A brief history of the Spanish language / David A. Pharies.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pharies, David A.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Spanish language--History.

Spanish language.

History.

Physical Description:

xiv, 298 pages : maps ; 21 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Summary:

In what will likely become a classic introduction to the history of the Spanish language, David Pharies clearly and concisely charts the evolution of Spanish from its Indo-European roots to its present form. An internationally recognized expert on the history and development of this language, Pharies brings to his subject a precise sense of what students of Spanish linguistics need to know.

A Brief History of the Spanish Language begins with introductory chapters on what it means to study the history of a language, the concept of linguistic change, and the nature of language families. In the core sections of the book, readers are treated to an engaging presentation of the genealogy of the language, including accounts of the structures and peculiarities of Latin, the historical and cultural events that helped to shape the language, the nature of Medieval Spanish, the language myths that have become attached to Spanish, and the development of the language beyond the Iberian Peninsula, especially in the Americas. Focusing on the most important facets of the language's evolution, A Brief History of the Spanish Language makes the history of Spanish accessible to anyone with a knowledge of Spanish and a readiness to grasp basic linguistic concepts.

Contents:

What Is a Language History? 1

Why Study the History of Spanish? 4

Chapter 1 Language Change 7

The Inexorability of Language Change 7

Changes in Progress 8

Language Change as Observed through Written Evidence 9

The Categories of Language Change 11

The Causes of Language Change 13

The Mechanism of Language Change 15

Sociolinguistics 16

Chapter 2 The Genealogy of Spanish 19

Language Families 19

Some Important Language Families 23

The Indo-European Language Family 24

The Italic Branch 25

Bilingualism and Diglossia 26

Genealogy of Spanish 28

Chapter 3 External History of the Iberian Peninsula up to the Thirteenth Century 31

The Iberian Peninsula before the Arrival of the Romans 31

The Romanization of the Iberian Peninsula 34

The End of the Roman Empire 36

The Visigothic Invasion 37

The Muslim Invasion 40

An Extinct Variety of Ibero-Romance: Mozarabic 42

The Reconquest 44

The Rise of Castilian 47

Chapter 4 The Latin Language 51

Stages in the History of Latin 52

Phonology 53

Orthography and Pronunciation 55

Nominal Morphology 57

Verbal Morphology 66

Syntax 67

Text Analysis 68

Chapter 5 From Latin to Medieval Castilian: Phonology 75

The Nature of Phonological Change 75

The Most Important Phonological Changes of the Romance Period 77

Phonological Derivations 90

Exceptions to Regular Phonological Change 93

Text Analysis 95

Alphonsine Orthography 96

Chapter 6 From Latin to Medieval Castilian: Morphology and Syntax 101

Interdependence of Morphological and Syntactic Changes 101

Nominal Morphology 102

A Linguistic Myth: The Cacophony of the Pronoun Combination le lo 113

Verbal Morphology 118

Principal Syntactic Changes 126

Text Analysis 132

Appendix Lexical Archaisms in Alphonsine Prose 135

Chapter 7 From Medieval Castilian to Modern Spanish 141

Political and Cultural History of Spain after the Middle Ages 141

An Archaic Dialect: Sephardi 144

Linguistic Changes 151

A Linguistic Myth: The Lisping King 155

Text Analysis 164

A Linguistic Myth: The Phonemic Character of Spanish Orthography 165

Chapter 8 History of the Spanish Lexicon 169

Routes of Lexical Integration in Spanish 169

The Reduplicative Playful Template 176

Etymology 181

Stages in the History of the Spanish Lexicon 184

Chapter 9 Spanish Dialectology 191

Varieties of Spanish in the Two Castiles 192

Andalusian 194

Canary Island Spanish 203

American Spanish 204

Demography of the Spanish Language 211

Four Distinctive Varieties of American Spanish 212

Spanish in the United States 226

Rudiments of Spanish Phonetics and Phonology 233.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [261]-266) and indexes.

ISBN:

0226666824

9780226666822

0226666832

9780226666839

OCLC:

71266616

Publisher Number:

9870226666822

9870226666839

Online:

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