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Exploring the Role of Morphology in the Evolution of Spanish
Author
After a brief survey of the perception of morphological change in the standard works of the Hispanic tradition in the 20th century, the author first attempts to refine concepts such as analogy, leveling, blending, contamination, etc. as they have been applied to Spanish. He then revisits difficult problems of Spanish historical grammar and explores the extent to which various types of morphological processes may have operated in a given change. Selected problems are examined in light of abundant textual evidence. Some include: the resistance to change of Sp. dormir ‘to sleep’, morir ‘to die’, the vocalic sequence /ee/, the reduction of the OSp. verbal suffixes -ades, -edes, -ides, -odes, and the uncertain origin of Sp. eres ‘you are’. Important notions such as the directionality of leveling, phonological vs. morphological change in the nominal and verbal paradigms, the morphological spread of sound change, and the role of morphological factors in apparent syntactic change are discussed.
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 179] 1999. xvi, 187 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 21 October 2008
Published online on 21 October 2008
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
- Prelim pages | pp. i–iv
- Table of contents | pp. v–viii
- Acknowledgments | pp. ix–x
- Preface | pp. xi–xii
- Some Notes About the Present Book | pp. xiii–xvi
- Chapter 1. Concepts of Morphological Change | pp. 1–28
- 20th-century Perceptions of Morphological Change in the Evolution of Spanish
- A Not-too-untraditional Model of Morphological Change
- Chapter 2. The Nature of Leveling in the Old Spanish Verbal Paradigm | pp. 29–78
- The Directionality of Leveling in the Old Spanish Verbal Paradigm Distillable from Resistance to Language Shift: The Case of Spanish dormir, morir (and podrir)
- Old Spanish ove, tove, estove, andove, sope, cope > Modern Spanish hube, tuve, estuve, anduve, supe, cupe
- Old Spanish aperçebir, perçebir, reçebir, escrevir, bevir > Modern Spanish apercibir, percibir, recibir, escribir, vivir: A Case of Leveling or Reanalysis?
- Chapter 3. Phonological or Morphological Change? | pp. 79–112
- The Effects of Morphology on Sound Change in the Paradigm: The /ee/ >/e/ Sound Change and Old Spanish veer
- The /ée/ > /éi/ Change: Sound Change or Backformation?
- The Voseo Imperatives: Sound Change or Morphemicization?
- Chapter 4. The Morphological Spread of Sound Change | pp. 113–146
- Chapter 5. Hidden Morphological Factors in Apparent Syntactic Change | pp. 147–174
- The -y of Spanish hay
- The Origin of Spanish eres
- Conclusion | pp. 175–176
- | pp. 177–184
- Index of Subjects | pp. 185–187
“[...] presents a number of fascinating proposals to solve several long-standing thorny problems and raises valuable theoretical issues. [...] demonstrating that an imaginative application of the principles of morphology can provide coherent explanations of historical developments which until now have resisted all attempts to explain them.”
John England, University of Sheffield
“[...] as a result of his openness and flexibility in identifying and combining explanatory factors, Rini is able to connect seemingly unrelated strands and pieces of data in an ingenious fashion to offer novel explanations for long unresolved issues.”
Andrés Enrique-Arias, Universitat de les Balears, Palma, in Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Vol. LXXX, Number 1, 2003
“[...] una muy valiosa contribución a la gramática histórica del castellano, que nos enseña otra vez hasta qué punto la romanística proporciona a los investigadores una fuenta inagotable de problemas mal resueltos cuyo estudio puede enriquecer la lingüística histórica, incluso en sus mainfestaciones más teóricas.”
André Thibault
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Sánchez, Gonzalo Francisco & Camille Noel
Rini, Joel
Rini, Joel
Rini, Joel
Juge, Matthew L.
Martin Maiden, John Charles Smith & Adam Ledgeway
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