ABSTRACT
In the last chapter we looked at the progressive dialectalisation of the Latin of Gaul in the centuries following the collapse of the Roman Empire. Now we shall examine the beginnings of the long process whereby French passed from ‘dialect’ to ‘language’, from ‘vernacular’ to ‘standard’. In Haugen’s analysis (see above, pp. 25-6), the first phase of standardisation involves the ‘selection’ from among the dialects spoken over a given geographical area of one which is to form the basis of the future standard language. The ‘selection’ of vernacular norms is a ‘social’ process entailing modifications to the status of the varieties concerned.
