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1 - Data, Theory, and Explanation: The View from Romance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2022

By
Adam Ledgeway  and
Martin Maiden
Edited by
Adam Ledgeway  and
Martin Maiden
Adam Ledgeway
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Martin Maiden
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

In this chapter the editors introduce the book and its aim of showing how the study of comparative and historical data from the Romance languages can illuminate general linguistics. After a brief presentation of the volume and its structure, the editors reflect on how their personal experiences of working with data from the Romance languages have led them to reflect on wider issues in general ling uistics. Recurrent themes in their work have been, respectively, morphosyntactic change (Ledgeway) and sound change and its morphological consequences (Maiden). Among the topics whose theoretical implications are explored are: parametric variation, universals, typological variation, pro-drop, word order, linguistic theory and philology, complementizer systems, the interaction of phonological and morphological factors in morphologization, the problem of defining a language family, and the perils of ‘standard language bias’ in the practice of historical linguistics. While these may appear a quite heterogeneous set of issues, they are treated in a way that prompts some major shared fundamental conclusions, in particular that Romance linguistics can make its most powerful contributions to general linguistics when Romance linguists exploit to the maximum the extraordinary wealth of historical and comparative data which the Romance languages and dialects offer them.

Keywords

Romance linguisticstheoretical linguisticshistorical linguisticscomparative linguisticsmorphosyntactic changesound changemorphologization
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Romance Linguistics , pp. 1 - 94
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

Selected References

Ledgeway, A. (2007a). ‘La posizione dell’aggettivo nella storia del napoletano’. In Bentley, D. and Ledgeway, A. (eds), Sui dialetti italoromanzi. Saggi in onore di Nigel B. Vincent (The Italianist 27, Special supplement 1). Norfolk: Biddles, 104–25.Google Scholar
Ledgeway, A. (2010b). ‘The clausal domain: CP structure and the left periphery’. In D’Alessandro, R., Ledgeway, A., and Roberts, I (eds), Syntactic Variation. The Dialects of Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 38–51.Google Scholar
Ledgeway, A. (2012a). From Latin to Romance: Morphosyntactic Typology and Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ledgeway, A. (2015a). ‘Parallels in Romance nominal and clausal microvariation’, Revue roumaine de linguistique 60: 105–27.Google Scholar
Ledgeway, A. (2017a). ‘Syntheticity and analyticity’. In Dufter, A. and Stark, E. (eds), Manual of Romance Morphosyntax and Syntax (Manuals of Romance Linguistics). Berlin: De Gruyter, 837–84.Google Scholar
Ledgeway, A. (2020b). ‘The north–south divide: parameters of variation in the clausal domain’, L’Italia Dialettale 81: 29–77.Google Scholar
Maiden, M. (1991). Interactive Morphonology. Metaphony in Italy. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Maiden, M. (1992). ‘Irregularity as a determinant of morphological change’, Journal of Linguistics 28: 285–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maiden, M. (2013). ‘Semi-autonomous morphology: a problem in the history of the Italian (and Romanian) verb’. In Cruschina, S., Maiden, M., and Smith, J. C. (eds), The Boundaries of Pure Morphology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 24–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maiden, M. (2016a). ‘Romanian, Istro-Romanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Aromanian’. In Bentley, D. and Ledgeway, A. (eds), Sui dialetti italoromanzi. Saggi in onore di Nigel B. Vincent (The Italianist 27, Special supplement 1). Norfolk: Biddles, 91–125.Google Scholar
Maiden, M. (2016b). ‘Italo-Romance metaphony and the Tuscan diphthongs’. Transactions of the Philological Society 114: 198–232.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maiden, M. (2018). The Romance Verb. Morphomic Structure and Diachrony. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maiden, M. (2021a). ‘The morphome’. Annual Review of Linguistics 7: 89–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maiden, M. (2021b). ‘Establishing contact: Slavonic influence on Romanian morphology?’ Journal of Language Contact 14: 24–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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