to represent the medieval spellings and pronunciations. On the whole, the modern reader
with a basic knowledge of the Old Occitan spelling can make a pretty good attempt at
pronouncing as the troubadours did. However, it takes some sophistication to determine
the location of tonic stress, and often only a knowledge of etymology can distinguish
between the open and closed e and o.
Like Old French, Old Occitan has a two-case declension of nouns and adjectives that
is most prominent and regular in masculines: murs, mur, mur, murs ‘wall’ (cited in the
conventional order: nominative singular, oblique singular, nominative plural, oblique
plural). Some feminine nouns follow a similar pattern (flors, flor, flors, flors ‘flower’),
but most merely distinguish singular and plural: domna ‘lady,’ domnas ‘ladies.’ A
number of masculine nouns and a couple of feminine ones show shifting stress, a
changing number of syllables, or both: bar, baro(n), baro(n), barons ‘noble.’ Several
other patterns exist, while some nouns and adjectives are invariable.
The verb system has forms corresponding to the active and passive voices; the
indicative, subjunctive, conditional, imperative, infinitive, and participial moods; the
future, present, imperfect, preterit, future perfect, compound past, pluperfect, and past
anterior tenses; three persons; and two numbers. Verbs can be divided into three
conjugations, characterized by the thematic vowels a, e, and i. The most idiosyncratic
feature is perhaps the “strong” preterits, which follow patterns like, for penre ‘to take,’
pris, prezist, pres, prezem, prezetz, preiro(n). The large number of irregular verbs—on
the whole, the most frequently used ones—pose a continuous challenge to the reader.
Further challenges are word order, which is fairly free given that the functions of most
nouns, adjectives, and verbs within a sentence are adequately revealed by their endings,
and the plentiful use of masculine, feminine, and neuter personal pronouns, whose forms
and functions often overlap in ways that give room to the interpreter’s imagination.
Naturally, with the license encouraged by the constraints of rhyme and syllabification,
poetry is harder to interpret than prose, which is closer to the presumed but irretrievable
language of everyday life in medieval Occitania.
Nathaniel B.Smith
[See also: FRENCH LANGUAGE; TROBAIRITZ; TROUBADOUR POETRY]
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Brunel, Clovis, ed. Les plus anciennes chartes en langue provençale. Paris: Picard, 1926;
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Jensen, Frede. The Old Provençal Noun and Adjective Declension. Odense: Odense University
Press, 1976.
——. The Syntax of Medieval Occitan. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1986.
Klingebiel, Kathryn. Bibliographie linguistique del’ancien occitan (1960–1982). Hamburg: Buske,
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Levy, Émil. Petit dictionnaire provençal-français. 5th ed. Heidelberg: Winter, 1973.
Smith, Nathaniel B. “The Normalization of Old Provençal Spelling: Criteria and Solutions.” In
Studia occitanica in memoriam Paul Remy, ed. Hans-Erich Keller et al. Kalamazoo: Medieval
Institute, 1986.
——, and Thomas G.Bergin. An Old Provençal Primer. New York: Garland, 1984. [With
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The Encyclopedia 1281