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Linguistic Atlas of the Iberian Peninsula

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The Linguistic Atlas of the Iberian Peninsula (Spanish: Atlas Lingüístico de la península ibérica) (ALPI) is a project aimed at creating a linguistic atlas conceived of in 1914 by Ramón Menéndez Pidal, who left it in charge of his student, Tomás Navarro Tomás, who directed its work from the Centro de Estudios Históricos de la Junta para Ampliación de Estudios. The project was based on some survey notebooks elaborated in 1930-31, and 3 teams of survey takers took on the job of collecting the data corresponding to the more than 1300 questions in those notebooks in 527 survey points, generally small towns, previously selected in order to cover in the most complete way all the language varieties of the Iberian Peninsula, Roussillon, and the Balearic Islands, with the exception of Basque-speaking areas. Neither the Canary Islands, nor the Azores nor Madeira were included. The greater part of this survey work was realized between 1931 and 1935, and the rest was completed between 1947 and 1954. The material was published on the Internet in 2016.

Following the traditional methodology of the first linguistic atlases, in each survey point (town or village) two informants were typically chosen, one for the study of phonetics and morphosyntax and the other for the part involving lexicon. These informants were non-educated older rural males, or NORMS - they were from the area, had left it infrequently, had little education and were older. In this way, the linguists aimed at studying the most genuine traits of the speech of each location. The informants were then asked to give the typical form in each place for a series of words and phrases, defined in the survey, and their answer was copied by way of phonetic transcription, which reflected the pronunciation. This transcription was done in the RFE Phonetic Alphabet.

The survey-takers were the following:

Following from the results of the surveys, the atlas proper was planned to be published, in 10 volumes, but only the first volume came to light.

Mishaps

The linguistic interviews had to be interrupted due to the Spanish Civil War from 1936-39. Tomás Navarro Tomás had to go into exile, and he took with him the materials from the ALPI.

One of the interviewers, Aníbal Otero, was accused of spying, apparently for the fact that he used phonetic transcription symbols in his survey notebooks, and was condemned to death. Later the penalty was commuted, and he remained in prison until 1941.

In 1951 Tomás Navarro Tomás sent the materials to Spain, to the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), after making an agreement that the remaining interviews would be completed and the atlas would be published.

In 1962 the first volume out of ten planned was published, but immediately after the work was stopped, and no volumes have been published since. The survey notebooks remained stored in various public and private locations. Starting in 1999, David Heap, professor at the University of Western Ontario, made photocopies of the notebooks and published them online (see External links). In 2016 the online publication of the ALPI from the CSIC began.

En 1962 se publicó el primer volumen de los 10 previstos, pero inmediatamente se suspendieron los trabajos, y ya no se han publicado más volúmenes. Los cuadernos de encuesta quedaron guardados dispersos en diversos lugares públicos y privados. A partir de 1999, David Heap, profesor de la Universidad de Western Ontario (en Canadá), fotocopió los cuadernos y publicó facsímiles en Internet (ver Enlaces externos). En 2016 ha comenzado desde el CSIC la publicación en línea del ALPI.

Online publication

Starting in 2007, motivated by the centenary of the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios, the CSIC decided to publish the unpublished materials of the ALPI. This task was entrusted to Pilar García Mouton, research professor of the CSIC and specialist in geolinguistics. The team she works with is made up of Inés Fernández-Ordóñez (Autonomous University of Madrid), David Heap (University of Western Ontario), María Pilar Perea (University of Barcelona), João Saramago (Center of Linguistics of the University of Lisbon) and Xulio Sousa Fernández (Instituto da Lingua Galega of the University of Santiago de Compostela).[1]

The project takes advantage of the possibilities that information technology offers for automatic cartography and for making all kinds of searches in a corpus as big as that of the ALPI. The publication is realized digitally, over the web, based on a geo-referenced database, accessible to all possible users.

The first results of this online publication can be found at [1]. The user can access data on the Romance speech of 527 Peninsular and Balearic locations recorded in the interviews. The search tool permits different types of searches and facilitates on-demand mapping of the results.

On May 12, 2016 a first installment was published, which will be increased in 2017, thanks to a grant from the BBVA Foundation given in 2014.

The ALPI's web page offers a wealth of information for specialists, teachers, students and a general audience. It presents the history of the historic project, describes its methodology and facilitates the link to the interview Jesús Hermida did of Tomás Navarro Tomás in 1974. It includes an image gallery of great ethnographic value, a Gallery that allows searches, with photos made in the 1930s surveys in the Rodríguez-Castellano Collection (Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomás, CCHS-CSIC). The website describes in detail the steps of the current publishing process, the criteria followed, etc. Finally, the Publications section constitutes a true virtual library, which gives access to the first volume of the ALPI (CSIC, 1962), to the studies related to the atlas published by its authors and those that have been published by the team that is currently working on its elaboration and digital publishing.

The scientific value of the ALPI as a historical testimony is inarguable. With its publishing, the scientific community will be able to document a historic stage in the history of the Iberian Romance languages.

References

  1. ^ García Mouton, Pilar (2016). "Atlas Lingüístico de la Península Ibérica". Madrid: CSIC.

Bibliography


Category:Linguistic atlases Category:Spanish language Category:Spanish books Category:Portuguese language Category:Catalan language

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