From Latin through the Romance languages, which types of past participle survived? Which older, "irregular" types disappeared and which older, "regular" types proliferated? Which new types of past participles emerged, which proved popular in standard Romance languages, and which exist in a wide range of dialects? The author explores reasons for the expansion or contraction of each type, in each area.

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. The volume will appeal to linguists from a range of backgrounds, including Romance linguistics, historical linguistics, typology, and morphosyntax, and is also of relevance to those working in sociology, gender studies, and psychology.

Eines der hervorstechenden Merkmale der romanischen Verbalmorphologie ist der Fortbestand der zwei lateinischen Überbleibsel -I/ESC- und -IDI̯-, deren formaler und funktionaler Gebrauch sich innerhalb der romanischen Sprachen um zwei grundlegende Pole dreht: -I/ESC- und -IDI̯- können als Derivations- oder als Flexionsmorpheme (oder zumindest flexionsgebunden) stehen. Obwohl -I/ESC- und -IDI̯- eine sehr vergleichbare Entwicklung genommen haben, sind sie noch nie in einer gemeinsamen Studie untersucht worden. Während das Schicksal von -I/ESC- bei Romanisten auf großes Interesse stieß, wurde die Verbindung zu -IDI̯- bis dato nur fragmentarisch beschrieben. Die vorliegende Studie möchte diese Lücke durch eine ergänzende Analyse der "Metamorphosen", die beide Segmente in der Fortentwicklung vom Lateinischen zum Romanischen genommen haben, schließen. Der Schwerpunkt liegt dabei auf den Flexions- bzw. flexionsgebundenen Formen in den gegenwärtigen romanischen Sprachen. In methodischer Hinsicht kombiniert die Studie eine umfassende heuristische Analyse mit der Korpusanalyse neuer, empirisch erhobener Daten auf der Basis von (dialektologischer) Feldarbeit, elektronischen Befragungen, (neuesten) Wörterbüchern und Dialektatlanten. Die behandelten Themen verbinden Bereiche der theoretischen, historischen und Soziolinguistik.

Ti Alkire and Carol Rosen trace the changes that led from colloquial Latin to five major Romance languages, those which ultimately became national or transnational languages: Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. Trends in spoken Latin altered or dismantled older categories in phonology and morphology, while the regional varieties of speech, evolving under diverse influences, formed new grammatical patterns, each creating its own internal regularities. Documentary sources for spoken Latin show the beginnings of this process, which comes to full fruition in the medieval emergence of written Romance languages. This book newly distills the facts into an appealing program of study, including exercises, and makes the difficult issues clear, taking well motivated and sometimes innovative stands. It provides not only an essential guide for those new to the topic, but also a reliable compendium for the specialist.