- Description
- 1 online resource (xxiv, 385 pages) : illustrations, maps.
- Summary
- This book explores grammatical gender in the Romance languages and dialects and its evolution from Latin. Michele Loporcaro investigates the significant diversity found in the Romance varieties in this regard; he draws on data from the Middle Ages to the present from all the Romance languages and dialects, discussing examples from Romanian to Portuguese and crucially also focusing on less widely-studied varieties such as Sursilvan, Neapolitan, and Asturian. The investigation first reveals that several varieties display more complex systems than the binary masculine/feminine contrast familiar from modern French or Italian. Moreover, it emerges that traditional accounts, whereby neuter gender was lost in the spoken Latin of the late Empire, cannot be correct: instead, the neuter gender underwent a range of different transformations from Late Latin onwards, which are responsible for the different systems that can be observed today across the Romance languages. The volume provides a detailed description of many of these systems, which in turns reveals a wealth of fascinating data, such as varieties where 'husbands' are feminine and others where 'wives' are masculine; dialects in which nouns overtly mark gender, but only in certain syntactic contexts; and one Romance variety (Asturian) in which it appears that grammatical gender has split into two concurrent systems.
- Series Statement
- Oxford studies in diachronic and historical linguistics ; 27
- Uniform Title
- Gender from Latin to Romance (Online)
- Oxford studies in diachronic and historical linguistics ; 27.
- Alternative Title
- Gender from Latin to Romance (Online)
- Subject
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 317-364) and indexes.
- Access (note)
- Access restricted to authorized users.
- Contents
- Introduction -- The starting point: gender in Latin -- Grammatical gender in Romance: the mainstream -- Romance gender systems: the fuller picture -- Mass/countness and gender in Asturian -- The older stages of the Romance languages - Gender from Latin to Romance: a reconstruction -- The typological interest of lesser-known Romance gender systems.
- LCCN
- 2017939061
- OCLC
- ssj0002032078
- Author
Loporcaro, Michele.
- Title
Gender from Latin to Romance [electronic resource] : history, geography, typology / Michele Loporcaro.
- Imprint
Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2018.
- Edition
First edition.
- Series
Oxford studies in diachronic and historical linguistics ; 27
Oxford studies in diachronic and historical linguistics ; 27.
- Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 317-364) and indexes.
- Access
Access restricted to authorized users.
- Connect to: