Romance Linguistics (425) Fall 2007 Time: W 9.50 - 12.50 Location Scott 207
Professor: Viviane DEPREZ
Contact information: Office Phone 932- 6863 e-mail [email protected]
Office hours: W: 2-3 and by appointment 18 Seminary Pl Office 201 (my name is on the door) NB: Please always confirm appointments by e-mail. Thanks
GOALS OF THE COURSE
Traditional Romance Linguistics studies focus on the lexical and phonological properties of Romance languages and aims at deriving their similarities and differences from the evolution of a common ancestor language, Latin. In this course, we focus on a different type of comparative studies articulated within a particular theory of language called the Principles and Parameters theory (Chomsky (1981)). Although this perspective recognizes the historical link between the Romance languages, it focuses rather on the comparison of synchronic (i.e. present-day) and syntactic data. Specific properties of the Romance languages and differences among them provide a unique grasp of the functioning of minute parametric variations, sometimes called Micro-parametric variations. This course considers various aspects of the syntax of some Romance languages and dialects. It does not try to cover all aspects of the syntax of Romance languages as such attempts often result in superficial surveys. Instead it focuses on a restricted number of topics and studies them in an extensive way.
Requirements
• Weekly Readings and Assignments , best 10 counting. No late assignment accepted. • Final Research Project: in class presentation and paper.
Grading 10% class participation 35 % readings and assignments 55 % Final Project: 20% presentation, 35% final paper
Main text: There is no main text. Readings will be distributed in class. Students are asked to contribute to the cost of Xeroxing at the end of the semester (around 15$)
Date Topics Readings HW Project
9/5 The landscape of Romance: Orbilat web #1 Start thinking Main languages and dialects 9/12 History and derivation Latin: the father of #2 Write a list of Rom Lang interests 9/19 Internal language and new Comparative How new languages #3 Narrow list of Studies emerge / David interests to 2 or 3 Lightfoot MS. Ch1 9/26 Review of basic syntax; Case in Romance MS. Ch 2,&3 #4 Choose Partner 10/3 Romance Noun Phrases I: Regularities HO RomL6 #5 Determine Topic Gender, number and determiners 10/10 Romance Noun Phrases II: Class Notes #6 Start Bibliography Modification, Bare nouns, Noun drop ROMLG7 Hag 607-611 10/17 Romance Verb Phrases: verb movement HO #7 Title, Abstract Haeg 585-605 &Bibliography due 10/24 Romance Subjects: Pro-drop, subject Ms Ch 4.2 #8 Get main ressources clitics and inversion Haeg 585-605 10/31 Romance Questions HO #9 Start reading Inversion, Complex inversion 11/07 Romance Objects: clitics HO #10 Start research A view from Aquisition
11/14 Romance Objects: null objects Haeg Ch 12 #11 Research and read Object Agreement Dialect highlight: Peruvian Spanish 11/21 Negation in Romance HO Schwegler #12 Get presentation Zanuttini ready 11/28 Thanks Giving Recess Write paper
12/5 Student Presentations Edit paper 12/12 Student Presentations Final Paper due at the latest 12/14 !
REFERENCES:
Two useful Text references: (see also bibliography below) Martin Harris and Nigel Vincent : The Romance languages Rebecca Posner: The Romance languages
USEFUL WEBSOURCES:
In general to find out information about a language it is often best to type the name of the language in Google and then select what might be of interest.
Below, however, are a few sources I have gathered along the way. Some might have outdated links some might be temporarily disconnected. In this case, the best is again to use the Google search engine. There are many more grammars of romance languages out there.
1. http://www.orbilat.com/index.html One of the most complete web page on romance languages
2. http://www.sal.tohoku.ac.jp/~gothit/romance.html A very useful resource page for everything about romance languages and linguistics
3. http://www.sola-sole.com/gramat.htm A catalan grammar
The I love language web site: Information on a large variety of languages http://www.ilovelanguages.com See also: http://www.yourdictionary.com Grammars of a variety of languages
Finegan, E. What Is 'Correct' Language? Linguistic Society of America. http://www.lsadc.org/web2/prescriptivism.html
How to quote electronic sources http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/cgos/basic.html#215
Linguist List An electronic list with many Linguistic resources.
Linguistic Society of America
Department of Linguistics (Rutgers) Department of Spanish and Portuguese (Rutgers)
And of course Wikipedia: Romance languages and related links
• For those particularly interested in French and the historical evolution of this language, note that Rutgers is privileged in allowing students to have access to a gigantic data base of French
American Research on the Treasury of the French Language http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/indexes/search_guides/artfl.shtml
For anyone interested, I can provide help in identifying a topic of research using this data base as well as other data bases of Old French in development in the very large project Les voies du Francais http://www.arts.uottawa.ca/voies/
IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR STUDENT PROJECTS
1) Student presentations will be done alone or in groups of 2 Presentations should be about 20 minutes and as professional as possible : some support must be given, hand out, power point…. A paper will be written up summarizing the findings (15 pages) for each student. Students working in groups should have clear separate topic parts
Suitable Topics: A small research project on a phenomenon not covered in class, preferably on your chosen Romance language
Sample topics:
1) Detailed Historical evolution of the main sound in one particular Romance language From Latin to Romance Language X
2) A topic in the phonology of a Romance language X: ex: liaison in French, Mute-e in French, the phonology of Verlan….
3) Comparing the phonology of one dialect that that of the main Romance language to which it is related
4) A topic in the syntax of Romane: ex Anaphoric relations (John likes himself) in one or several Romance Languages: similarity and differences with English and among the romance languages
5) Aspects of Questions in one Romance language (ex: French in-situ, Spanish/Portuguese inversion, Italian dialect subject doubling questions)
6) The historical evolution of negation in one Romance language
6) Causative constructions in one Romance language
7) A study of the placement of clitics in one minor Romance language
8) The placement of adverbs in one particular Romance language
9) A description of the main features of one regional dialect in comparison with other Romance languages
10) The historical evolution of determiners or Quantifiers in one particular Romance language
11) Evolution of certain aspects of the lexicon in one Romance language
12) Sociolinguistics aspects of one particular Romance dialect ….
Treatment of these topics may involve a detailed language description or, for linguistically more advanced students, a critical report on how the topic has been treated theoretically in the literature.
Important: The (group of) student(s) must have chosen a topic, turn in an abstract and assemble a bibliography by 10/17. If this is not done by this date, the project grade will be affected
Viviane Deprez 8/24/2007 4:11 PM Comment [1]: Evolution de cependant, quelqu’un, des , personne de
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
NB: The following bibliography is limited to fairly general works. Works on specific topics also abund. It is part of year research work to establish a biblioghraphy on the particular topic that interest you.
Romance: general Agard, Frederick B., 1984. A Course in Romance Linguistics. I A synchronic view. 2 A diachronic view. (Washington: Georgetown University Press). Bourciez, Edouard, 1967. Eléments de linguistique romane (Paris: Klincksieck). Boyd-Bowman, Peter, 1954. From Latin to Romance in Sound Charts. (Washington: Georgetown University Press). Elcock, W.D., rev. with a new introd. by John N. Green, 1975. The Romance Languages (London: Faber & Faber). Harris, Martin & Nigel Vincent (eds), 1990. The Romance Languages. (London: Routledge). Harris, Martin, 1978. The Evolution of French Syntax (London: Longman). Posner, Rebecca, 1996. The Romance Languages (Cambridge: University Press).
Latin Herman, József, trs. Roger Wright, 2000. Vulgar Latin (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press). Janson, Tore, 1979. Mechanisms of language change in Latin (Stockhom: Almqvist and Wiksell). Väänänen, Veikko, 1967. Introduction au latin vulgaire (Paris: Klincksieck). Wright, Roger, 1982. Late Latin and Early Romance in Spain and Carolingian France. (Liverpool: Francis Cairns).
Portuguese and Spanish
Spanish Lloyd, Paul M., 1987. From Latin to Spanish (New York: American Philosophical Society). Penny, Ralph, 1991. A History of the Spanish Language (Cambridge: CUP). Penny, Ralph, 2000. Variation and Change in Spanish (Cambridge: CUP). Pountain, Christopher J., 2001. A History of the Spanish Language through Texts (London: Routledge).
Portuguese Mattoso Câmara, J., 1972. The Portuguese Language. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Teyssier, Paul, 1980. Histoire de la langue portugaise. (Paris: PUF).
Either * Corominas, J., Diccionario crítico-etimológico de la lengua castellana (1954) * Corominas, J. and Pascual, J., Diccionario crítico etimológico castellana e hispánico (Gredos, 1986) * *Lapesa, R., Historia de la lengua española (Gredos, 1980) * Lloyd, P., From Latin to Spanish (APS, 1987) * Spanish Phonology descriptive and historical *Mattoso Câmara, J., The Portuguese Language (Chicago, 1972) * *Menéndez Pidal, R., Manual de gramática histórica española (Madrid, 1966) * Spaulding, R., How Spanish Grew (Berkeley, 1971) * Sten, H., Les particularités de la langue portugaise (Copenhagen, 1944) * Teyssier, P., Manuel de langue portugaise (Portugal-Brésil) (Paris, 1984) * Teyssier, P., Histoire de la langue portugaise (PUF, 1980)
Catalan and Occitan
* Alibèrt, I.L., La gramatica occitana (C.E.O., 1976) * Badia i Margarit, A., Gramática histórica catalana (Noguer, 1951) * Bec, P., La langue occitane (PUF, 1973) * Grandgent, C., An Outline of the Phonology and Morphology of Old Provençal (Boston, 1905) * Hualde, J.I., Catalan (Routledge, 1992) * Yates, A., Catalan (London, 1975)
French Ayres-Bennett, Wendy, 1996. A History of the French Language through Texts (London: Routledge). Price, Glanville, 1971. The French Language Present and Past (London: Arnold)
* REF Dauzat, A, Dubois and Mitterand, H., Nouveau dictionnaire historique et étymologique (Paris, 1964) * Désirat, C. and Hordé, T., La langue française au 20è siècle * *Ewert, A., The French Language (Faber, 1978) * REF Gamillscheg, E., Etymologisches Wörterbuch der französischen Sprache (Heidelberg, 1966—) * Pope, M., From Latin to Modern French (MUP, 1952) * *Price, G., The French Language Present and Past (Arnold, 1971) * *Rickard, P., A History of the French Language (Hutchinson, 1974) * Wartburg, W. von, Evolution et structure de la langue française (Berne, 1950)
Rhaeto-Romance
* Arquint, J., Vierv ladin (Lia rumantscha, 1964) * *Haiman, J. and Benincà, P., Rhaeto-Romance (Routledge, 1992) * REF Holtus, G., Metzeltin, M. and Schmitt, C., eds., Lexikon der romanistischen Linguistik (Vol. 3) * Rohlfs, G., Rätoromanisch (Beck, 1975)
Italian and Sardinian
* Blasco-Ferrer, E., Storia linguistica della Sardegna (Niemeyer, 1984) * Chapallaz, M., The Pronunciation of Italian (Bell and Hyman, 1981) * Devoto, G., Il linguaggio d'Italia (Rizzoli, 1974) * Devoto, G., Avviamento alla etimologia italiana (1979) * Gensini, S., Italiana: elementi di storia linguistico-letteraria (Minerva Italica, 1988) * REF Holtus, G., Metzeltin, M. and Schmitt, C., eds., Lexikon der romanistischen Linguistik (Vol. 4) (1988) * Lepschy, A. and G., The Italian Language Today (Hutchinson, 1988) * Maiden, M., A Linguistic History of Italian (Longman, 1995) * Maiden, M. and Parry, M., eds., The Dialects of Italy (Routledge, 1997) * Migliorini, B. and Griffith, T.G., The Italian Language (Faber, 1984) * *Rohlfs, G., Grammatica storica della lingua italiana e dei suoi dialetti (3 vols.) (Einaudi, 1966—) * Tekavi, P., Grammatica storica del italiano (3 vols.) (Mulino, 1972—) * Wagner, M., La lingua sarda (Beme, 1951)
Dalmatian # Bartoli, M., Das Dalmatische (Wiener Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1914) # REF Holtus, G., Metzeltin, M. and Schmitt, C., eds., Lexikon der romanistischen Linguistik (Vol. 3)
Romanian
* Agard, F., Structural Sketch of Romanian (Baltimore, 1958) * REF Holtus, G., Metzeltin, M. and Schmitt, C., eds., Lexikon der romanistischen Linguistik (Vol. 3) * Lombard, A., La langue roumaine – une présentation (Paris, 1974) * Mallinson, G., Rumanian (Croom Helm, 1986) * REF Rosetti, A., Istoria limbii române de la origine pînîn secolul al XVII-lea (Bucureti, 1968)
Historical Linguistics: general
How new languages emerge / David Lightfoot. Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Syntactic effects of morphological change / edited by David W. Lightfoot.
How to set parameters : arguments from language change / David Lightfoot. Publication info: Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, c1991.
McMahon, April M.S., 1994. Understanding Language Change (Cambridge: University Press). von Wartburg, Walther, 1969. Problems and Methods in Linguistics (Oxford: Blackwell).
Historical Linguistics: themes
Klausenburger, Jürgen, 2000. Grammaticalization: Studies in Latin and Romance Morphosyntax (Amsterdam: Benjamins).
Schwegler, Armin, 1990. Analyticity and Syntheticity: a Diachronic Perspective with Special Reference to Romance Languages (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter).