Pierre Bec

Pierre Bec (in Occitan "Pèire Bèc"), is an Occitan poet and linguist. Born in Paris, 1921, he spent his childhood in Comenge, where he learnt Occitan. He has been deported to Germany from 1943 al 1945. After coming back, he studied in Paris, where he graduated in 1959. He was one of the founders of the "Institut d'Estudis Occitans" (Institute for Occitan studies, IEO), and its president as well from 1961 on.

He is also titular professor at Poitiers university and assistant director of the "Centre d'Études Supérieures de Civilisation Médiévale" (Centre for high studies in medieval civilisation). He is considered one of the most important specialists in Occitan dialectology and in mediaeval Occitan literature. His activity is distributed among Occitanist politics, philological research and literary creation. He collaborated with publications like "Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale" , "Revue de Linguistique Romane", "Estudis Romànics", "Oc".

In 1982 he took part in the Linguistic Normalisation commission for Aranese, with Jacme Taupiac and Miquèu Grosclaude: they established some linguistics norms, officialised in 1983, following IEO's indications for Gascon.

Works

Literature

* "Petite anthologie de la lyrique occitane du Moyen Âge" (1954)
* "Les saluts d'amour du troubadour Arnaud de Mareuil" (1961)
* "La langue occitane" (1963)
* "Manuel pratique de Philologie romane" (1970-1971)
* "Burlesque et obscénité chez les troubadours" (1984)
* "Chants d'amour des femmes troubadours" (1995)
* "Au briu de l'estona" (1955) poesia
* "Sonets barròcs entà Iseut" (1979) poesia
* "Lo hiu tibat" (1978) novel·la
* "Sebastian" (1980) novel·la
* "Raconte d’una mort tranquilla" (1993) narració
* "Contes de l'unic" (1977) narració

Linguistics

Lingüística

* "Manuel pratique d'occitan moderne" (Picard, 1973; 2e édition 1983)

* "Manuel pratique de philologie romane" (Picard, 1970 (vol. 1), 1971 (vol. 2) - reedit. 2000)

* "Les Interférences linguistiques entre gascon et languedocien dans les parlers du Comminges et du Couserans" (PUF, 1968): Essai d'aréologie systématique.

Importance for Gallo-Cisalpine language(s)

As a linguist, Pierre Bec stated, within his "Manuel pratique de Philologie romane" (2nd volume, p.316) that some kind of diachronical unity holds between Rhaeto-Romance languages (i.e. Romansh, Friulian and Ladin) and Northern Italian or Cisalpine ones (Insubric, Eastern Lombard, Piedmontese, Venetan, Emilano-Romagnol and Ligurian). This issue has been further investigated by the Australian linguist Geoffrey Hull.

ee also

*Occitan
*Aranese
*Gallo-Italic languages
*Geoffrey Hull