Correspondencias léxicas entre a fala de Cáceres e o portugués

Abstract

In the Valley of Xálima three closely-related Romance varieties are spoken, referred to collectively as the fala. Since their “rediscovery” about a quarter of a century ago, the controversy over their linguistic affiliation has been intense. One position which claims that the fala has a Galician origin relies on historical arguments (medie­val repopulation processes) and linguistic ones (alleged similarities to Galician not shared by the neighbouring languages). In 2013 the chief exponent of the Galician ties of the varieties spoken at Xálima, Dr. Xosé-Henri­que Costas, published a book bringing together several papers on diverse aspects of the fala including a study of dozens of lexical items which according to Costas are exclusive to the fala (such as archaisms) or paralle­ls between the fala and Galician that are found in nei­ther Portuguese nor Spanish. However, careful reading of this text revealed that several of the forms cited are well-known in dialectal Portuguese, which points to the need to check the validity of the whole list. The aim of this paper is to carry out a systematic study of the presence or absence in Portuguese and Spanish dialect materials of these allegedly specific terms in the fala. The results of the analysis confirm the initial hypothesis: a significant number of the forms proposed by Costas are in use in Portuguese dialects (not only those adjacent to the Va­lley of Xálima) or even in standard Portuguese. There are also matches with dialect varieties of Extremadura and Salamanca. The conclusions of this paper highlight the need to take into account dialect data when examining the linguistic features of the fala as a necessary precau­tion which will help to make a scientific debate over its origin all the more robust.