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The Importance of Comparative Romance Linguistics and Keeping Language Departments Intact

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The Importance of Comparative Romance Linguistics and Keeping Language Departments Intact The Importance of Comparative Romance Linguistics and Keeping Language Departments Intact Sarah Hart Te State University of New York at Bufalo 1. Introduction n recent years, it has become common to see language departments divided at larger American universities. To mention several: the University of Massachusets at Amherst combines ISpanish and Portuguese in one department ofce with its own website, while French and Italian are found in a diferent ofce with separate websites. Te department for Spanish and Portuguese is also separated from the department for French and Italian at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Ohio State University. At the University of Virginia and Penn State, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese are housed in one department while French exists in a department on its own1. 72 | Te Importance of Comparative Romance Linguistics Hart | 73 Te importance of comparative Romance linguistics makes this an alarming trend. It is through comparative Romance linguistics that the history of Romance can be discovered; indeed much of what is known today about its history is through reconstruction of the modern Ro- mance languages. According to Calvert Watkins, “Te reconstruction of vocabulary can ofer a fuller, more interesting view of prehistoric people than archeology precisely because it includes non-material cul- ture” (qtd. in Campbell 380). Tus comparative linguistics allows us to know more about past civilizations and learn from them. Te follow- ing comparative study of the Spanish verbs saber and conocer shows a discovery only possible through knowledge and research of several Ro- mance languages. Tese verbs were chosen based on a discovery made while reading Latin: verbs which appeared to be their ancestors did not match the meanings of saber and conocer. 2. History of Romance Many people are aware that the Romance languages descended from Latin. However, there are in reality two distinct Latin languages. Te frst can be found in such writings as Catullus poems, Cicero speeches, and Augustine prose; it is called Classical Latin and was spoken by very few members of society, as it was primarily a literary language. Te sec- ond is Vulgar Latin, so named not because it was a defective, crude or obscene language, but simply because it was spoken by the vulgus: the common people. As the Romance languages evolved through speech, not text, their true ancestor is Vulgar Latin, which we will call Popu- lar Latin for the remainder of this paper to avoid negative connotations (Boyd Bowman 1). While examples of Classical Latin are abundant, examples of Pop- ular Latin are extremely rare. Whereas Classical Latin has been pre- served and put into print over several centuries in amazing multitudes, Popular Latin was rarely documented and solely appears today in state- 72 | Te Importance of Comparative Romance Linguistics Hart | 73 ments by grammarians, non-literary notes, glossaries, and texts writen by those with litle education. Some writers also used Popular Latin in plays to reach a wider audience and to portray plebian characters more realistically. Additionally, two very important sources of information on Popular Latin are the Appendix Probi and Peregrinatio ad loca sancta. Te former is a list showing forms that were considered preferable, side by side with forms that were considered incorrect (Popular forms); the later is a travel description writen by an uneducated woman, believed by researchers to be a Spanish nun (Penny 6-7). Although the two Latins are closely related in the Indo-European language family, they are distinct enough to be considered separate languages. It is not simply that Popular Latin is a later form of Classical Latin; both existed in the same time period separate of each other, and as time passed the language in each area of Romania evolved diferently as a result of substrate and superstrate infuence (Penny 5). Evidence that Classical Latin is not the ancestor of the Romance languages appears with the set of Romance words for horse: the Classi- cal Latin word for horse is equus, however the Romance languages show caballo in Spanish, cheval in French, cavallo in Italian, cavalo in Portu- guese and cal in Romanian. Tis is clearly not a mater of extreme sound change, and it is not a mater of recent borrowing. Te variation in the fve words acts as evidence against borrowing; it shows the distinct his- torical sound changes that occurred in each language. For example, if French had recently borrowed cheval from another language, we would not see a change in the initial sound. French is a language that allows words to begin with ca-, such as cacahouète (peanut), canyon (canyon) and cacher (to hide). Tus, a borrowing would also allow ca- and not show evidence of the historical palatalization that French words under- went. In addition, the limited evidence of Popular Latin shows the word caballus being used for horse. Tis word also existed in Classical Latin, 74 | Te Importance of Comparative Romance Linguistics Hart | 75 however it meant nag; workhorse. Equus and caballus form the proto- typical example of evidence that Romance languages evolved from a language other than Classical Latin. We are fortunate this was also demonstrated in the limited resources for Popular Latin, as the small amount of data does not ofen provide sufcient evidence (Penny 4-5). Unlike the case of caballus, Classical Latin forms are frequently identical in form and meaning to Popular Latin even though the two are separate languages. Tus many people fall into the trap of believing that the Romance languages descended from the Latin of Catullus and Cicero, the Latin that is still taught in some schools today. Tis article will not only show the inaccuracy of that sentiment but also demon- strate the importance of such historical knowledge and unity among researchers of today’s Romance languages. 3. Comparative Reconstruction Comparative reconstruction is a tool that uses a group of related lan- guages to etymologize certain words in an ancestor language. Tis is especially common with language families for which an ancestor lan- guage is unknown or minimally documented, as is the case of Popu- lar Latin. To complete a comparative reconstruction, we will use the cognate forms to Spanish saber and conocer in French, Italian and Por- tuguese but not Romanian, in which Slavic infuence ofen causes the forms to be unhelpful to reconstructions. Spanish Portuguese French Italian saber saber savoir sapere conocer conhecer connaître conoscere At frst it appears as if the etymon, or ancestor form, of the frst word could be saber since it occurs twice while the others only occur once; however, in reconstruction, frequency is not a factor, history is, and each variation must be considered fully. Te frst diference we see 74 | Te Importance of Comparative Romance Linguistics Hart | 75 in the four verbs is between the three labial sounds /p/, /b/ and /v/. Tis is not surprising given the popularity of lenition in Romance% that is the weakening of sounds ofen between two vowels. Te path of lenition starts with voiceless stops, then voiced stops, then fricatives, then sometimes deletion. In the case of labial sounds, the order is p > b > v > Ø (Boyd Bowman 107). Based on this rule, we will posit *sap-, which is marked with an asterisk to show it is a reconstructed form. Tis form is further evidenced by the appearance of –p- in various stems of Spanish saber such as sup- in the preterite and sep- in the sub- junctive. Te next distinction lies with the French diphthong against the other three single vowels. Considering that diphthongization is common in many languages, we can safely assume –e- was the original vowel (54). Finally, we have one form with fnal –e and three without. Apocope (deletion of a fnal vowel) is also an extremely common sound change, especially efecting –e, thus we will posit the –e existed in the Popular Latin etymon, producing the reconstructed form *sapere (56). Concerning the next verb, for which the cognates are conocer (Sp.), conhecer (Pt.), connaître (Fr.) and conoscere (It.), the frst distinction shows an alveolar nasal in Spanish, French and Italian and a palatal nasal in Portuguese (similar to ñ in Spanish). Te most likely recon- struction for this sound is /gn/ which palatalized to form /!/ in Por- tuguese. Te other three languages showing deletion of /g/ is not sur- prising, as consonant clusters ofen simplify over time (Boyd Bowman 97). Further evidence is seen in the old spelling in Italian: cognoscere. For the next distinction, we chose to leave out French as it appears to have undergone a radical change while Spanish and Portuguese show /s/ and Italian shows /"/ (the frst sound in shell). Based on orthogra- phy, we assume that Italian conoscere, although pronounced with /"/, was at some point pronounced with /sk/ and again refer to the trend of simplifcation of consonant clusters and posit that /sk/ existed in the 76 | Te Importance of Comparative Romance Linguistics Hart | 77 ancestor form. Tis assumption is further supported by the /sk/ cluster that appears in the Spanish form conozco. Finally, apocope will again cause us to posit a fnal –e on the ancestor form. Tis leaves us with the reconstructed form *cognoscere pronounced /kognoskere/. Trough knowledge of several Romance languages and common historical sound changes along with consultations with various speak- ers of the four languages studied in this section, we have thus posited *sapere and *cognoscere as the ancestor forms. Not surprisingly, these forms match words in Classical Latin. However, form alone does not prove that Classical Latin sapĕre was the same as Popular Latin sapere. In the following section, we will complete a similar reconstruction us- ing the meaning of the words rather than their forms.
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