Romance Did Not Begin In Rome

For many years, we have been taught that Romance languages come from Latin. Historical grammar has described this process on the basis of a complicated theoretical framework of successive changes that caused a deep transformation of the parent tongue, which degenerated into the so-called Vulgar Latin. However, as shown in recent research, on a morphosyntactic structure level, linguistic change is a very slow process. Some of the internal changes of a language do not occur over centuries but rather could be traced back over millenia. Why does historical grammar attribute to external influences the evolutionary process from Classical to Vulgar Latin and disregard the fact that it could be caused by the substrate language or languages? Some features of those languages would have survived the Romanization and point to an older common ancestor, an agglutinative and compositional language shared by the various Mediterranean peoples and from which the so-called Romance languages would stem. This work presents some new research hypotheses, which show that Romance languages share a high percentage of phonetic, lexical, morphosyntactic and semantic characteristics, showing a close kinship to a linguistic typology that relates them to each other but distances them from Latin. It is focused on Spanish although some examples are included in different Romances, such as the Romanian language which retains some aspects that help us to get closer to this common parent tongue. How can it be that the Romanian language has survived isolated so many tough, non-Romance invasions? The structural, lexical, phonetic and conceptual similarities between Romanian and the rest of Western Romance languages -distant languages whose people have not been in direct contact for at least two thousand years- suggests an earlier common language which must be much older than Latin. Therefore, the characteristics of the Romance languages might have evolved directly from this common, previous language, without having to justify this development through Latin. The relationship between Romance languages and Latin would then be of kinship and not filiation. The evidence is increasingly conclusive: Romance languages do not originate in Latin. Foreword by Cristina Brescan.

The volumes Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory: Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ contain the selected papers of the Going Romance conferences, a major European annual discussion forum for theoretically relevant research on Romance languages.This volume assembles a significant number of selected papers that were presented at the 21st edition of Going Romance, which was organized by the Chair of Romance Linguistics of the University of Amsterdam in December 2007. The range of languages (both standard and non-standard varieties) analyzed in this volume is quite significant: Catalan, French, Italian, European and Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish. The volume is quite representative of the spread of the variety of research carried out nowadays on Romance languages within theoretical linguistics and shows the vitality of this research.

'I'm fully in love with this story and Alessandro is my new book boyfriend!' Darcy's Book Blog Can a holiday romance ever have a happy ending? Escape with Kate to the sun-drenched city of Rome where a love affair is just about to begin ... When Kate's husband Matt dumps her on Friday 13th she decides enough is enough - it's time for her to have some fun and so she hops on a plane to Rome. A week of grappa and gelato in pavement cafes under azure blue skies will be just what the doctor ordered. What she doesn't count on is meeting and falling for sexy policeman Alessandro. But the course of true love doesn't run smoothly - Alessandro has five meddling sisters, a fearsome mama and a beautiful ex Orazia. They're all certain that Kate is not the girl for him. Can Kate and Alessandro's love last the distance? Or will she return home with the one souvenir she doesn't want - a broken heart ... Fall in love with the colourful cafes and the cobbled piazzas of Rome and follow Kate's dreams and her heart in this enchanting escapist read. Perfect for fans of Debbie Johnson and Carol Matthews.

A brief but comprehensive account of the fateful changes which took place in Western society during the time when paganism was overtaken by Christianity.