Methodology

The Interactive atlas of Occitan intonation website contains a whole series of oral materials in audio and video format intended to provide the basis for further in-depth studies of Occitan prosody. These materials are organized according to the standard geographical dialect areas designated for Occitan, namely the Northern Occitan (with the Lemosin, Auvernhàs and Vivaroalpenc dialects), the Meridional Occitan (with the Lengadocian and Provençal dialects), the Gascon.

You will find below a list of the localities of the linguistic domain where surveys have been carried out. You can click on those in blue in order to access the data. The other ones are not yet available on line.

In NORTHERN OCCITAN:

- in lemosin dialect (Cf. dialectal map):

in Peiregòrd:
in High Lemosin region:

- in auvernhàs dialect (Cf. dialectal map):

in Marjarida / Margeride:
in Cantal:

- in vivaroalpenc dialect (Cf. dialectal map):

in the Champsaur region:
in the region of Briançon:
in the Occitan Valleys of Piemont region in Italy:
- in Val Cluson / Valle Chisone (Provincia di Torino):
- in Val Varacha / Valle Varaita (Provincia di Cuneo):
- in Val Maira / Valle Maira (Provincia di Cuneo):
- in Val Estura / Valle Stura (Provincia di Cuneo):
in the region of Niça / Nice:

In MERIDIONAL OCCITAN:

- in provençal dialect (Cf. dialectal map):

in maritime Provence:
in central Provence:

- in lengadocian dialect (Cf. dialectal map):

in Roèrgue:
in oriental Lengadòc:
in the region of Tolosa / Toulouse:
in the region of Agen:
in Low Carcin / Quercy:
in High Carcin / Quercy:
in Cantal:

In GASCON(Cf. dialectal map):

in Bearn / Béarn:
in Lomanha / Lomagne:
in Savés / Savès:
in Basadés / Bazadais:
in Shalòssa / Chalosse:
in Val d'Aran:
in Bigòrra Baisha / Basse Bigorre:
in the Lanas / Landes:
in Armanhac / Armagnac:
in the region of Tolosa / Toulouse:

More surveys are to be made in other localities, in particular in order to cover better the lemosin, auvernhàs and provençal dialects, but also the vivarese and lengadocian ones.

Regarding the selection of locales, we use the following criteria:

– Representation of the main dialectal areas and, if it is possible, subdialectal areas

– At the end, we want to have a mean of 2 locales (generally, little villages in the countryside) in each department
– Practicity of knowing between surveyer and informers from the zone and/or disponibility of informers.

In terms of content, for each population center selected, data was obtained by means of three main methods:

A. Intonation survey

Examples of different types of utterance (48 contours per locale) were taken from among the responses to an intonation survey. This survey was based on that used by Prieto (2001) and is designed to evoke everyday situations. It is an inductive method in which the researcher presents the subject with a series of situations (such as “You go into a shop you have never been in before and ask the shop assistant if they sell mandarine”) and then asks him or her to respond accordingly. This method is especially useful because it allows the researcher to obtain a wide range of intonation contours that are difficult to obtain with other methods.

To date, surveys have been executed in the abovementioned locales, two in the limousine dialect area and two in the languedocian one. The informers are generally people old enough to have occitan as their first language, but not too much so that their voice be clear enough to be analyzed (see informers' personal data). We seek preferently women, but it is not always possible because of the actual sociolinguistic situation of the occitan language.

The survey consisted of approximately 48 situations, each intended to elicit a particular type of utterance. Utterances were organized as follows (see intonation survey for a description of the type of sentence elicited in each section of the survey):

Declaratives

Absolute interrogatives

Partial interrogatives

Reiterative questions

Requests and orders

Vocatives

The intonation pattern for each utterance is described in a file which contains the fundamental frequency contour as measured using the Pitchworks program, the audio file, a description of the melodic curve, the ToBI prosodic labeling (see Oc-ToBI), an interpretation (in Occitan) of the utterance, and a plot of the intonation contour.

B. Map Tasks

The Map Task is a validated technique in which two subjects cooperate to complete a specified task. It is designed to cause the subjects to produce particular interrogative patterns. Each of the two subjects has a map of an imaginary place marked with drawings. A route is marked on the map of one of the two participants (to see this version of the map, use this link: mapa-giver), and that person has the role of the instruction-giver. The version of the same map held by the other participant (see mapa-follower) differs from that of the instruction-giver in that a few drawings are agenced in a different way, and most of all, the map does not show the route to be followed. The second participant therefore has to ask the instruction-giver questions in order to be able to reproduce the same route on his or her own map.

For the moment, 3 records have been obtained thus far by means of this method. An audio recording of the performance of the Map Task and its corresponding orthographic transcription (see transcription criteria) can be accessed for each locale. The participating subjects were persons with the same caracteristics as for the intonation survey.

C. Videotaped conversations

For each locale, you can find an extract of video materials and the corresponding orthographical transcription (see transcription criteria). These extracts last three minuts, and they were chosen out of free conversations between informers from the locale.

People surveyed

Contact

Atlàs interactiu de l’intonacion de l’occitan
Departament de Traducció i Ciències del Llenguatge
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
08018 Barcelona
Corrièr-e: rafeu.sichel@upf.edu