Romance Languages: A Historical Introduction

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Cambridge University Press, 24 jun 2010 - 377 páginas
Ti Alkire and Carol Rosen trace the changes that led from colloquial Latin to five major Romance languages, those which ultimately became national or transnational languages: Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. Trends in spoken Latin altered or dismantled older categories in phonology and morphology, while the regional varieties of speech, evolving under diverse influences, formed new grammatical patterns, each creating its own internal regularities. Documentary sources for spoken Latin show the beginnings of this process, which comes to full fruition in the medieval emergence of written Romance languages. This book newly distills the facts into an appealing program of study, including exercises, and makes the difficult issues clear, taking well motivated and sometimes innovative stands. It provides not only an essential guide for those new to the topic, but also a reliable compendium for the specialist.
 

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Índice

Introduction
1
1 The evolution of stressed vowels
5
2 Early changes in syllable structure and consonants
26
3 Consonant weakening and strengthening
44
4 New palatal consonants
56
raising yod effects and nasalization
77
the present indicative
95
systemic reorganization
127
 an overview
252
11 Formation of the Romance lexicon
287
12 Emergence of the Romance vernaculars
317
Notes
339
Glossary of linguistic terms
353
Suggestions for further reading
360
Works cited
364
Index
372

8 Noun and adjective morphology
185
Exercises
206

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Sobre el autor (2010)

Ti Alkire is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Romance Studies at Cornell University. Besides historical Romance linguistics, his research interests include stylistics, translation theory, and current variation in French and Italian. Carol Rosen is a Professor of Linguistics and Romance Studies at Cornell University. Her work in language typology, grammatical relations, and formal theory design lends a special character to her research in Romance linguistics, ranging over historical and contemporary topics.

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