DIALECTAL ORONYMS AND HISTORICAL MORPHOSYNTAX: THE METHOD OF MENÉNDEZ PIDAL AND ADVERBIAL FORMATIONS WITH <em>CIMA</em> AND <em>SOMO</em>

Abstract

We owe to Ramón Menéndez Pidal the design of a comparative method that brings together present-day toponyms and Medieval Ibero-Romance lexical dialectal areas. In this contribution, we claim the method can be applied to grammatical sequences, such as the locative adverbials formed from the oronyms cima / somo [‘summit’]. After tracing the geographic extension of these oronyms and their related terms, we compare it with the location of those adverbials as attested in Medieval charters and literary texts: the uniformity of both distributions is very high, thus supporting the validity of the method and serving to spur on research on Spanish historical (morpho) syntax from a dialectal standpoint.