Catalan: a Comprehensive Grammar

CATALAN: A COMPREHENSIVE GRAMMAR Catalan: A Comprehensive Grammar is a complete reference guide to modern Catalan grammar, presenting an accessible and systematic description of the modern language. The Grammar reflects the current reality of Catalan by acknowledging regional diversity and features Balearic and Valencian varieties alongside the language used in the Barcelona region. The combined specialist knowledge of the author team ensures a balanced coverage of modern Catalan. Features include: • comprehensive coverage of all parts of speech . a wealth of authentic examples illustrating language points • attention to areas of particular difficulty for those whose first language is English • full cross-referencing • detailed index Catalan: A Comprehensive Grammar will remain the standard reference work for years to come. Max W. Wheeler is Reader in Linguistics at the University of Sussex. Alan Yates is Tiles Balears' Professor of Catalan at the University of Sheffield. Nicolau Dols is Professor Titular d'Escola Universitaria at the University of the Balearic Islands. CATALAN: A COMPREHENSIVE GRAMMAR Max W. Wheeler, Alan Yates and Nicolau Dols London and New York First published 1999 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon , Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group Transferred to Digital Printing 2006 © 1999 Max W. Wheeler, Alan Yates and Nicolau Dols Typeset in Times by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and record.ng, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Wheeler, Max. Catalan: a comprehensive grammar / Max W. Wheeler, Alan Yates and Nicolau Dols. p. cm.—(Routledge grammars) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Catalan language-- Grammar. I. Yates, Alan. II. Dols. Nicolau, 1967- . III. Title. IV. Series. PC3823.W44 1999 98^17194 449'.982421—dc21 CIP ISBN 0^115 20777-0 (hbk) ISBN 0 -415-10342-8 (pbk) Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent We dedicate this volume to the memory of Joan Gili (1907-1998) CONTENTS Preface ix Acknowledgements xvii Map of Catalan-speaking areas and dialects xviii PART I: NOUN PHRASE CONSTITUENTS 1 Gender of nouns 3 2 Plural of nouns and formation of derived nouns 30 3 Articles 43 4 Adjectives 71 5 Comparison 95 6 Demonstratives 106 7 Possessives 114 8 Miscellaneous adjectives and pronouns (quantifiers and indefinites) 121 9 Nominalizations via articles 143 10 Numerals 150 11 Personal pronouns (stressed) 160 12 Pronominal clitics (weak object pronouns) 167 PART II: ADVERBS, PREPOSITIONS, AND CONJUNCTIONS 13 Adverbs and adverbials 221 14 Prepositions 242 15 Conjunctions 268 PART III: VERBS 16 Morphology of the verb 283 17 Use of indicative (non-continuous) verb forms 340 18 Progressive constructions and other verbal periphrases 363 19 The subjunctive 373 20 The infinitive 393 21 Participles 407 22 The gerund 416 23 Pronominal verbs 427 viii Contents PART IV: SENTENCE TYPES: SIMPLE AND COMPLEX 24 Interjections and ideophones 449 25 Simple sentences and grammatical relations 458 26 Negation 474 27 Interrogation and exclamation 486 28 Imperative utterances 501 29 Passive and impersonal sentences 505 30 Copular sentences (ser, estar, etc.) 521 31 Relative clauses 532 32 Complement clauses 550 33 Adverbial clauses 557 34 Conditional sentences 575 PART V: INFORMATION STRUCTURE AND WORD ORDER 35 Cleft sentences 591 36 Word order 599 37 Spelling, accent rules, and punctuation 610 Further reading 621 Bibliography 623 Index 625 PREFACE This book is designed to provide an up-to-date, systematic description of the morphology and syntax of the modern standard Catalan language. In prepar• ing it we have had in mind the needs of pre-university and university students, teachers, translators and those with a private or professional interest in the language as it is currently used by Catalan speakers in educated conversation and in the normal range of written registers. We note with pleasure the appearance of Jenny Brumme's Praktische Grammatik der katalanischen Sprache (Wilhelmsfeld: Egert, 1997); we coincide with the aims and scope of this work in offering a substantial grammar of Catalan, in a language other than Spanish or Catalan itself, designed expressly for non-natives. Brumme's work was published when the present volume was in the final stages of prep• aration, so we have been unable to make use of it in our own work. We have, of course, relied considerably on the extensive existing literature on Catalan grammar, though we have developed some topics which have not previously been covered in depth. We have also given particular emphasis to areas of usage which are likely to be difficult for users starting from English. One assumption with which we have worked is that those who use this book, whether for reference or for systematic study, will already have acquired some basic familiarity with Catalan, either through immediate con• tact and 'total immersion' or, more probably, through working with various methods (in the medium of English, Spanish or Catalan itself) for induction in the language. This Comprehensive Grammar is thus conceived as an ex• tension or complement to a fairly wide repertoire of basic study materials, a sample of which is provided in the Further reading list. Another, related, assumption is that users of this book will be acquainted with basic traditional grammatical concepts and terminology; we aim to explain any more special• ized concepts and terms as we go along. Such explanations can be located via the index. Catalan is a member of the Romance family of languages which are mod• ern forms of the Latin language which spread from Rome to much of Europe in the wake of the Roman empire around the beginning of the common era. As its geographical position might suggest, Catalan shares several features with its nearest Romance neighbours: Italian, Sardinian, Occitan, Spanish, while being distinct in several respects from all of them. The map on page xviii shows where Catalan is spoken and identifies the main dialect divisions. The second section of this Preface briefly discusses 'normative' and 'standard' Catalan in relation to the position of the language in the twentieth century x Preface and insofar as these important concepts affect criteria and procedures followed in the body of this book. We do not attempt to supply here any history of Catalan as a member of the Romance family of languages, or any discussion of the mightily complex issues of Catalan as a stateless language in post-Renaissance Europe, in contact/conflict with more powerful lin• guistic neighbours (primarily Spanish, but also French, and Italian). These sociolinguistic and politico-linguistic factors have been of great moment in shaping the historical evolution of Catalan and, especially in the twentieth century, in affecting the politics associated with community self-awareness centred in linguistic difference. The territories where Catalan is natively spoken are: (1) The Principality of Andorra. (2) In France: almost all of the departement of Pyrenees-Orientales. (3) In Spain: (i) Catalonia (under the autonomous government, the Generality, of Catalonia), except for the Gascon-speaking Val d'Aran. (ii) The eastern fringe of Aragon. (iii) Most of the Comunitat Valenciana, excepting some regions in the west and south which have been Aragonese/Spanish-speaking since at least the eighteenth century. (iv) El Carxe, a small area of the province of Murcia, settled in the nineteenth century. (v) The Balearic Islands: Majorca and Minorca (Balearic stricto sensu), Ibiza (Eivissa) and Formentera (strictly Illes Pitiuses). (4) In Italy: the port of Alghero in Sardinia. A conservative estimate of the number of native speakers of Catalan is about 6.5 million (based on the 1991 census in Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearics, with estimates for the remaining territories). Within Spain a further three million claim to understand Catalan. Partly as a result of the incorpor• ation of Catalan locally into the education system, there are within Spain increasing numbers of second-language speakers. STATUS OF CATALAN The status, situation, and prospects of the Catalan language are significantly different in each of the territories enumerated above, though each of those in Spain shares, in some way, the consequences of Catalan's having been for centuries an oppressed minority language. For a multiplicity of reasons, cul• tural decline and loss of prestige affected Catalan from the sixteenth century onwards. The defeat of the Catalans in the war of the Spanish Succession (1714) initiated a series of measures extending throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, imposing the use of Spanish in public life, for example, Preface xi in accounts, in preaching, in the theatre, in the criminal courts, in education, in legal documents, in the civil registers, on the telephone. In the twentieth century these measures were mostly repeated, and supplemented by the imposition of Spanish in the catechism, by prohibition of the teaching of Catalan, and by sanctions against persons refusing to use Spanish. The Sec• ond Republic (1931-39) to a large extent removed these restrictions, but Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War was followed in 1940 by a total ban on the public use of Catalan. This ban was subject to a series of relaxations from the 1950s onwards, allowing (subject to censorship applied generally in Spain) the publication of increasing numbers of Catalan books from the 1960s, though Catalan remained excluded from nearly all public institutions until Spain's adoption of a democratic constitution in 1978.

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