Overview
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.
Full Product Details
Author: Michele Loporcaro (Full Professor of Romance Linguistics, Full Professor of Romance Linguistics, University of Zurich)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Volume: 27
Dimensions:
Width: 16.10cm
, Height: 2.60cm
, Length: 24.20cm
Weight: 0.834kg
ISBN: 9780199656547
ISBN 10: 0199656541
Pages: 414
Publication Date: 14 December 2017
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Reviews
Undoubtedly a very important contribution to research, particularly remarkable for the richness of the data and the sharpness of the analyses put forward. It will certainly leave its mark in the field of Romance morphology. Highly recommended. * Marco Maggiore, Revue de Linguistique Romane [Translated from French] *
Author Information
Michele Loporcaro is Professor of Romance Linguistics at the University of Zurich. He previously held positions at the Universities of Padua and Cosenza, in addition to visiting professorships at several universities in Europe and the USA and visiting fellowships at Magdalen College, Oxford (2012) and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2013-14), and the Italian Academy for Advances Studies in America at Columbia University in the City of New York (2017). In 2012, he received the Antonio Feltrinelli prize for his work in Italian linguistics. His research interests include historical linguistics, linguistic historiography, and the phonology, morphology, and syntax of Italo-Romance linguistic varieties. His work has been published widely in many journals and he is the author of several books, including Profilo linguistico dei dialetti italiani (Laterza 2009; 3rd edn. 2013), and Vowel Length from Latin to Romance (OUP 2015).
