The ten articles collected in this volume are an impressive indication of the range and depth of Malkiel's knowledge of diachronic processes in the Romance languages. In the author's experience, etymological studies of lexis frequently lead one into the areas of phonology and morphology, and the… read more
Phonosymbolism, or sound symbolism (Lautsymbolik), is a vital ingredient of language growth. Many serious scholars, however, have regarded it with embarrassment or indifference. A cautious reintroduction of phonosymbolism as a factor responsible for changes undergone, in varying degrees, by most… read more
The period of 1965 to 1978 was an extremely productive time for U.S. (Russian born) Romance etymologist and philologist Yakov Malkiel whose specialty was the development of Latin words, roots, prefixes, and suffixes in modern Romance languages, particularly Spanish. Malkiel will be known as the… read more
This volume presents seven extensive essays by specialists in their respective fields of historical linguistics. The first essay after the Introduction states the principles presented in Directions for Historical Linguistics (1968) and assesses the progress made since then towards constructing a… read more
Like most Romance scholars of his generation, Ramón Menéndez Pidal was an accomplished etymologist. In most instances, his etymological verdicts enter into broader historico-grammatical, dialectological, and narrowly philological investigations, from which they can be laboriously distilled.… read more
This brief presentation reconstructed on the basis of a tape recording a quarter-century after the date of its original delivery is hardly more than an informal causerie, which the speaker never expected to see in print some day. However, it represents an interesting document in the history of… read more
SUMMARY For over a century it has been axiomatic with Romance linguists that the formation of rising diphthongs in stressed syllables, at the threshold of the medieval period, was controlled by the given word's environment; by quantity (and, later, by quality) of the accented Latin vowel; and in… read more
Whereas in other countries in which historical linguistics struck root in the past century it became customary, particularly after 1870, to cultivate Romance and Indo-European studies as two separate, exacting disciplines which few specialists would want to bridge, Italy – initially under the… read more
This bio-bibliographical account of Georg Cohn (1866–194?) essays to sketch out the life of a Berlin Privatgelehrter at the end of the 19th and the early period of the 20th century. It characterizes the intellectual milieu of time and place, both inside and outside the vistas of Romance philology… read more