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2 results

  • 5 - Structure of the Syllable

  • from Part Two - Phonetics and Phonology
  • Edited by Adam Ledgeway, University of Cambridge, Martin Maiden, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Romance Linguistics
    Published online:
    23 June 2022
    Print publication:
    07 July 2022, pp 183-208

  • Summary

    In this chapter, the syllable structure of Romance languages is addressed, focusing on properties shared by all varieties as well as some specific aspects of individual varieties. The syllable template adopted is hierachical and binary, with crucial recognition of the rhyme as an intermediate constituent. The fate of vowel quantity is discussed within a framework that takes the concepts of variation and multilingualism are primary, whilst making reference to current historical sociolinguistics. In addition to the main phonological processes sensitive to syllable structure, the prosodic categories of stress and timing are also briefly illustrated. The notion of proto-Romance is criticized as not corresponding to any historically documented linguistic reality nor to a uniform system, but only to an artificially reconstructed schema. In a classification of the Romance languages, taking into account the more dynamic force of the northern Romance varieties, it is argued that a vertical axis (i.e., North–South) is better than the traditional horizontal East–West axis.

  • 11 - Creoles

  • Edited by Martin Maiden, John Charles Smith, Adam Ledgeway, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages
    Published online:
    05 October 2013
    Print publication:
    24 October 2013, pp 400-444

  • Summary

    This chapter investigates why Latin had its name changed to Romance, and why Romance then came to be thought of as being several separate languages with different names. Linguists identify linguistic turning-points, such as what Herman calls the End of the History of Latin, or the start and end of Middle French, etc., on the basis of reconstructable internal chronologies of changes in phonetics, morphology and syntax. Histories of the French language locate the first written texts in French to the ninth century, rather than to any earlier time, on orthographical criteria, even though there is no obvious internal linguistic development exactly coterminous with that periodization. Even though most of the tenth-century evidence from Italy seems to come from the south, both the distinction between Latin and Romance and that between Gallo-Romance and Italo-Romance were made in the second half of the tenth century in northern Italy.