This book examines the grammatical changes that took place in the transition from Latin to the Romance languages. The emerging languages underwent changes in three fundamental areas involving the noun phrase, verb phrase, and the sentence. The impact of the changes can be seen in the reduction of the Latin case system; the appearance of auxiliary verb structures to mark such categories tense, mood, and voice; and a shift towards greater rigidification of word order. The author considers how far these changes are interrelated and compares their various manifestations and pace of change across the different standard and non-standard varieties of Romance. He describes the historical background to the emergence of the Romance varieties and their Latin ancestry, considering in detail the richly documented diachronic variation exhibited by the Romance family. Adam Ledgeway reviews the accounts and explanations that have been proposed within competing theoretical frameworks, and considers how far traditional ideas should be reinterpreted in light of recent theoretical developments. His wide-ranging account shows that the transition from Latin to Romance is not only of great intrinsic interest, but both provides a means of challenging linguistic orthodoxies and presents opportunities to shape new persepctives on language change, structure, and variation.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Oxford University Press
ISBN-13
9780198736691
eBay Product ID (ePID)
214255635
Product Key Features
Book Title
From Latin to Romance: Morphosyntactic Typology and Change
Author
Adam Ledgeway
Format
Paperback
Language
English
Publication Year
2015
Number of Pages
466 Pages
Dimensions
Item Height
232mm
Item Width
153mm
Item Weight
694g
Additional Product Features
Title_Author
Adam Ledgeway
Series Title
Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics