The Romance Languages (Cambridge Language Surveys) [Paperback]

Rebecca Posner (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521281393 | ISBN-13: 978-0521281393 | Publication Date: September 13, 1996

What is a Romance language? How is it related to other Romance languages, 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, and relates linguistic features to historical and sociological factors. Her discussion is extensively illustrated with new and original data, and an up-to-date and comprehensive bibliography is included.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...this book will undoubtedly take its place among the major works of synthesis on Romance languages." Suzanne Fleischman, Anthropological Linguistics

"...Posner's The Romance Languages is a work of immense erudition and scholarship which will be most appreciated by those who have some prior knowledge of the history and development of this widespread language family." Marc Picard, Canadian Journal of Linguistics

Book Description

What is a Romance language? How is it related to other languages and what can it tell us about language in general? Combining philological expertise with insights drawn from modern theoretical linguistics, this study relates linguistic features to historical and sociological factors.

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (September 13, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521281393
• ISBN-13: 978-0521281393
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #721,495 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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71 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed..., February 23, 2000

By 

Steven Barbieri (Lisbon, Portugal) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Romance Languages (Cambridge Language Surveys) (Paperback)

Overall, Ms. Posner gives a broad but shallow overview of how she believes Latin evolved into the Romance languages during the middle ages. Nonetheless, I found several obvious mistakes, which lead me to believe that she had some basic knowledge of some of the languages she used to illustrate her research efforts but not any substantial knowledge in all of the Romance languages as the title might allude. In my opinion, she spends too much time and effort baffling the reader with highly technical, linguistic jargon in order to explain simple linguistic idiosyncrasies, but most of her explanations are quite shallow and inconclusive. In many of her examples, she jumps from point to point without ever convincingly defending her position on why certain changes happened. She just states some examples and then goes on to something else hoping the reader will figure it out. Then, after she has confused the reader with highly technical linguistic frases just to explain a specific sound or spelling, she makes references to other parts of her book, which is difficult to navigate through, desperately trying to divert the reader's attention away from the obvious - that she did not support her theories with chronological evidence from old texts as is done in other comparative linguistic books.

I noted numerous mistakes in spellings and grammer where she was defending a theory from a change in Latin to a word in Spanish, (i.e. "guadañar," should have been "ganar," rather than converting "guadagnare" from Italian; and "guarnir," also from Italian but not Spanish should be "guarnecer"; and "dormió" is instead "durmió") Galician ("antes de chegarem" rather than "...chegaren"), Portuguese (future subjunctive is not exactly the same as the personal infinitive; "fęz" should be "fez"), and Italian ("Lo si compra" should be "Se lo compra" -"si" changes to "se" before "lo", "la", "li" "le" & "ne"; "Non mi si ascolta" is never said. What is said is "Non mi ascolta nessuno.).

In addition, her comments about the Portuguese understanding Spanish but not reciprocally is obvious in that given the same or a similar word, Portuguese is truncated and/or nasalized (besides the overwhelming "sh" and "zh" sounds of which the continental Portuguese pride themselves) making it difficult for the Spanish (and might I add the Brazilians) to decipher. She states that there is a long-standing history of animosity between the two countries going back to the date of Portugal's last independence from Spain 1580-1643 (which was really 1580-1640).

In addition, Ms Posner stated that "there was little reliable data to support the existence of Philippine Spanish." Well, she obviously doesn't know her Philippino/Spanish history nor any of the languages and dialects of the Philippines. Spain ruled the Philippines for over 350 years, and there are many hundreds of Spanish words incorporated in Tagalog and several of the other Austronesian languages spoken in the Philippines. Furthermore, there does exist a Spanish Creole dialect known as "Chavacano" which was born out of 18th century Spanish. It does not belong to the Austronesian family of languages; however, its lexicon is Spanish but its syntax is similar to that of other Philippine languages. Chavacano is spoken in Zamboanga, Basilan, Cavite, Ternate, and Ermita (Manila).

She was ignorant in her remarks that Philippino was just a "relexified Portuguese Creole" when Portugal had no linguistic influence whatsoever in the Philippines, and there aren't any similarities between Tagalog or any other Philippine dialect/language and Portuguese other than what they have in common with Spanish.

I was hoping she would have explained the nasalization of Portuguese better than saying it was probably due to Celtic influence. Portuguese was born in the late 12th-13th centuries (long after the Celts were Romanized) out of Galician, which is directly linked to Celtic, and there is no nasalization in that language whatsoever. Furthermore, 15-16th century Spanish has evidence of nasalization (the original Don Quixote has lots of examples) which is still prevalent in Andalusian Spanish (Moorish influence?). In all words ending in "n", Andalusian and Caribbean Spanish nasalize the final "n" (though not lexical) much more than any other dialect, which would lead me to believe that the pronunciation of the letter "n" as "ng" (or represented by "~" over vowels in Portuguese) has an influence other than Celtic. What caused the omission of the intervocalic "l" and "n" in Portuguese and Galician?

She never convincingly explained the conversation of "ç, z, and c" to be pronounced as Ţ (theta) in Spain in the 16-17th centuries. Andalusia and Galicia resisted until the 19/20th century, and Catalá, Aragonès, and Asturianu-Lleones never adopted it. The folklore has always been that King Felipe II (1527-1598) had a lisp and forced his subjects to imitate him. However, reality is something different because Portugal never adopted such a lisp when he ruled there, but instead, the Portuguese pronounce the final "s" like "sh", and "z" and "c" have the same sounds as in English.

Her knowledge of Latin, French, and some of the obscure/dead dialects is commendable. However, her research efforts thorough enough and arguments not convincing despite the fact that such material on Romance dialects comparison (especially the ones she picked) is hard to find. It is difficult to find and read credible material in which the author truly has a profound and substantiated knowledge basis to share with his or her readers on all Romance dialects/languages and their evolution from Latin, and Ms. Rebecca Posner did not impress me.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Romance Languages: A Comprehensive Survey, December 1, 1999

By 

Joseph Winkler (Mariposa CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Romance Languages (Cambridge Language Surveys) (Paperback)

The broad and deep learning in this volume is fitting for its wide subjects, namely, the background and development of the Romance languages. Some of this learning is specialized, to be grasped easily only by the linguist. "One group of words fairly consistently shows displacement of accent--these are proparoxytones with a penultimate short vowel followed by an obstruent + r cluster." Let the layman translate that! Fortunately, other parts of Ms. Posner's learning can be expressed in a more kindly manner and thus readily absorbed by the nonspecialist.

As a layman with a fair knowledge of Latin, but without training in any of the Romance languages themselves, I came to this volume seeking what had arisen in normal conversation as two seemingly simple questions-- How and why did a relatively small area on the westernmost part of the Iberian peninsula develop its own language, i.e., Portugese? Why more than any other language does written French seem to represent something so different from its spoken sound? And so Amazon.com, which has become an important souce for me, and its review by a customer, led me here.

The answers to both questions were found, I think, (remoteness and standardization in the case of the former; standardization mostly in the latter), but not without effort and a lot of synthesizing small bits of data into what must be hoped are correct conclusions. Hesitation by the author in drawing concise conclusions gives the impression that her learning is at times a weight, inhibiting her from giving unqualified and firm answers, lest every possible nuance not be considered. In fact the general reader like me searches for just such gems of revelation in this sea of learning and clings to them with gratitude, as to a lifesaver.

Although the linguistic metaphor of "the family tree" is used, there are no diagrams. I would have benefited from several "trees" showing the languages at different times and in various stages of development. Nice too would have been photos of what are considered the earliest extant texts in each language, that is, the first instance when each can be called a separate language, with facing translations into the modern language and into English. A brief lexicon of linguistic terms could have made this book less formidable to the nonspecialist. For example, although the meaning eventually can be deduced, my ordinary dictionary, which perforce lay beside me, does not define "jodization."

Ms. Posner's learning shines through as she makes clear to our surprise just how much is not known conclusively. As she explains how important are the processes of deduction and reconstruction by which the Romance linguist must live and die, we warm to the subject and feel this volume, whatever its difficulties, is worth the effort.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Difficult to read if you're not a linguist, July 14, 2005

By 

A. Chung "An aficionado" (San Jose, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Romance Languages (Cambridge Language Surveys) (Paperback)

This book is informative to the point where I find myself having to look up words on almost every page! This book is for those who are familiar with linguistic terms and the like (i.e. palatal, velar, fricative, etc.) If you want a simpler rundown of how the Romance languages are similar and/or different, look elsewhere. This book provides this information, but from a linguists point-of-view. Just keep that in mind.