Abstract
This contribution seeks to describe the specific blends of the Old French that developed in Outre mer, that is, in the States founded by the Crusaders, either in Syria-Palestine or in the Greek-speaking world (Cyprus; Achaia; Morea). On the basis of what may be inferred from literary or documentary texts written in a Levantine context, as well as from Oriental documents (Greek; Armenian; Arabic and even Coptic), which contain information from witnesses about Old French, it is possible to state that the Old French of the poulains or of the gasmouloi was influenced greatly by its non-Romance surroundings (Arabic in Syria-Palestine; Greek in Cyprus, Achaia and Morea). However, the most striking features of Levantine Old French may be due to the fact that a new koiné arose based on Old French dialects that would not have otherwise come into contact in France. Moreover, the impact of contact with Italo-Romance dialects, Occitan, and Catalan, was to foment interlingual hybridization, the characteristics of which are perhaps even more significant than the occasional borrowing from an Arabic or Greek text.
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Aslanov, C. (2013). Crusaders’ Old French. In: Arteaga, D. (eds) Research on Old French: The State of the Art. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 88. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4768-5_11
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