The formal lexical model of Constantí Llombart

Abstract

Our aim in this contribution is to focus attention on the lexical model of Constantí Llombart, one of the main representatives of the Renaixença (19thC. Catalan Renaissance) in Valencia. Llombart wanted to extend this movement of cultural recovery to the whole of Valencian society. And that is why he proposed for literary language a linguistic model of synthesis, avoiding the vulgar forms and the Spanish forms of the colloquial language, but also the archaisms that could distance it from the popular sectors. In the lexical purity of the literary language, Llombart took into account the classical writers and the Catalan writers of the Renaixença, as well as the lexicographic sources, especially the dictionaries of Carles Ros and Josep Escrig, and surely also that of Labèrnia. Without renouncing the popular and dialectal lexicon,  he proposed the literary recovery of traditional words, which were unused or decadent, and that experienced the competence of Spanish forms, and he incorporated neologisms and words introduced in the literary Catalan language during the 19th century.