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What is a Romance language? How is one Romance language related to others? How did they all evolve? And what can they tell us about language in general? In this comprehensive survey Rebecca Posner, a distinguished Romance specialist, examines this group of languages from a wide variety of perspectives. Her analysis combines philological expertise with insights drawn from modern theoretical linguistics, both synchronic and diachronic. She relates linguistic features to historical and sociological factors, and teases out those elements which can be attributed to divergence from a common source and those which indicate convergence towards a common aim. Her discussion is extensively illustrated with new and original data, and an up-to-date and comprehensive bibliography is included. This volume will be an invaluable and authoritative guide for students and specialists alike.
Written as a text, this book looks at the external history of French from its Latin origins to the present day through some of the analytical frameworks developed by contemporary sociolinguistics. French is one of the most highly standardized of the world's languages and the author invites us to see the language as heterogenous, rather than a monolithic entity, using the model proposed by E. Haugen as a useful comparative grid to plot the development of standardization. After an introductory section which examines the dialectalization of Latin in Gaul, the four central chapters of the book are constructed around the basic processes invoved in standardization as identified by Haugen: the sele...
Revitalising Language in Provence: A Critical Approach questions the concept of language revitalization and challenges the field’s main tenets through a detailed analysis Southern France’s Provençal movement, one of Europe’s longest standing language revitalisation projects. Presents a wealth of new research data relating to revitalising language movement Offers an innovative new way of problematizing language revitalisation Questions the very concept of language revitalisation and challenges the field’s main tenets Reveals what language revitalisation movements really stand for, what they use language for, and who the people spearheading these movements are