This volume presents current research in the formal treatment of linguistic phenomena in the Romance languages. It focuses on a variety of issues in phonology, second language acquisition, semantics, and syntax. Topics in phonological theory include the analysis of geminates, assimilation, rhotics, aspiration, syllabification, the interaction of phonology with morphology, the phonology-phonetics interface, and issues of transderivation and allomorphy selection. The primary question addressed in the area of second language acquisition theory is the issue of learners' access to Universal Grammar. The studies in semantic theory examine the proper analysis of indefinites, bare plurals, and specificity, with a particular emphasis on the syntax-semantics interface. Finally, the essays on syntactic theory discuss issues pertaining to argument structure, functional projections, phrase structure and adjunction, feature checking, and the syntactic representation of tense.

This volume presents current research in the formal treatment of linguistic phenomena in the Romance languages. It focuses on a variety of issues in phonology, second language acquisition, semantics, and syntax. Topics in phonological theory include the analysis of geminates, assimilation, rhotics, aspiration, syllabification, the interaction of phonology with morphology, the phonology-phonetics interface, and issues of transderivation and allomorphy selection. The primary question addressed in the area of second language acquisition theory is the issue of learners' access to Universal Grammar. The studies in semantic theory examine the proper analysis of indefinites, bare plurals, and specificity, with a particular emphasis on the syntax-semantics interface. Finally, the essays on syntactic theory discuss issues pertaining to argument structure, functional projections, phrase structure and adjunction, feature checking, and the syntactic representation of tense.

This is the first of two volumes emanating from the Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages held at the University of Texas at Austin in February 2005. It features the keynote address delivered by Denis Bouchard on exaptation and linguistic explanation, as well as seventeen contributions by emerging and internationally recognized scholars of Spanish, French, Italian, as well as Rumanian. While the emphasis bears on formal analyses, the coverage is remarkably broad, as topics range from morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics and language acquisition. Each article seeks to represent a new perspective on these topics and a variety of frameworks and concepts are exploited: distributive morphology, entailment theory, grammaticalization, information structure, left-periphery, polarity lattice, spatial individuation, thematic hierarchy, etc. This volume will challenge anyone interested in current issues in theoretical Romance Linguistics.

This is the second of two volumes emanating from the Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages held at the University of Texas at Austin in February 2005. It features the keynote addresses delivered by Prof. Jacques Durand on the Phonology of Contemporary French Project and Prof. John Charles Smith on skeuomorphy and refunctionalization. It also includes eleven contributions by reputed scholars on topics ranging from phonetics, phonology, morphophonology, dialectology, sociolinguistics and language variation. Formal phonology papers favor the model of Optimality Theory, while phonetic measurements serve as the basis for sociolinguistic and dialectometric studies. Many of these studies emphasize new comparative, typological approaches to Romance data (including many non-standard varieties of French, Italian and Spanish). This volume will be of interest to all Romance linguists.

This is the second of two volumes emanating from the Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages held at the University of Texas at Austin in February 2005. It features the keynote addresses delivered by Prof. Jacques Durand on the Phonology of Contemporary French Project and Prof. John Charles Smith on skeuomorphy and refunctionalization. It also includes eleven contributions by reputed scholars on topics ranging from phonetics, phonology, morphophonology, dialectology, sociolinguistics and language variation. Formal phonology papers favor the model of Optimality Theory, while phonetic measurements serve as the basis for sociolinguistic and dialectometric studies. Many of these studies emphasize new comparative, typological approaches to Romance data (including many non-standard varieties of French, Italian and Spanish). This volume will be of interest to all Romance linguists.

This volume contains 17 studies on historical Romance linguistics within a variety of current theoretical frameworks; it includes studies on phonology, morphology and syntax, focusing solely or comparatively on all five ‘major’ Romance languages: French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish. An introduction by the eminent Romance Linguist Jürgen Klausenburger addresses the fit of these studies in the overall development of the field of historical Romance linguistics since the 19th century. The studies in this volume demonstrate an organic link between Malkiel’s (1961) ‘classic’ definition of Romance linguistics and the field of Romance linguistics today, because just as scholars of the field in the 19th century successfully applied the dominant paradigm of (historical) linguistics of their time, Neogrammarian theory, so do the authors contained in the present volume avail themselves of current linguistic advances to achieve equally significant results.

This is the first of two volumes emanating from the Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages held at the University of Texas at Austin in February 2005. It features the keynote address delivered by Denis Bouchard on exaptation and linguistic explanation, as well as seventeen contributions by emerging and internationally recognized scholars of Spanish, French, Italian, as well as Rumanian. While the emphasis bears on formal analyses, the coverage is remarkably broad, as topics range from morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics and language acquisition. Each article seeks to represent a new perspective on these topics and a variety of frameworks and concepts are exploited: distributive morphology, entailment theory, grammaticalization, information structure, left-periphery, polarity lattice, spatial individuation, thematic hierarchy, etc. This volume will challenge anyone interested in current issues in theoretical Romance Linguistics.

This volume presents a selection of the best papers from the 1991 Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, held in Santa Barbara. In addition, the volume contains revised versions of three of the keynote papers. A welcome aspect of this collection, reflective of the conference itself, is the recurrent incorporation of historical and social factors into explanations of linguistic form.

This volume is a selection of twenty peer-reviewed articles first presented at the 41st annual Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), held at the University of Ottawa in 2011. They are thematically linked by a broad notion of variation across languages, dialects, speakers, time, linguistic contexts, and communicative situations. Furthermore, the articles address common theoretical and empirical issues from different formal, experimental, or corpus-based perspectives. The languages analyzed belong to the main members of the Romance family, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, French, Ladin, Italian, Sardinian, and Romanian, and a variety of topics across a wide spectrum of linguistic subfields, from phonetics to semantics, as well as historical linguistics, bilingualism and second-language learning, is covered. By illustrating the richness and complementarity of subjects, methods, and theoretical frameworks explored within Romance linguistics, significant contributieons are made to both the documentation of Romance languages and to linguistic theory.