Diachronic Applications in Hispanic Linguistics

Book excerpt: This volume presents specific topics in diachronic Hispanic linguistics. These topics include: lexical survivals in Ibero-Romance, Arabisms, lexical variation in early modern Spain, the origins of the confusion of b with v, Andalusian Spanish in the Americas, the expansion of seseo and yeísmo, processes of koineization, syntactic change in scribal documentation from the Middle Ages, and the semantic changes of the verbs ser, estar and haber. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the Spanish lexicon, phonetics, morphosyntax, dialectology and semantics with the input of ten prominent scholars. It focuses not only on relevant issues in the evolution of Spanish but also answers pertinent questions in the field such as: Why do we have Latin lexical survivals in Ibero-Romance and not in other Romance languages? What kind of social factors drove Arabic lexical borrowings? How did the advent of printing affect the standardization of the lexicon and orthography? What are the main theories to explain the confusion between b and v? How relevant was the role of the Andalusian dialect in the general historical evolution of Spanish in the Americas? What were the main social and demographic influences operating in the development of Spanish during the colonial period? How accurately did scribal practices represent the speech of the Middle Ages? How did ser (ESSERE), estar (STARE) and haber (HABERE) develop differently in Romance languages?