted Latin, which was the origin of the subsequent Romance languages that are still spoken in those areas today (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Catalan, Italian, etc.). - This traditional explanation looks quite clear and reasonable, but in fact there are many good reasons to question it, as I’ll try to show here.

The readers of this blog are already familiar with Mario Alinei and the Continuity Theory. One of the main features of this new approach is the fact that the linguistic data are always analysed in connection with archaeological and anthropological data. Another important aspect is the type of linguistic analysis that is carried out. As I have already noted, Mario Alinei is a dialectologist. For many years he was the president of the Atlas Linguarum Europae project and he is considered one of the most important experts in Italian and European dialectology. One of the things he found out is that the main differences between the various Italian dialects had been established at a very archaic period, and not in the Middle Ages, as is generally assumed. The distribution of some kinship or agricultural terminology and the diffusion of some phonological traits from one dialect to another point to a pre-Roman chronology (Alinei, 2000:951-978). This can be applied to areas where other Italic dialects have traditionally been attested (central and southern Italy) but also to other areas where it was supposed that other types of languages were spoken: in northern Italy, on the islands of Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia, and also in Etruria, where the presence of the Etruscans has been interpreted, in the light of the CT, as an intrusive elite that ruled over a mainly Italic-speaking population. One by one, Alinei analyses the data from the various areas and comes to the conclusion that the most relevant elements in the formation of these dialects, even at the most archaic stages, are Italic. Otherwise, how is it possible, for example, that the names for the plough, or for the various parts of the plough, were coined on the basis of a vocabulary that was more archaic than the one the Roman conquerors actually brought with them? In many respects Italian dialects (in Sardinia, in Piedmont, in Tuscany and elsewhere) seem to be 'older' than Classical Latin. The only acceptable explanation for this apparently paradoxical fact is that Italic languages were spoken in these areas before the Romans arrived. After the conquest, Latin became the most influential element in these territories, in a process which eventually shaped the local dialects into what they are today.

But Alinei’s proposals go beyond the geographic boundaries of Italy. He finds evidence for pre-Roman Italic languages in other territories, e.g. the Balearic Islands, southern France and the east and south of the Iberian Peninsula, as well as some Adriatic areas. In fact, he coined the term gruppo italide in order to avoid the geographic connotations of the word Italic. Some linguistic data seem to point in this direction, but a great amount of research is still to be done in order to refine this thesis. It seems, however, that the archaeological data support the existence of this “Italid” group, as can be seen in the areal distribution of the Printed-Cardium Pottery culture (c. 5000 BC; see the image on the right as an example; more information about this picture, here), or even in the distribution of the Epigravettian culture (24000 to 10000 BC). Looking at the maps of these cultures (you can find them in Alinei, 2002), it seems that there is correspondence between some present-day Romance languages and the areas that Alinei considers originally Italid. As we saw in the previous post, about the languages of Switzerland (you can read it here), the historical event of the Roman conquest is not relevant in the distribution of dialects in that area. Something similar could be said about the Italid area in general. (Alinei, 2000, p. 582): “la romanizzazione avrebbe lasciato le proprie tracce solo là dove i linguemi precedenti erano già affini al Latino, mentre non avrebbe avuto conseguenze linguistiche rilevanti – salvo l’introduzione di prestiti – nelle aree in cui i linguemi autoctoni erano di ceppo diverso (Germanico, Celtico, Slavo, Illirico)”; (ib., p. 592): "Dal Neolitico Medio in poi, insomma, le principali aree dialettali sono già manifeste". Which is, of course, a revolutionary thing to say in the field of Historical Linguistics or Romance Studies. And I quite agree with him. First, because it offers a rational way of explaining the emergence of modern Romance dialects, avoiding the typical (and easier) explanations based on conquests and invasions. Secondly, because there are other researchers, with no direct connection with Mario Alinei or the CT, who have reached a series of results which, at least partially, point in the same direction.

One of these researchers is the Spanish linguist Francisco Villar, one of the most prestigious experts in pre-Roman languages of the Iberian Peninsula. As I said, he is no adherent to the CT, and his approach and methodology have little to do with it. In one of his studies (Villar, 2000), he analysed the whole corpus of pre-Roman Hispanic names for people and places, especially hydronyms. He found out that there were both Indo-European and non-IE elements in this archaic vocabulary. One would expect something like this, because it has traditionally been assumed that in Pre-Roman Hispania there were both IE languages, belonging to the Celtic group, and also non-IE languages, for example Iberian. But he also found some unexpected results, for example the existence of another IE language, that he called substrato indoeuropeo italoide. This non-Celtic IE lexicon is found in many areas in the Iberian Peninsula, but especially in the south and north-east. (Villar, 2000, p. 442): “El estrato étnico y lingüístico más profundo y abundante tanto en Cataluña y la Cuenca del Ebro, como en Andalucía que nos permite detectar la toponimia lo constituyen unas poblaciones indoeuropeas muy antiguas, que crearon el primer entramado hidrotoponímico de densidad suficiente como para perdurar a través de los sucesivos cambios de lengua y llegar hasta nuestros días”; (ib., p. 414): “La lengua paleohispánica tiene relaciones dialectales particularmente estrechas con las itálicas y, en forma más lejana y menos definida con las bálticas”.

Finally, I would like to summarize and conclude this article with a hypothesis, which is also an invitation for future research: In the Italian Peninsula, on the islands of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, in the south of France and the east of the Iberian Peninsula, dialects belonging to the Italid group have been spoken at least from the Neolithic, with no discontinuity. On the other hand, it is also possible that the first Homo Sapiens Sapiens who settled in these territories were speakers of Indo-European languages.

Bibliography:
- ALINEI, Mario (2000). Origini delle Lingue d’Europa. II. Continuità dal Mesolitico all’età del ferro nelle Principali Aree Etnolinguistiche. Bologna, Il Mulino.
- ALINEI, Mario (2002). Towards a generalised continuity model for Uralic and Indo-European languages. In Julku, Kyösti (ed.), The Roots of Peoples and Languages of Northewrn Eurasia IV. Oulu, Societas Historiae Fenno-Ugricae, 2002, 9-33 .
- VILLAR, Francisco (2000). Indoeuropeos y No-Indoeuropeos en la Hispania Prerromana. Salamanca, Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca.

Language continuity in Europe (II): Switzerland

If we were asked to think of a typical example of a multilingual country in Europe, Switzerland would probably be one of the first ones to come to mind. Let’s take a look at the map of the offical languages of this country:












(From Wikimedia Commons. Click here for a larger image and further details).


This linguistic complexity, however, can be simplified if we bear in mind that these languages belong to two different and clearly-defined groups: on the one hand, we have a Germanic dialect: Swiss German (Schwyzertütsch), spoken in the Centre and north of the country, and, on the other hand, a group of Romance dialects (Franco-Provençal, Gallo-Italic and Ladin), located in the west and south.

The traditional explanation for this language diversity derives from two historical facts: the Roman Conquest, which brought about Latin as the base of modern Romance dialects, and the Germanic migrations at the end of the Roman Empire, which are the origin of Swiss German. It is also supposed that, before these historical events, the people who lived in this area were basically speakers of Celtic dialects.

The Continuity Theory (CT), however, sees it quite differently. Switzerland is actually a good place to test this theory. During the last glaciation, this area was completely uninhabited. It was only at around 8000 BC, when the ice-cap started to recede, that human populations started to settle in this area again, which means that there is no continuity between these human groups and the ones that lived here before the glacial period. A similar situation can be seen, in general, in the northern territories of Europe and Asia. For example in the Scandinavian Peninsula (see this post for more details).

Mario Alinei (2000, pp. 334-353) analyzed the prehistoric cultures of Switzerland from the Mesolithic (i.e. from the end of the last Glacial Age) onwards and found out that there is a consistent and significant correspondence between the distribution of these cultures and the distribution of present-day dialects. For example, analyzing the cultures of the Early Neolithic Period, Alinei realized that the Liniendandkeramik (LBK) culture was present in the areas were Germanic languages are spoken today, whereas the Chassey, Lagozza and Cortaillaud cultures correspond, respectively, to the areas where French (oil), Gallo-Italic and Franco-Provençal dialects are spoken, all of them belonging to the Italic group. This correlation of prehistoric cultures and modern dialects continues in the Late Neolithic and Calcolithic periods, and also in the Bronze and Iron Ages. An important factor in the formation of these speech communities is the presence of Celtic elements, connected mainly with the Iron Age cultures of Hallstatt (750-450 BC) and La Tène (450-58 BC), but also to be found in some older cultures, already in the Neolithic. In any case, these Celtic elements cannot be seen as the result of a massive migration or invasion. In the words of the archaeologist Marc Sautier (1976, 153):

“The arrival of the Celts did not deeply alter the indigenous way of life, except probably in the social field, as the impression is given that the relatively few newcomers constituted a ruling class”.

The expansion of Celtic cultures (and also, in the east, of Balkan elements) is connected with technological developments, especially in metallurgy. In many cases, especially in the later periods, the Celts can be interpreted as an intruding elite that ruled over the original population.

As we have seen, the CT explains the linguistic situation of Switzerland in a completely new way. Germanic and Italic dialects were already spoken here in the Mesolithic, i.e. from around 8,000 BC, with a geographical distribution which is quite similar to the one we have today, 10,000 years later. An important factor in the formation of these dialects is the influence of external groups, especially the Celts.

What about the Romans then? It is obvious that their language, and also the dialects brought by the Germanic tribes that migrated from the north, are of great importance in the formation of modern Swiss dialects. However, their role in the geographic distribution of these dialects is basically irrelevant.

Bibliography:
- ALINEI, Mario. (2000). Origini delle Lingue d’Europa. II. Continuità dal Mesolitico all’Età del Ferro nelle Principali Aree Etnolinguistiche. Bologna, Il Mulino.
- SAUTER, Marc R. (1976). Switzerland from Earliest Times to the Roman Conquest. London, Thames and Hudson.