About Joan Coromines’ «pre-Gascon». Phytonyms with a seemingly anomalous final unstressed vowel in Aranese Occitan

Abstract

In line with the pre-Catalan phonetic facts that Joan Coromines found in the territory of the north-western Pyrenean Catalan (and especially in Pallars), this same linguist referred to facts of pre-Gascon phonetics in the nearby Aran Valley, for which he even suggested an exact territorial boundary. In this work we not only show that this boundary does not exist, but we are interested in the seemingly anomalous maintenance of the final unstressed -o (abundant in topo­nymy) in some phytonyms that Coromines himself gives as supposed evidences of that linguistic phenomenon. Not only does it seem obvious that some cases cited by the great Catalan linguist have nothing to do with a exceptional maintenance of that vowel, but other examples can be compared to forms with a final unstressed -o that appear in several areas of the Gascon domain in certain contexts and for certain referents, which calls into question that the terms mentioned by Coromines could justify the presence of Basque varieties in a particular Valley.