Variation and Change in Spanish

by Ralph Penny

This book applies recent theoretical insights to trace the development of Castilian and Latin American Spanish from the Middle Ages onwards, through processes of repeated dialect mixing both within the Iberian Peninsula and in the New World. The author contends that it was this frequent mixing which caused Castilian to evolve more rapidly than other varieties of Hispano-Romance, and which rendered Spanish particularly subject to levelling of its linguistic irregularities and to simplification of its structures. These two processes continued as the language extended into and across the Americas. These processes are viewed in the context of the Hispano-Romance dialect continuum, which includes Galician, Portuguese and Catalan, as well as New World varieties. The book emphasises the subtlety and seamlessness of language variation, both geographical and social, and the impossibility of defining strict boundaries between varieties. Its conclusions will be relevant both to Hispanists and to historical sociolinguists more generally.

Genres: Linguistics, Research

300 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 29, 1996

Reviews

[Jan Cölle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much more than a book on Spanish this book gives valuable insight on how change operates on languages and everything is written in a manner that can be understood without specific linguistic knowledge. All that I expected and more. The only thing that's still missing for me is an explanation on why latin evolved in this particular way in the Iberian peninsula (latin with a vandal accent?) but that's probably mostly speculatory and this book is not about speculation. Anyway, if anyone can give me a title of a book speculating on the above and/or a similar book on German, English or French I'd be greatful.