Twentieth-century varieties reflecting mediaeval settlement in Normandy: Combining modern and historical dialectology

Abstract

The problemIn toponymic and historical studies of Normandy, France, the contribution of Viking invaders in the ninth to eleventh centuries is well-known. We know that Vikings began to invade the province in 840 and took control there in a series of steps starting in 911 (Neveux 1998;Le Fèvre 2000). Much research has demonstrated the traces they left in the form of place-names which to this day attest to a previous Scandinavian presence in Normandy. Such names are often formed using the name of a Viking landowner plus a common noun (Rauville < Hrolfr + Latin villam 'settlement'; Quettetot < Ketill + Common Scandinavian topt 'building plot'), or using Common Scandinavian nouns to describe the place (Carquebut < kirkja 'church' + buth 'house', 'village'; Yquelon < eik, a type of oak tree, + lundr 'grove'). Good overviews are provided by Adigard des Gautries (1954), Lepelley (1999a,b) and The Viking Network; more detail can be found in other works in the list of references.The present article uses data from the Atlas Linguistique et Ethnographique Normand (henceforth ALEN: Brasseur 1980-2011, combined with toponymic and historical data, to examine the effect of the phonetics of the Viking invaders' language(s) on the speech of the ALEN informants (born in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries). The examination will show that, at least in the areas of heaviest Viking settlement, the phonetics of Mainland Norman have much in common with the phonetics of the invaders' Scandinavian language. Since these common elements are still in evidence in ALEN, this article tests the hypothesis that patterns of language This is a pre-publication version of an article which has been accepted for publication and will appear in Acta Linguistica Hafniensia before the end of 2012.Please quote only from the final published version.use can have influence on the phonetics of the vernacular hundreds of years after the original contact language has ceased to be spoken in the area in question. On the theoretical level, such influence indicates that our understanding of present-day variation can be informed by the historical phonology of both the language studied and the language which has been in contact with it, even if the two languages are no longer in contact. In the present case, the inventory of velar consonants of Old and Middle Scandinavian is very similar to the range of reflexes of Latin /ka-/ found in the parts of Normandy which are known to have been colonised by Anglo-Danes (Table 2), which have been chosen as an example to demonstrate the combination of traditional and modern techniques. Many previous studies of the place-names of Normandy have produced maps of the names containing at least one probably Scandinavian element (cf Figure 4 below and, in the literature, Lepelley 1999a, 110ff and 1999b:45ff; de Beaurepaire 1969, 84; 1979, 13; 1981, 33; 1986, 43). The Viking place-names of Normandy and England have also been studied by historians for indications of the exact origins of the Viking colonisers of Normandy ...

Language Planning and Microlinguistics

“…It is very rare for substrate influences to be present in an area where there has been historical language contact, but where contact has now ceased; however, such cases have been found (for a summary see Sankoff, 2002, pp. 645-66;Hall, 2013). We propose that RFN (a) is also a possible case of substrate influence long after the substrate language has ceased to be widely spoken in the area in question.…”

The Linguistic Geography of the French of Northern France: Do We Have the Basic Data?

“…In Hall's (2008) sample from Darnétal, in the Rouen urban area, speakers younger than 20 or over 69 years old pronounced the vowels of pattes and pâtes differently, but importantly raised them both towards the centre of the vowel-space. See Figures 6a and 6b: Figure 6a shows data for all age-groups and both sexes, while Figure 6b shows the same data but emphasises the oldest and youngest age-groups, in order to make their raising towards the centre of the vowel-space clear.…”

“…In work on Normandy, France, Hall (2008) has found a similarly phonetically small difference between the phonemes represented by the vowels of pattes ('animal's paw') and pâtes ('pasta'). In the most conservative varieties of European French and in Canadian French generally, these words are pronounced [pat] and [pɑt], but many people in France pronounce them the same, both [pat].…”

“…As also noted, I am purposely referring to the more recent current as the linguistic methodology because its primary focus is on linguistic structure, whereas the primary focus of the preservation methodology is on lexical variation (which may or may not be structured, and in which the social and geographical context is often crucial). Data collected with the preservation methodology in mind can certainly be used to investigate linguistic structure: as examples, see Temple (, on the Atlas Linguistique de France ) and Hall (, on the Atlas Linguistique et Ethnographique Normand ). Therefore, in distinguishing between the preservation and linguistic methodologies, I do not mean to make any judgement as to their relative usefulness: neither way of doing a dialectological survey is better or worse than the other: they are simply different.…”

“…For French in general, we have the ground-breaking work of the Programme 'Phonologie du Français Contemporain' ('"Phonology of Contemporary French" Programme': Durand, Laks, and Lyche (2009), http://www.projet-pfc.net). For areas in the North specifically, there are at least Reichstein (1960); Deyhime (1967aDeyhime ( ,1967b; Léon (1972); Peretz (1977); Lennig (1978); Mettas (1979); Jamin (2005) and Berit Hansen and Juillard (2011) on Paris, Lefebvre (1991) and Pooley (1996Pooley ( , 2004 on Lille, Hornsby (2006) on Avion (in the far Northern industrial region), Hall (2008) on Normandy, and some contributions from Salmon (1985) on Alsace. Many of the regional differences explored in these studies cannot be straightforwardly said to be connected with a regional autochthonous varietyin particular, the city of Paris has been thought of as a seat of Standard French for centuries.…”