The Castilian-catalan Border In The Baix Cinca (aragon): A Lexical Study (dialectology, Sociolinguistics, Lexical Borrowing, Spain).

This dialect study of two Catalan-speaking towns (Fraga and Mequinensa) on the edge of an area of Spain (Aragon) which is overwhelmingly Castilian-speaking, uses a group of carefully selected lexemes to measure degrees of linguistic interpenetration. Two sample groups of residents of these towns, one Catalan- and one Castilian-speaking, were interviewed using a questionnaire designed to elicit certain domestic (inside-home) and non-domestic (outside-home) lexemes, in addition to considerable demographic information. The number of Castilianized lexemes (for Catalan speakers) and Catalanized lexemes (for Castilian speakers) was usually considerably higher among non-domestic lexemes than for domestic ones. This indicated that household lexemes (such as meal constituents, types of fruit and vegetables, and parts of the house) were more likely to be maintained in the home (or native) language than words relating to the outside world (street, sidewalk, and post office, for example). Nevertheless, this study reveals that maintenance of loss of home-language lexemes in a specific dialect is much more erratic and less predictable than any dichotomous division into simple outside and inside categories could describe. Subsequent research inside Catalunya proper (near Barcelona) demonstrated that this lexical study is an effective way of determining an area's relative degree of linguistic normalization; that is, the degree to which Catalan has become, after decades of repression, the normal language for communication at all levels (for household, educational, and official functions). In the course of this synchronic study, sociolinguistic questions such as diglossia, linguistically mixed families, and domains of linguistic behavior also arose; however, the major contribution of this study is its application of basic principles of survey research, interviewee selection, and questionnaire writing (as developed by The University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research) to synchronic linguistic research.PhDLanguage, Literature and LinguisticsLinguisticsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/127980/2/8702802.pd