Ibero-Romance?

[Beli Orao]

Did Castilian and Portuguese really share a proto-Ibero-Romance ancestor with Catalan, part of the Eastern Ibero-Romance (Occitano-Romance?) group? If so, are Astur-Leonese and Pyrenean-Mozarabic transitional groups between Eastern and Western Ibero-Romance? And which of the modern spoken varieties of Ibero-Romance can be considered most conservative phonologically? morphologically?

[Travis B.]

I would not call Catalan and Occitan Ibero-Romance myself...

[Beli Orao]

Didn't Occitano-Romance develop on the Iberian peninsula? Isn't it a transition from Western Ibero-Romance to Gallo-Romance?

[Dewrad]

Didn't Occitano-Romance develop on the Iberian peninsula?

Probably not.

Isn't it a transition from Western Ibero-Romance to Gallo-Romance?

Pretty much any romance variety anywhere is a transition from something to something else. That's why it's a dialect continuum.

[Travis B.]

Didn't Occitano-Romance develop on the Iberian peninsula? Isn't it a transition from Western Ibero-Romance to Gallo-Romance?

Old Occitan, which both Occitan and Catalan are descended, rather developed in southern France, and then was spread to eastern Spain and the Balearic Islands by settlers from there.

[Ziz]

Did Castilian and Portuguese really share a proto-Ibero-Romance ancestor with Catalan, part of the Eastern Ibero-Romance (Occitano-Romance?) group? If so, are Astur-Leonese and Pyrenean-Mozarabic transitional groups between Eastern and Western Ibero-Romance? And which of the modern spoken varieties of Ibero-Romance can be considered most conservative phonologically? morphologically?

Brazilian Portuguese is probably the most phonologically conservative. It maintains the /e o/~/ɛ ɔ/ distinction lost in most other Romance languages, and reduced vowels are less frequent and closer to the original unreduced vowel. In other words, /e o a/ reduce post-tonically to [ɪ ʊ ɐ] whereas in European Portuguese, it's more like /ɯ u ə/ in all unstressed syllables, with final /ɯ/ (written -e) being often dropped altogether.

That said, BP has even odder values than EP for its rr and initial and coda r. Also, in many places /t d/ are the affricates [tʃ dʒ] before /i ĩ/.

Morphologically, though BP retains the future subjunctive that was lost in Spanish, it has nonetheless heavily eroded the morphological distinction between the 2nd and 3rd person. In many varieties, the 2nd person is completely gone. EP has replaced vós with vocês in most areas, with the morphological loss of the 2nd person plural.

European Spanish, though, has lost neither tú nor vosotros, so... it's difficult to say.

[Beli Orao]

Brazilian Portuguese is probably the most phonologically conservative.

I have a hard time believing that any variety of Portuguese is more phonologically conservative than Castilian et. al. Have you taken into account Astur-Leonese and Pyrenean-Mozarabic varieties?

[linguoboy]

I have a hard time believing that any variety of Portuguese is more phonologically conservative than Castilian

Are you for serious? This is a language that has /lj/ > /h/ and /#pl/ > /j/, after all. Where the ten vowel phonemes of Latin are collapsed to five and the rich silibant system of Proto-Romance reduced to /s/. What about it do you find remotely "conservative"?

[Beli Orao]

Are you for serious? This is a language that has /lj/ > /h/ and /#pl/ > /j/, after all. Where the ten vowel phonemes of Latin are collapsed to five and the rich silibant system of Proto-Romance reduced to /s/. What about it do you find remotely "conservative"?

I've always heard (sorry for stealing your phrase, Eddy) that Castilian was a particularly conservative Romance language. What would you say is the most conservative Ibero-Romance variety?

[linguoboy]

I've always heard (sorry for stealing your phrase, Eddy) that Castilian was a particularly conservative Romance language. What would you say is the most conservative Ibero-Romance variety?

I would say it's not a question that can be adequately answered, even if you restrict yourself to one specific aspect of the language.

Take for instance the fates of the liquids. In Portuguese you have deletion of intervocalic /l/ and /n/ (sometimes with nasalisation of adjoining vowels, e.g. MANU(M) > mão) and simplification of /ll/ and /nn/. Initial Cl clusters palatalise, e.g. PLANU(M) > chão.

In Catalan, you have /l/ > /L/ in initial position, deletion of /n/ in final position, otherwise retention, plus /ll/ > /L/ and /nn/ > /J/. Initial clusters are retained, e.g. PLANU(M) > pla.

In Spanish you have retention of /l/ and /n/, /ll/ > /j/ and /nn/ > /J/. Initial clusters palatalise, e.g. e.g. PLANU(M) > llano.

So which is the most "conservative"? It all depends which changes you privilege. In a case like PLANUS, someone who only knows Latin would be most likely to recognise a cognate in [p5a], despite the fact that literally half the segments have been discarded. But which is more of a stretch, [S6~u~] or [j\ano]? And why?

[Beli Orao]

So which is the most "conservative"? It all depends which changes you privilege. In a case like PLANUS, someone who only knows Latin would be most likely to recognise a cognate in [p5a], despite the fact that literally half the segments have been discarded. But which is more of a stretch, [S6~u~] or [j\ano]? And why?

If you put it that way, wouldn't the Latin speaker be more likely to recognize Aragonese plan[o]?

[linguoboy]

So which is the most "conservative"? It all depends which changes you privilege. In a case like PLANUS, someone who only knows Latin would be most likely to recognise a cognate in [p5a], despite the fact that literally half the segments have been discarded. But which is more of a stretch, [S6~u~] or [j\ano]? And why?

If you put it that way, wouldn't the Latin speaker be more likely to recognize Aragonese plan[o]?

Doubtless. Now repeat this comparison for four or five thousand other lexemes and you may see a pattern developing.

[Octavià]

Old Occitan, which both Occitan and Catalan are descended, rather developed in southern France, and then was spread to eastern Spain and the Balearic Islands by settlers from there.

It looks like Occitano-Romance, a term coined by Pèire (Pierre) Bec in his book "La langue occitane" (1963, 1973), was a dialectal continuum from which Catalan emerged. But it would be also inexact to say that Catalan originated in "southern France" but rather in Old Catalonia, that is, the part of the country NE to the Llobregat-Cardener rivers conquered by the Frankish kings in the 8th century as part of their "Marca Hispanica".

And from toponymical evidence we know that in NW Catalonia (Pallars, Ribagorça) and the Aran valley (historically and linguistically not part of Catalonia) it was spoken a Pynenean-Mozarabic dialect with a strong Bascoid substrate at least until the 11th century before being replaced by Catalan and Gascon, two different varieties of Occitano-Romance.

[Octavià]

Did Castilian and Portuguese really share a proto-Ibero-Romance ancestor with Catalan, part of the Eastern Ibero-Romance (Occitano-Romance?) group?

No. While Castilian and Portuguese are part of Hispano-Romance (a better name than Ibero-Romance), Occitano-Romance is a different group to which Catalan belongs.

If so, are Astur-Leonese and Pyrenean-Mozarabic transitional groups between Eastern and Western Ibero-Romance?

The last remnant of Pyrenean-Mozarabic is Aragonese (now an endangered language only spoken in the N of Aragon), which can be considered as transitional variety betwen Hispano and Occitano-Romance, having Gascon to the N and Catalan to the E.

Asturian (or if you prefer, Astur-Leonese) is part of Hispano-Romance like Castilian itself and Galician-Portuguese. There're also other non-Castilian Spanish varieties from the northern area included by some linguists (but not by Asturians themselves) into Asturian. For political reasons, Spanish linguists tend to consider these varieties and even Asturian and Aragonese as being constitutive dialects of Spanish. This is much more like Italian linguists considering most Romance varieties spoken in Italy as "Italian dialects".

And which of the modern spoken varieties of Ibero-Romance can be considered most conservative phonologically? morphologically?

Definitely, this is Aragonese. Phonologically, it retains Latin intervocalic voiceless stops (e.g. formica, rete), which became voiced in the other Western Romance languages. And morphologically, it also keeps -b- in the imperfective forms of the 2nd and 3rd verb declensions (e.g. teniba).