Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 16.djvu/544

* 476 PBOTJT. tectural drawings of old Normandy. Many of his dra«inss ^vcre afterwards litliographed and published in volumes, under the titles, /•'"(■«"«''^s of Sketches Made in France and Gcrmr/Hi/I ISJd) ; Interiors and Exteriors (1834): SK-ctchcs m France, Swit::erland. and Italy (1830), etc. He Avas also well known as the author of numerous elementary drawing-books, including Bits for Beginners) Bints on Lifiht and Shade, Composi- tion, etc. His water-color drawings are char- acterized by decision of handling, great breadth, and clear and pleasing coloring. PBOVENQAL (pro'vaN'sal') LANGTJAGE. family of Romance dialects spoken in Provence (and neighboring districts), or that part of South- cm France in which was the Roman provmce called Provincia. It was with French the first Romance tongue to win importance in lit- erature. Its literary vogue decayed after the period of the Albigciisian Crusade (1200-1229), but in modern times it has been rather successful- ly applied to literary purposes again by >Iistral (q.v.) and other writers. From French, its northern neighbor, Provencal is separated geo- graphically by a line which, starting from the mouth of the Gironde, follows tlie Dordogne for a while, then ascends to the north toward Isle- .Tourdain, and, bending to the east as far as ilontlucon. descends again in a southerly direc- tion, crosses the Rhone, passes through the re- gions of Lyonnais and Dauphin^, and reaches the Alps. This line of demarcation serves also to divide it on the northeast from a linguistic terri- tory known as the Franco-Provencal, because it hiis peculiarities savoring both of French and Provencal. In the southwest of the territory to the south of the dividing line described is found a body of Gascon dialects, which in the iliddle Ages were treated as forming a speech foreign to Provencal. The number of persons speaking the modern Provencal dialects (including Gas- con) may be estimated at about S.000.000. Pro- vencal has often been called the lan<iue d'oc. as contrasted with French, called the lanyue d'oil; oc and oil were respectively the Provencal and the Old French words for 'yes.' The older speech, as represented in the lit- erary works of the twelfth century, had eight simple vowels, viz. open and close varieties of a, of e, and of o, the high front vowel i, and a rounded form of this last vowel, written « as in modern French. Among the more common diph- thongs were ic. no, ue, and att. The retention of the Latin diphthong au is a characteristic of Provencal as compared with the other Romance tongues. The consonantal sounds comprised the velar stops k (written r before a, o, and u, and at the end of a word, as in car, 'why.' cort, 'court,' and (/», as in que, 'that,' and quino, 'fifth') and </ (written (ju or more usually </ before a, o, as in garnir, guamir, 'to furnish.' g before u, as in agur, 'augury,' and gu before e, i, as in guerra, 'war') ; the velar nasal with a value like that of the English ng in 'ring' (written n before the fc and ,<7 sounds already described, as in tenc, 'he held') : the dental stops t and d. the former voice- less, the latter voiced; the voiceless sibilant s (written s and .w. the latter usually between vowels, as in haissar, 'to lower') ; the voiced sibilant z (written z or s. as in chauza or ehatixa) : the dental spirant th {th of English 'there;' written d, and after the PROVENgAL LANGUAGE. middle of the twelfth century ;, when it probably alreadv denoted the z sound, as in cspaza, ■sword') ; the dental nasal n; the palatalized n (written n, iyn, etc., and more commonly in later times nh, as in rcnhar, 'to reign') ; a well-pro- nounced r; an /; a palatalized I (written Ih or ill, as in aeolhir, acoilUr, 'to welcome') ; the la- bial stops i> (voiceless) and b (voiced) ; the la- bio-dental spirants f (voiceless) and v (voiced) ; the labial nasal m; the semivowels i/, u, >ii (rep- resented by 1, by oil, and by », when they stood in liiatus). More complex sounds are li (the English eh of 'chureh,' i.e. a voiceless dental sib- ilant, represented by eh in all positions, and by g oecasionallv in the final position, as in sapcha, •let him know,' tug or tuich, 'all') ; di, the voiced equivalent of the preceding sound (the English j, represented by ; and, before e or i, by g, as in yen, 'gentle,' jo'glar, 'minstrel'; the manuscripts often have graphic i for ;) ; a voiceless dental sibilant ts (written c, as in marce, and z or tz, especially in the final position, as in faz, futz, 'he does') ; "and a voiced dental sibilant dz (written z, as in dizem, 'we say') ; as in French, the last two sounds soon lost tlieir dental component. In the liteiary documents final n is often omitted, and, on the other hand, it is often added to words that should normally end in a vowel ; this ease of addition or omission has led to its being called the movable n. Even in the earliest times the Provencal region was diviilcd into a northern and a southern linguistic district, the northern marked bv the change of initial Latin ca- to cha- (cha'stel. 'castle'), the southern by the re-' tention of the k sound {ca&tcl) of the ca-. What most distinguishes Provencal as compared with French is the" fact that it keeps the Latin accented o of free syllables and Latin unaccented final 0, while French has changed them respective- ly to e and slurred or mute e (cf. Provencal amaf and Okl French amet. modern French aime; Pro- venral hona and French limine). In modern Pro- vencal the final unaccented a has become o, and palatalized I has tended to become the palatal semivowel y as in French. Nasalization of vowels has not at any time been a regular feature of the language. The word-accent has always fallen on the last or the next to the last syllable. In the older period there was a case distinction of nominative and accusative for substantives, ex- cept those coming from the Latin first declension; thus, nominative singular sor, 'sister.' accusative singular seror. nominative plural serors, accusa- tive plural serors : nominative singular earaliers, 'knight,' accusative singular cavalier, nominative plural cavalier, accusative plural cavaliers; but nominative and accusative singular dontna, 'lady,' nominative and accusative plural doniuas. In the modern speech the plural sign s is silent ex- cept in liaison. The tour conjugations of Latin persisted in Provencal: but only the first (in- finitive in -ar) and the fourth (infinitive in -i>) remained with sufficient vitality to attract new verbs to them. As and as occasionally and Portuguese, tlie Latin pluperfect indicative trantaverani, etc.) had in early documents an indicative value (either pluperfect or aorist, usuallv the latter) : it had oftener, however, the imperfect subjunctive or conditional force that has prevailed also in the Iberian Peninsula. Bibliography. Stengel, Die heiden iiltesten in the earliest Old French, even nowadays in Spanish