Formas tipo cantanon/cantano: más datos sobre la convergencia geolectal galaico-asturleonesa

Abstract

Based on toponymic data, Joseph-Maria Piel established a linguistic area, the Gallaecia Magna, which he considered the territory where Galician and Portuguese were born. This region occupied a wide coastal belt extending, approximately, from Aveiro (Portugal) to Xixón (Asturias). Interestingly, nowadays the Easternmost part of this territory speaks Asturian. While the historians of Galician and Portuguese have stressed the relations between these two languages, Asturian- Leonese has been traditionally grouped with Castilian; however, the multitude of dialectal features shared by both Galician and Asturian-Leonese have been generally underestimated. These characteristics can only be understood if the existence of intense social and historical relationships among the inhabitants of these areas are considered. One linguistic feature shared by both languages that demonstrate these social links is the expression of the 3Pl in the Past Perfective Indicative of the Galician and Asturian verbs, i.e. forms such as cantano ‘they sang/have sung’. Features like this permit to group both languages together against Portuguese and Castilian and help to illuminate the linguistic history of the Northwestern Iberian Peninsula. Besides, the historical analysis of this variable could have interesting conclusions for the theory of morphology.