Introduction to Romance Linguistics

This course welcomes students and speakers of French, Italian, Latin, Portuguese, and Spanish who are curious about linguistics and wish to undertake a comparative study of the Romance linguistic family as a whole. We shall survey the basic principles and methods of the linguistic science and immediately apply them to the rich and fascinating data drawn from the history of the Romance languages. Through alternating internal (structural) and external (socio-cultural) approaches to the study of languages, our goal is to construct a coherent vision of unity and diversity that at once characterize the native languages of more than 900 million speakers worldwide. No previous experience in linguistics is required but a good knowledge of at least one Romance language is obligatory. (Approval required; Two semesters of a Romance language study) 3 hrs. lect./disc.