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

This handbook offers a synopsis of the regular changes that Latin words underwent in the course of their evolution into modern Romance languages (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French, with their English cognates). Although it is intended for the nonspecialist, students of Romance philology will find it useful as a ready reference and as a source of abundant examples of Latin sound changes.

The synopsis is presented in the form of separate alphabetical charts for each major sound change. The rules, stated as simply as possible, do not generally explain the evolution of the changes, but only the end results. For those desiring further information, there are notes after most rules outlining exceptions to or modifications of that rule and often sketching successive stages in the development of the sound. Several minor or sporadic sound changes are also treated in note form. Each chart is supplemented by a list of additional words illustrating the same sound change.

From Latin to Roman in Sound Charts has been used successfully as a graduate level text for such courses as History of Spanish, History of French, and Romance Linguistics.

This book describes several aspects of syntax and semantics of romance languages assuming the point of view of a constraint-based, non-transformational linguistic theory, i.e. Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). Besides the widening of the empirical coverage of HPSG the theory, its main significance consists in a refinement of the theory itself, on the basis of data from romance languages. It contains essays discussing phenomena from Catalan, French, Italian and Spanish.