Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T07:41:55.376Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Origins of Romance

from Part One - What Is a Language?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2022

By
Nigel Vincent
Edited by
Adam Ledgeway  and
Martin Maiden
Adam Ledgeway
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Martin Maiden
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Get access

Summary

This chapter explores the relation between textual attestation and comparative reconstruction in understanding the development of the Romance languages from Latin. It argues that both are required for a full understanding of the changes that have taken place, and that there are no grounds for prioritizing one above the other. The chapter reviews the debate around the Dictionnaire Étymologique Roman project and discussions concerning the periodization of Latin. It examines the relation between changes that emerge as a result of the internally motivated processes of grammaticalization and reanalysis and those induced by contact and borrowing. Attention is given to the special circumstances in which the emergent Romance vernaculars co-exist with and borrow from the standardized model of Classical Latin. Case studies discussed in this chapter include the development of grammatical gender and gender classes, perfect periphrases with the auxiliaries ‘be’ and ‘have’, constructions involving the verb ‘go’, the evolution of control and complementation with ‘want’ verbs, and the iteration of finite complementizers in the patterns which fall under the heading of recomplementation.

Keywords

reconstructionattestationlanguage contact and borrowinggrammaticalizationgenderperiphrasiscontrolrecomplementationLatin (chronology of)
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Romance Linguistics , pp. 97 - 122
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Selected References

Adams, J. (2013). Social Variation and the Latin Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buchi, E. and Schweickard, W. (2011). ‘Ce qui oppose vraiment deux conceptions de l’étymologie romane. Réponse à Alberto Vàrvaro et contribution à un débat méthodologique en cours’, Revue de Linguistique Romane 75: 628–35.Google Scholar
Corominas, J. and Pascual, J. A. (1991–97). Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar
Dardel, R. (1965). Recherches sur le genre roman des substantifs de la troisième déclinaison. Geneva: Librairie Droz.Google Scholar
Drinka, B. (2017). Language Contact in Europe. The Periphrastic Perfect through History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dworkin, S. N. (2016). ‘Do Romanists need to reconstruct Proto-Romance? The case of the Dictionnaire Étymologique Roman (DÉRom) project’, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 132: 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elcock, W. D. (1960). The Romance Languages. London: Faber & Faber.Google Scholar
Hall, R. A. (1974). Proto-Romance Phonology. New York: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Haverling, G. (2016). ‘On the use of habeo and the perfect participle in earlier and later Latin’. In Adams, J. and Vincent, N. (eds), Early and Late Latin: Continuity or Change? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 180–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lass, R. (2018). [Review of Buchi and Schweickard (eds) (2014) and (2016)], Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 134: 580–87.Google Scholar
Ledgeway, A. (2012). From Latin to Romance: Morphosyntactic Typology and Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ledgeway, A. and Maiden, M. (eds) (2016). The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loporcaro, M. (2011a). ‘Syllable, segment and prosody’. In Maiden, M., Smith, J. C., and Ledgeway, A. (eds), The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages. Vol I: Structures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 50–108.Google Scholar
Loporcaro, M. (2018) Gender from Latin to Romance: History, Geography, Typology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Maiden, M. (2016a). ‘Romanian, Istro-Romanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Aromanian’. In Ledgeway, A. and Maiden, M. (eds), The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 91–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyer-Lübke, W. (1935). Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.Google Scholar
Pfister, M. and Schweickard, W. (1979–). Lessico etimologico italiano. Mainz: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur.Google Scholar
Rosén, H. (1999). Latine Loqui: Trends and Directions in the Crystallization of Classical Latin. Munich: Wilhelm Fink.Google Scholar
Sornicola, R. (2011). ‘Romance linguistics and historical linguistics: reflections on synchrony and diachrony’. In Maiden, M., Smith, J. C., and Ledgeway, A. (eds), The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages. Vol I: Structures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–49.Google Scholar
Varvaro, A. (2011). ‘La ‘rupture étymologique’ del DÉRom. Ancora sul metodo dell’etimologia romanza’, Revue de linguistique romane 75: 623–27.Google Scholar
Weiss, M. (2017). [Review of Buchi and Schweickard (2014)], Kratylos 62: 127–53.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×