A strictly descriptive—or synchronic—approach to romance linguistics.

This first of the two-volume A Course in Romance Linguistics is strictly descriptive (synchronic) as opposed to the second volume which is strictly historical (diachronic). Both embody the author's forty-odd years of experience in teaching this subject with never a fully satisfactory textbook at hand. The present manual is the first to set forth a concerted learning program designed to guide students through material organized in terms of up-to-date linguistic principles and at the same time to provide them with models of analysis and description on which to base exercise and projects of their own.