The Catalan language is a language of romance group, closely related to Occitan. It is the only official language in Andorra, but it shares the status of official with Spanish in the Spanish Autonomous Communities of Catalonia, Valencia and Balearic Islands. It is not recognized as official in the Autonomous Community of Aragon in Spain, the Northern Catalonia in France and the Italian city of Alguer. However it is partially used in the latter as it remains the traditional language of the territory of the Catalan Countries. Depending on the formal status and history the situation of the language differs in many aspects including education, the possibility to use in the public situations and the knowledge. The article deals briefly with these questions on the basis of official statistics as well as the research of the author of the article.
This paper focuses on the analysis of the lexical and semantic influences of L2 (Catalan) on the L1 (Amazigh) in a basic semantic field: parts of the body. Based on the observation that our participants show differences in their L1 usage related to the amount of time they have been in contact with Catalan, our goal is to analyze and describe these differences to see if they are the consequence of a transfer from the L2 conceptual system. This paper is a qualitative study with a sample size of 14 participants whose L1 is Amazigh and who live in Catalonia. The results show that there are cases of semantic and conceptual influence, although to a lesser degree than in other studies that do not analyze data from basic semantic fields. We will also show that there are extralinguistic factors that influence these transfers (the status of the languages involved and certain characteristics of the speakers).
The article focuses on the language situation in Valencia, an important autonomous community of Spain. There are two official languages: Castilian as a language of the whole of Spain (i.e. Spanish) and Valencian as the Valencian people’s language proper. The paper describes the relations between Spanish and Valencian both from a linguistic and a socio-political point of view and offers a statistical summary of the use of both languages in the territory of the Valencian Community. Two tendencies important for the future of Valencia are discussed, a tendency to use “countrywide” Spanish and a tendency to preserve Valencian (the latter tendency is frequently based on respect for tradition as well as on personal decisions). In addition, the article considers relations between Valencian and Catalan.
This paper aims to provide some information on the use of per part de as a preposition introducing noun phrase external arguments in Catalan. It is assumed that some nouns, like verbs, project an argument structure, i.e. DP is parallel to IP. One of these parallelisms concerns the passivization properties. In fact, authors like Picallo (1991) assumed that nouns can only be analyzed as licensing argument structure and having an event reading when they are passive and their agent is thus introduced by per or per part de. However, these constructions seem to be infrequent in medieval Catalan, which calls into question the preceding assumption. In summary, this paper will provide some evidence to prove that, while passivity is not directly linked to eventivity, a passive/active alternation has expanded in Catalan DP domain.
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En este artículo se ofrece información sobre el uso de per part de como introductor del argumento externo de los nombres eventivos en catalán. Se asume que los nombres, igual que los verbos, proyectan una estructura argumental, por lo que se pueden establecer paralelismos entre el sintagma determinante y el sintagma flexión. Uno de estos paralelismos tiene que ver con las posibilidades de pasivización. De hecho, autores como Picallo (1991) asumen que los nombres solo tienen lectura eventiva (y, en consecuencia, solo admiten estructura argumental) cuando son pasivos y el agente es introducido por las preposiciones per o per part de. Ahora bien, estas construcciones parecen muy poco frecuentes en catalán antiguo, lo que pone en cuestión la asunción precedente. El artículo muestra, pues, que no se puede relacionar la pasividad con la eventividad y que los nombres, como los verbos, disponen de alternancia pasiva/activa en su lectura eventiva.
This article deals with the norm and the standard of the Catalan language in the context of the recent reform of its grammar. We formulate our linguistic analyses and interpretations in relation to historical and geographical backgrounds, paying particular attention to the main varieties of Catalan. In the successive development stages of the linguistic norm, we show how codifiers have faced the challenging task of taking sufficient account of specific dialectal peculiarities in a language that is not backed by a nation-state and is spoken in different countries and regions.
The paper addresses problems related to the choice of educational language in Spain. We briefly present the current sociolinguistic situation in the Basque Country, Galicia and Catalonia and the possibilities of educational language choice in these autonomous communities. Based on data provided by the city halls of Bilbao, Vigo and Barcelona, we analyse the language models actually available at both state and (semi)private primary schools in these cities. We also take into account practical elements such as the distance of a school from the family’s residence. Our research reveals that each of the autonomous communities analysed addresses the choice of educational language in a different way and that a theoretical availability of different language models does not necessarily mean that the chosen model will be accessible in a state school close to the child’s home. The analysis aims to present questions related to the choice of educational language in a plurilingual state as part of a complex problem which is related not only to linguistic identity but also to general topics of multilingual education and its suitability for all children.
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