The Romance Languages [Paperback]

This comprehensive survey examines the Romance languages from a wide variety of perspectives.What is a Romance language? How is it related to other languages and what can it tell us about language in general? Combining philological expertise with insights drawn from modern theoretical linguistics, this study relates linguistic features to historical and sociological factors.What is a Romance language? How is it related to other languages and what can it tell us about language in general? Combining philological expertise with insights drawn from modern theoretical linguistics, this study relates linguistic features to historical and sociological factors.What is a Romance language? How is it related to other Romance languages, how did they all evolve, and what can they tell us about language in general? In this comprehensive survey Rebecca Posner, a distinguished Romance specialist, examines this group of languages from a wide variety of perspectives. Her analysis combines philological expertise with insights drawn from modern theoretical linguistics, and relates linguistic features to historical and sociological factors. Her discussion is extensively illustrated with new and original data, and an up-to-date and comprehensive bibliography is included.Introduction; Part I. The Similarities: 1. What is a Romance language I; 2. What is a Romance language II; 3. Latin and Romance; 4. Convergence, inter-influence and parallel development; Part II. The Differences: 5. How many Romance languages?; 6. When did the Romance languages differentiate?; 7. How did the Romance languages differentiate?; 8. Sociolinguistic factors. ...this book will undoubtedly take its place among the major works of synthesis on Romance languages. Suzanne Fleischman, Anthropological Linguistics ...Posner's The Romance Languages is a work of immense erudition and scholarship which will be most appreciated by those who have some prior knowledge of the history and development of this widespread langl“8