The influence of the political border between France and Spain in the basque dailect of Garazi valley

Abstract

The aim of this work is to measure the linguistic influence of the political border in Basque. For that purpose, we have analysed the dialect of Garazi valley, because the border between Spain and France divides this territory: the town Luzaide is in the Spanish State, and the rest of the towns are in the French State. We have considered the social variables Geography and Age, and 7 phonetical/phonological and morphological linguistic variables. Our hypothesis is that among the elders we have a linguistic continuum in both sides of the border. Nevertheless, the continuum is getting broken among the youngest people, because of the influence of French/Spanish and the supralocal varieties called Iparraldeko batua/ Hegoaldeko batua. Initial hypothesis has been proved. We have conduced semi-guided and free interviews that lasted one hour and a half or two hours with 48 informants. To analyse the data, we have carried out the Mixed Logistic Regression statistical analysis with R program.