Alonso Zamora Vicente, a precursor of Galician dialectology

Abstract

In 1951, 1952, 1953 and 1963 Alonso Zamora Vicente published articles about oral Galician, which were the first scientific works of dialectology for the whole of the Galician territory. This article analyzes pioneering studies of Zamora Vicente about the lisp and gheada and his dialectal classification of Galician. For this purpose, the beginnings of the scientific study of the Galician language at the University of Santiago de Compostela in the 1960s and the publication of the Galician Linguistic Atlas are surveyed. Finally, notes are given on his personal experience at the University in the 1940s, as a professor of Spanish Literature, when he traveled through Galicia to gather information for his pioneering work in Galician dialectology; and his admiration in the 1990s for the scientific development of Galician is explored thanks to the creation of the Galician Language Institute at the Faculty of Philology that exceeded what he had dreamed of 50 years ago