A thousand unimportant years? The ethnical preffixes “gallo” and “franco” and the message behind their use: mono or polycausality?

Abstract

To find convincing explanations for linguistic changes that have occurred in periods that prevent us direct access can not do without either one potential factor. It has even been proved that it is polycausal explanations that are the most promising. But it is clear that in many cases this rule has not been followed. The overestimation of the role played by the substrate and therefore the role of antiquity to explain the birth of French reflected in the fact that ethno-prefix "Gallo" has established itself as dedicated term, which is not the case for its correlative "Franco-." The same phenomenon also applies to other linguistic problems such as the birth of protoromansch.