The papers collected in this volume reflect the numerous interests in the field of Romance languages and Romance linguistics today. A far-ranging amount of Romance data are presented: French, Italian, and Spanish dialect data are crucial to several authors' arguments, Rumanian is the focus of two papers, and many of the papers included discuss overall Romance developments. It is noteworthy that formal approaches to syntax are here regularly applied to historical data (three papers specifically deal with pro-drop phenomena in Old French). Of the papers on phonology, syllabification and linking processes receive much attention.

"Brilliant and beautiful. Now this book exists, it’s hard to know how we did without it." –China Miéville, author of October A cultural and intellectual balance-sheet of the twentieth century's age of revolutions This book reinterprets the history of nineteenth and twentieth-century revolutions by composing a constellation of "dialectical images": Marx's "locomotives of history," Alexandra Kollontai's sexually liberated bodies, Lenin's mummified body, Auguste Blanqui's barricades and red flags, the Paris Commune's demolition of the Vendome Column, among several others. It connects theories with the existential trajectories of the thinkers who elaborated them, by sketching the diverse profiles of revolutionary intellectuals--from Marx and Bakunin to Luxemburg and the Bolsheviks, from Mao and Ho Chi Minh to José Carlos Mariátegui, C.L.R. James, and other rebellious spirits from the South--as outcasts and pariahs. And finally, it analyzes the entanglement between revolution and communism that so deeply shaped the history of the twentieth century. This book thus merges ideas and representations by devoting an equal importance to theoretical and iconographic sources, offering for our troubled present a new intellectual history of the revolutionary past.

This book presents a range of ongoing studies on atypical language development in Romance languages. Despite the steady increase in the number of studies on typical language development, there is still little research about atypical language development, especially in Romance languages. This book covers four main conditions causing atypical language development. Part I explores the linguistic and communicative characteristics of preterm children learning Romance languages. The focus of Part II centers on children with Specific Language Impairment. Hearing Loss in Part III is another relevant factor leading to atypical language development. The final part IV zeroes in on genetic syndromes coupled to cognitive impairment with special attention to language development. This book presents a much needed overview of the most recent findings in all relevant fields dealing with atypical language development in children speaking Romance languages.

Originally published in 1984, Reading the Romance challenges popular (and often demeaning) myths about why romantic fiction, one of publishing's most lucrative categories, captivates millions of women readers. Among those who have disparaged romance reading are feminists, literary critics, and theorists of mass culture. They claim that romances enforce the woman reader's dependence on men and acceptance of the repressive ideology purveyed by popular culture. Radway questions such claims, arguing that critical attention "must shift from the text itself, taken in isolation, to the complex social event of reading." She examines that event, from the complicated business of publishing and distribution to the individual reader's engagement with the text. Radway's provocative approach combines reader-response criticism with anthropology and feminist psychology. Asking readers themselves to explore their reading motives, habits, and rewards, she conducted interviews in a midwestern town with forty-two romance readers whom she met through Dorothy Evans, a chain bookstore employee who has earned a reputation as an expert on romantic fiction. Evans defends her customers' choice of entertainment; reading romances, she tells Radway, is no more harmful than watching sports on television. "We read books so we won't cry" is the poignant explanation one woman offers for her reading habit. Indeed, Radway found that while the women she studied devote themselves to nurturing their families, these wives and mothers receive insufficient devotion or nurturance in return. In romances the women find not only escape from the demanding and often tiresome routines of their lives but also a hero who supplies the tenderness and admiring attention that they have learned not to expect. The heroines admired by Radway's group defy the expected stereotypes; they are strong, independent, and intelligent. That such characters often find themselves to be victims of male aggression and almost always resign themselves to accepting conventional roles in life has less to do, Radway argues, with the women readers' fantasies and choices than with their need to deal with a fear of masculine dominance. These romance readers resent not only the limited choices in their own lives but the patronizing atitude that men especially express toward their reading tastes. In fact, women read romances both to protest and to escape temporarily the narrowly defined role prescribed for them by a patriarchal culture. Paradoxically, the books that they read make conventional roles for women seem desirable. It is this complex relationship between culture, text, and woman reader that Radway urges feminists to address. Romance readers, she argues, should be encouraged to deliver their protests in the arena of actual social relations rather than to act them out in the solitude of the imagination. In a new introduction, Janice Radway places the book within the context of current scholarship and offers both an explanation and critique of the study's limitations.

Weaver-Zercher blends academic analysis with her own experiences of researching, reading, and talking with others about Amish fiction in order to explore the phenomenon, with particular attention to the hypermodernity and hypersexuality that are fueling the appeal of the genre for evangelical Christian readers.

Nowadays thousands of grammar books, textbooks, outlines, references and language guides of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French are published year by year. However, all of them teach these languages separately. Here you will find a comparative grammar of the four major Romance languages together based on their grammatical and lexical similarities for you, lovers of foreign languages, to learn and compare Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French simultaneously. It is an audacious endeavor to find or create a novel way of learning to speak several languages and becoming a multilingual person. It took me over 3 years to finish the book. It consists of over 800 pages, 10 chapters covering all the grammatical aspects of these 4 languages. It includes over 1000 examples, 500 easy-to-follow charts and tables. It contains 138 geographical, historical and cultural facts about Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French countries.Below I will discuss several reasons why I decided to write this book and why you need it.1) First of all, this book is written for readers like you who are fond of or would like to learn Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French simultaneously or just to get an all-round knowledge of all these four Romance languages. It is designed not only for beginners who do not have an extensive knowledge of grammar, yet need a guide through the grammatical concepts of all mentioned above languages, but also intermediate and advanced students who would like to have a reference book ofseveral Romance languages at once.2) Second of all I spent many years learning these languages separately, which was a complete waste of time before I realized it. This book will hopefully save you a great deal of time and allow you to study and compare at a glance the four main Neo-Latin languages.3) Knowledge of foreign languages is fast becoming a necessary requirement for those who are involved in international business, tourism, culture and education. This book offers you four languages to learn, which will make you feel at homewherever you go, whether as a tourist or businessman.4) Learning several languages simultaneously or one by one will train and strengthen your memory and can help stave off such terrible diseases as Alzheimer's.5) If you have never studied several languages at once before and you like challenges, then you should definitely try it. Because it is a really entertaining and challenging task to do.In conclusion, I would like to sincerely thank you for preordering the book and your interest in it. I hope it will help youimprove your languages and become multilingual.