Trajectoire diachronique d'un dialecte composite : le niçois
Résumé
In this paper, I analyze the inconsistent diachronic evolution, the hybrid nature and the originality of Niçois, the Occitan dialect of Nice. A new monolingual dictionary of Niçois is being elaborated. Although thoroughly descriptive of any kind of variation, it needs a standard for its lemmas and its metalanguage. In order to specify what should be the general philosophy of the standard, I demonstrate that it is insufficient to define Niçois as a dialect of Provençal and that the latest propositions for its standardization tend to sacrifice authenticity for the sake of regularity. The two main sections of the paper consist in a commented collection of data. They show that Niçois has developed as a marginal dialect in which Provençal and Alpine evolutions have taken place simultaneously and in a disorderly way. It is the particular combination of both these evolutions with another set of more specific treatments that forms the very essence of Niçois. Therefore, an acceptable standardization must not arbitrarily modify the form of Niçois words; it should only determine a stable graphic system and the principles of lemmatization when cases of free variation are encountered.