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Gender from Latin to Romance

Author: Michele Loporcaro

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 415

ISBN-13: 0199656541

This book explores grammatical gender in the Romance languages and dialects and its evolution from Latin. Michele Loporcaro investigates the significant diversity found in the Romance varieties in this regard; he draws on data from the Middle Ages to the present from all the Romance languages and dialects, discussing examples from Romanian to Portuguese and crucially also focusing on less widely-studied varieties such as Sursilvan, Neapolitan, and Asturian. The investigation first reveals that several varieties display more complex systems than the binary masculine/feminine contrast familiar from modern French or Italian. Moreover, it emerges that traditional accounts, whereby neuter gender was lost in the spoken Latin of the late Empire, cannot be correct: instead, the neuter gender underwent a range of different transformations from Late Latin onwards, which are responsible for the different systems that can be observed today across the Romance languages. The volume provides a detailed description of many of these systems, which in turns reveals a wealth of fascinating data, such as varieties where 'husbands' are feminine and others where 'wives' are masculine; dialects in which nouns overtly mark gender, but only in certain syntactic contexts; and one Romance variety (Asturian) in which it appears that grammatical gender has split into two concurrent systems. The volume will appeal to linguists from a range of backgrounds, including Romance linguistics, historical linguistics, typology, and morphosyntax, and is also of relevance to those working in sociology, gender studies, and psychology.

Social Variation and the Latin Language

Author: J. N. Adams

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-05-23

Total Pages: 957

ISBN-13: 1107354692

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Languages show variations according to the social class of speakers and Latin was no exception, as readers of Petronius are aware. The Romance languages have traditionally been regarded as developing out of a 'language of the common people' (Vulgar Latin), but studies of modern languages demonstrate that linguistic change does not merely come, in the social sense, 'from below'. There is change from above, as prestige usages work their way down the social scale, and change may also occur across the social classes. This book is a history of many of the developments undergone by the Latin language as it changed into Romance, demonstrating the varying social levels at which change was initiated. About thirty topics are dealt with, many of them more systematically than ever before. Discussions often start in the early Republic with Plautus, and the book is as much about the literary language as about informal varieties.

The Romance Languages

Author: Rebecca Posner

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1996-09-05

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9780521281393

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What is a Romance language? How is one Romance language related to others? 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, both synchronic and diachronic. She relates linguistic features to historical and sociological factors, and teases out those elements which can be attributed to divergence from a common source and those which indicate convergence towards a common aim. Her discussion is extensively illustrated with new and original data, and an up-to-date and comprehensive bibliography is included. This volume will be an invaluable and authoritative guide for students and specialists alike.

¿Por qué? 101 Questions About Spanish

Author: Judy Hochberg

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2016-10-20

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1474227937

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¿Por qué? 101 Questions about Spanish is for anyone who wants to understand how Spanish really works. Standard textbooks and grammars describe the "what" of Spanish - its vocabulary, grammar, spelling, and pronunciation - but ¿Por qué? explains the "why". Judy Hochberg draws on linguistic principles, Hispanic culture, and language history to answer questions such as: Why are so many Spanish verbs irregular? - Why does Spanish have different ways to say "you"? - Why is h silent? - Why doesn't Spanish use apostrophes? - Why does Castilian Spanish have the th sound? Packed with information, guidance, and links to further research, ¿Por qué? is an accessible study guide that is suitable for Spanish students, instructors, native speakers, and the general reader. It is a valuable supplementary text for serious students of Spanish at all levels, from beginning to advanced. ¿Por qué? also covers topics usually left to specialized books, including the evolution of Spanish, how children and adults learn Spanish, and the status of languages that co-exist with Spanish, from Catalan to Spanish sign language to the indigenous languages of Latin America.

The Romance Languages

Author: Martin Harris

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2003-12-16

Total Pages: 517

ISBN-13: 1134712294

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Available again, this book discusses nine Romance languages in context of their common Latin origins and then in individual studies. The final chapter is devoted to Romance-based Creole languages; a genuine innovation in a work of this kind.

Sexing the World

Author: Anthony Corbeill

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2015-01-18

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1400852463

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From the moment a child in ancient Rome began to speak Latin, the surrounding world became populated with objects possessing grammatical gender—masculine eyes (oculi), feminine trees (arbores), neuter bodies (corpora). Sexing the World surveys the many ways in which grammatical gender enabled Latin speakers to organize aspects of their society into sexual categories, and how this identification of grammatical gender with biological sex affected Roman perceptions of Latin poetry, divine power, and the human hermaphrodite. Beginning with the ancient grammarians, Anthony Corbeill examines how these scholars used the gender of nouns to identify the sex of the object being signified, regardless of whether that object was animate or inanimate. This informed the Roman poets who, for a time, changed at whim the grammatical gender for words as seemingly lifeless as "dust" (pulvis) or "tree bark" (cortex). Corbeill then applies the idea of fluid grammatical gender to the basic tenets of Roman religion and state politics. He looks at how the ancients tended to construct Rome's earliest divinities as related male and female pairs, a tendency that waned in later periods. An analogous change characterized the dual-sexed hermaphrodite, whose sacred and political significance declined as the republican government became an autocracy. Throughout, Corbeill shows that the fluid boundaries of sex and gender became increasingly fixed into opposing and exclusive categories. Sexing the World contributes to our understanding of the power of language to shape human perception.

Proto-Romance Morphology

Author: Robert A. Hall, Jr.

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1984-01-01

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 9027280142

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This volume deals with the reconstructed morphology of Proto-Romance. It is the third in a series by this author. The first volume (1974, Elsevier) deals with the external history of the Romance languages: the conditions under which they developed, were used, and (in some instances) went out of use. The second volume (1976, Elsevier) treats the phonology of their common source, Proto-Romance. Together these three volumes aim to cast light, not only on Popular Latin speech by means of its surviving elements in the Romance languages, but also on the extent to which the comparative method can be regarded as valid and useful in instances where no attestations are available for a language as closely related to the reconstructed proto-language as high Classical Latin was to Proto-Romance.

Vulgar Latin

Author: Jozsef Herman

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2010-11-01

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 9780271041773

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Vulgar Latin refers to those features of Latin language that were not recommended by the classical grammarians but existed nonetheless. Although Vulgar Latin is not well documented, evidence can be deduced from details of the spelling, grammar, and vocabulary that occur in texts of the later Roman Empire, late antiquity, and the early Middle Ages. Every aspect of Vulgar Latin is exemplified in this book, proving that the language is not separate in itself, but an integral part of Latin.Originally published in French in 1967, Vulgar Latin was translated more recently into Spanish in an expanded and revised version. The English translation by Roger Wright accurately portrays Vulgar Latin as a complicated field of study, where little is known with absolute certainty, but a great deal can be worked out with considerable probability through careful critical analysis of the data. This text is an invaluable aid to research and understanding for all those interested in Latin, Romance languages, historical linguistics, early medieval texts, and early medieval history.József Herman is the former director of the Linguistic Research Institute at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and is currently Professor of Latin Linguistics at the University of Venice. He is a well-known authority on the history of later Latin and the prehistory of Romance languages

Gendered Dynamics in Latin Love Poetry

Author: Ronnie Ancona

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2005-11-18

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 9780801881985

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In recent decades, Latin love poetry has become a significant site for feminist and other literary critics studying conceptions of gender and sexuality in ancient Roman culture. This new volume, the first to focus specifically on gender dynamics in Latin love poetry, moves beyond the polarized critical positions that argue that this poetry either confirms traditional gender roles or subverts them. Rather, the essays in the collection explore the ways in which Latin erotic texts can have both effects, shifting power back and forth between male and female. If there is one conclusion that emerges, it is that the dynamics of gender in Latin amatory poetry do not map in any single way onto the cultural and historical norms of Roman society. In fact, as several essays show, there is a dialectical relationship between this poetry and Roman cultural practices. By complicating the views of gender dynamics in Latin love poetry, this exciting new scholarship will stimulate further debates in classical studies and literary criticism with its fresh perspectives.