Romance Linguistics and Historical Linguistics: Reflections on Synchrony and Diachrony (original) (raw)
2011, in Maiden, M., Smith, J. Ch., Ledgeway, A. (ed. by), The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages, vol. 1, Structures, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
AI-generated Abstract
This paper explores the relationship between synchrony and diachrony in Romance linguistics, arguing that the discipline offers valuable insights into linguistic change that contemporary general linguistics may overlook. By analyzing morphosyntactic evolution and the significant transformations in noun phrase structure from Latin to Romance languages, it discusses key issues related to language change and the interconnectedness of these changes. It positions Romance linguistics as a crucial contributor to understanding broader linguistic theories.
Related papers
F Nuessel C Kirschner and J DeCesaris Studies in Romance Linguistics LSRL XVII-1990
Lingua. Vol. 82. Pp. 333-348., 1990
Carl Kirchner and Janet DeCesaris edited the selected proceedings of the annual Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages held at Rutgers University March 27-29, 1987. Twenty-six papers are included in this anthology: (1) Spanish-9 papers, (2) French 8 papers, (3) Romance-6 papers, (4) Romanian-2 papers, and (5) Italian-1 paper. Four of the papers presented were by invited speakers: Henrietta Cedergren, John Goldsmith, Beatriz Lavender, and Nicolas Ruwet.
Grammaticalization as pattern formation: Romanian auxiliaries from a diachronic Romance perspective
Revue roumaine de linguistique, 2020
By studying the grammaticalization of Romanian auxiliaries from a diachronic Romanian and a comparative Romance perspective, this paper argues that the output of grammaticalization is a predictable pattern in a given language, i.e. a language-specific parametric choice. Specifically, in the passage from old to modern Romanian we observe that a number of emergent periphrastic structures (innovations in contrast to Latin) died out, against the well-known transition from syntheticity to analyticity in the development of the Romance languages (i.e. the profusion of auxiliary structures in this particular situation). In order to account for what appears to be a diachronic paradox, we show that, under a rich cartographic structure of the IP, Romanian auxiliaries systematically grammaticalize as exponents of the category mood; the auxiliaries of the now-defunct periphrases have a richer feature matrix (and this accounts for their demise). The MoodP is also the target of synthetic (finite) verb movement, hence Romanian is, (micro)parametrically, a mood-oriented language, a hypothesis which accounts for the particular diachrony of periphrastic constructions in this language, as well as other properties.
The paper examines the interpolation and scrambling phenomena attested in Old Romanian and (modern) Istro-Romanian. By applying a coherent set of syntactic diagnostics, it is shown that these phenomena may be given the same analysis in both varieties: the discontiguity of the elements of the verbal cluster is the result of low verb movement of the lexical verb on the clausal spine. In a diachronic Romance comparative setting, the existence of low verb movement phenomena constitutes an important (yet overlooked) piece of evidence for the gradual emergence of V-to-I movement in the Latin-to-Romance transition. For the theory of diachronic linguistics in general, the preservation of interpolation and scrambling in Istro-Romanian shows that archaic phenomena may be preserved in isolated varieties, and that language contact (with Croatian in the case at hand) plays an important role in consolidating archaic features.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.
Related papers
Romanian Language and Linguistics (2013)
Parkinson, Stephen (ed.). The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies 75 (2013). London/Manchester: Modern Humanities Research Association/Maney, pp. 270-90, 2015