A new view of Basque through eighteenth-century correspondence
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Manuel Padilla Moyano
Abstract
This contribution deals with a recently discovered Basque correspondence which poses new research questions. The letters, written in Labourdin dialect in 1757, provide insight into the practice of writing, depicting an unexpected panorama of literate women and semi-professional scribes. Because of their nature, these records attest to some linguistic features lacking in the printed tradition of Labourdin. The goal of this paper is to discuss the linguistic importance of these newly discovered letters and, in particular, to show how they change our understanding of the history of the language. To that end, I focus on differences between the language used in literary texts and private correspondence. As an example of this divergence between literary texts and personal letters, I analyze two epenthesis rules: the insertion of a [β] after u and the insertion of [ ʝ] after i.
Abstract
This contribution deals with a recently discovered Basque correspondence which poses new research questions. The letters, written in Labourdin dialect in 1757, provide insight into the practice of writing, depicting an unexpected panorama of literate women and semi-professional scribes. Because of their nature, these records attest to some linguistic features lacking in the printed tradition of Labourdin. The goal of this paper is to discuss the linguistic importance of these newly discovered letters and, in particular, to show how they change our understanding of the history of the language. To that end, I focus on differences between the language used in literary texts and private correspondence. As an example of this divergence between literary texts and personal letters, I analyze two epenthesis rules: the insertion of a [β] after u and the insertion of [ ʝ] after i.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction vii
- A corpus-driven analysis of Romani in contact with Turkish and Greek 1
- How many ands in Picard? 17
- Language variation in Slovene 31
- Code-switching in SMS communication 43
- The interplay between dialect and standard 55
- Word order variation and foregrounding of complement clauses 69
- Voicing the ‘other’ 87
- Tourists’ attitudes towards linguistic variation in Scotland 99
- The pronunciation of -ig in three varieties of Austria 111
- A century of change in prevocalic (r) in Carlisle English 129
- Variation in wh-questions in Icelandic Sign Language 145
- Faroe Danish 157
- A new view of Basque through eighteenth-century correspondence 169
- Standard-dialect variation and its functionalization 183
- Production and perception of (ing) in Manchester English 197
- Pro-dialect practices and linguistic commodification in rural Valdres, Norway 211
- A real-time study of plosives in Glaswegian using an automatic measurement algorithm 225
- Index 239
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction vii
- A corpus-driven analysis of Romani in contact with Turkish and Greek 1
- How many ands in Picard? 17
- Language variation in Slovene 31
- Code-switching in SMS communication 43
- The interplay between dialect and standard 55
- Word order variation and foregrounding of complement clauses 69
- Voicing the ‘other’ 87
- Tourists’ attitudes towards linguistic variation in Scotland 99
- The pronunciation of -ig in three varieties of Austria 111
- A century of change in prevocalic (r) in Carlisle English 129
- Variation in wh-questions in Icelandic Sign Language 145
- Faroe Danish 157
- A new view of Basque through eighteenth-century correspondence 169
- Standard-dialect variation and its functionalization 183
- Production and perception of (ing) in Manchester English 197
- Pro-dialect practices and linguistic commodification in rural Valdres, Norway 211
- A real-time study of plosives in Glaswegian using an automatic measurement algorithm 225
- Index 239
