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.

The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages is the most exhaustive treatment of the Romance languages available today. Leading international scholars adopt a variety of theoretical frameworks and approaches to offer a detailed structural examination of all the individual Romance varieties and Romance-speaking areas, including standard, non-standard, dialectal, and regional varieties of the Old and New Worlds. The book also offers a comprehensive comparative account of major topics, issues, and case studies across different areas of the grammar of the Romance languages. The volume is organized into 10 thematic parts: Parts 1 and 2 deal with the making of the Romance languages and their typology and classification, respectively; Part 3 is devoted to individual structural overviews of Romance languages, dialects, and linguistic areas, while Part 4 provides comparative overviews of Romance phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics, and sociolinguistics. Chapters in Parts 5-9 examine issues in Romance phonology, morphology, syntax, syntax and semantics, and pragmatics and discourse, respectively, while the final part contains case studies of topics in the nominal group, verbal group, and the clause. The book will be an essential resource for both Romance specialists and everyone with an interest in Indo-European and comparative linguistics.

This volume is the first collection of papers that is exclusively dedicated to the concept of exaptation, a notion from evolutionary biology that was famously introduced into linguistics by Roger Lass in 1990. The past quarter-century has seen a heated debate on the properties of linguistic exaptation, its demarcation from other processes of linguistic change, and indeed the question of whether it is a useful concept in historical linguistics at all. The contributions in the present volume reflect these diverging points of view. Along with a comprehensive introduction, covering the history of the notion of exaptation from its conception in the field of biology to its adoption in linguistics, the book offers extensive discussion of the concept from various theoretical perspectives, detailed case studies as well as critical reviews of some stock examples. The book will be of interest to scholars working in the fields of evolutionary linguistics, historical linguistics, and the history of linguistics.

This handbook comprises an in-depth presentation of the state of the art in word-formation. The five volumes contain 207 articles written by leading international scholars. The XVI chapters of the handbook provide the reader, in both general articles and individual studies, with a wide variety of perspectives: word-formation as a linguistic discipline (history of science, theoretical concepts), units and processes in word-formation, rules and restrictions, semantics and pragmatics, foreign word-formation, language planning and purism, historical word-formation, word-formation in language acquisition and aphasia, word-formation and language use, tools in word-formation research. The final chapter comprises 74 portraits of word-formation in the individual languages of Europe and offers an innovative perspective. These portraits afford the first overview of this kind and will prove useful for future typological research. This handbook will provide an essential reference for both advanced students and researchers in word-formation and related fields within linguistics.

This book offers the first comprehensive account of the development of the Romanian morphological system. Romanian is one of the most morphologically complex Romance languages, but has remained relatively understudied compared with better-known languages such as French and Spanish. Following an introduction that provides an outline of the history of Romanian, its writing system and major typological characteristics, and the major patterns of allomorphy, chapters in this volume explore a range of fascinatingly complex aspects of Romanian grammar whose structure and history have to date been largely inaccessible to the English-speaking world. Among the most distinctive morphological characteristics of Romanian discussed by the authors are its inflexional case system; the highly unpredictable formation of the plural; the existence of a non-finite verb form that appears to be the continuation of the Latin supine; the near-absence of distinctive subjunctive morphology; and the complex patterns of allomorphy brought about by successive sound change. The frequently controversial origins of many of these developments have important implications for broader historical Romance linguistics and indeed for morphological theory more generally.

This book is the first comprehensive comparative-historical survey of patterns of alternation in the Romance verb which appear to be 'autonomously morphological': although they can be shown to be persistent through time, they have long ceased to be conditioned by any phonological or functional determinant. Some of these patterns are well known in Romance linguistics, while others have scarcely been noticed. The sheer range of phenomena which participate in these patterns in any case far surpasses what Romance linguists had previously realized. The patterns constitute a kind of abstract 'leitmotiv', running through the history of the Romance languages and conferring on them a distinctive morphological physiognomy. Although intended primarily as a novel contribution to comparative-historical Romance linguistics, the book considers in detail the status of these patterns which appear to be a matter of 'morphology by itself', unsupported by determining factors external to the morphological system. Particular attention is paid to the problem of their persistence, self-replication, and reinforcement over time. Why do abstract morphological patterns that quite literally 'do not make sense' display such diachronic robustness? The evidence suggests that speakers, faced with different ways of expressing semantically identical material, seek out distributional templates into which those differences can be deployed. In Romance the only available templates happen to be 'morphomic', morphologically accidental, effects of old sound changes or defunct functional conditionings. Those patterns are accordingly exploited, and indeed reinforced, by being made maximally predictable.