Multidisciplinary bibliography of the Portugal-Spain border

[Resumen extraído de la fuente original]

Este artigo pretende chamar a atención sobre a existencia dalgúns fenómenos dialectais que mostran a existencia dunha área xeolingüística galego-asturiana (que inclúe o Baixo-Minho portugués) que xa ten a súa orixe no mesmo momento da romanización. De feito, retómase a noción xeo-histórico-lingüística de Gallaecia Magna demarcada por Joseph M. Piel como locus xeográfico orixinario do nacemento do portugués, do galego e do asturiano. Esta área estaba formada polo noroeste de Portugal, as provincias de Pontevedra, Coruña, Lugo e a metade occidental de Oviedo. Algunhas diferenzas entre galego e portugués (que agrupan galego con asturiano) deben remitirse á inclusión de Galicia e do oeste de Asturias nesta área. Os fenómenos mostran un prolongado contacto galegoasturiano e unha fidelidade do galego e do asturiano a esta área e un comportamento independente e, ás veces, unitario do portugués e do castelán con respecto a estes fenómenos. Palabras clave: galego, portugués, asturleonés, castelán, contacto lingüístico. 

On the Gallaecia Magna and the historical and geolinguistic relations between Galician, Portuguese and Asturian

The aim of this article is to call attention to the existence of certain dialectal features that prove the existence of a Galicio-Asturian geolinguistic area (including the Portuguese Baixo-Minho) which dates back to the period of Roman colonization. What we effectively do is revive the geo-historico-linguistic notion of a Gallaecia Magna elaborated by Joseph M. Piel as the original geographical birthplace of Portuguese, Galician and Asturian. This area consisted of north-east Portugal, the provinces of Pontevedra, Coruña, Lugo and the western part of Oviedo. Some differences between Galician and Portuguese (that show Galician as more akin to Asturian) must have to do with the affinity of Galician and western Asturias to this area. The features are proof of a long period of contact between Galician and Asturian, and their allegiance to the area, as opposed to the independent, sometimes united, stance of Portuguese and Castilian in the face of these facts. Key words: Galician, Portuguese, Asturo-Leonese, Castilian, language contact.

[Resumen extraído de la fuente original]

It is admitted that the origin of the height of the radical vowel of Galician and Portuguese sigo ~ siga ‘I follow / I go on’ and cubro ~ cubra ‘I cover’ is problematic: the expected vowel in that context, through a regular phonological evolution, should be mid high, not high. Given the irregular origin of the high vowel in Galician, Portuguese and Spanish, that the three languages share the unexpected height and that it seems that the high vowel first appeared and was consolidated in the central dialects of the Peninsula, I will propose that forms like sigo and cubro were originated in those central dialects and were taken and spread into the occidental dialects by a language contact situation. As the contact was more prolonged and intense in Galicia than in Portugal, Galician promoted variants like pido ~ pides ~ pide ~ pida (‘I ask for’), shared with Spanish, and diverged in this respect from Portuguese, which blocked their spreading.