Winter '27

Linguistics 50.04 History of the Romance Languages (Pulju) @ 10: This course focuses on the internal history of three Romance languages—Italian, Spanish, and French—showing how they diverged from their common ancestor to become three separate languages today. Although we will pay some attention to social, cultural, political, and literary developments, the bulk of the course will cover changes in linguistic structure. We will trace the development of phonology, morphology, and lexicon from Vulgar Latin up through the present. Particular attention will be given to historical explanations for irregular patterns in the modern languages; e.g., stem alternations as seen in French je viens vs. nous venons, or the use of the article el with the feminine noun agua in Spanish. Distributive: QDS. WCult: W. NRO eligible.