Abstract

This study attempts an approach to a linguistic description of the Valencian area nort of the La Nau cape. The paper tries to analize the highest number of variables in order to ascertain the dialectal adscription of this area, which shows a number of common features with Majorcan. In fact, the great migration of islanders into the Marina Alta in the early 17th century was the historical event influencing the dialectal variety of the towns analyzed. However, a number of features specific to this area can be identified which do not belong to Balearic varieties. The paper includes ten maps showing the most interesting phonetic, morphological and lexical traits of the areas; the last map also establishes a number of subareas depending on the degree of Balearic influence, as a result of a preestablished scale. The conclusion is that the speech of the towns studied reflects a rich, varied and highly conservative linguistic variety.