Paul A. Gaeng's exhaustive morpho-syntactic analysis of Latin nominal declensions, as found in Christian funerary inscriptions from the Roman Empire, seeks to establish the extent to which this inscribed material reflects the period's linguistic evolution: from classical Latin's multi-case structure to the one-case system of Western Romance Languages. The study draws on E. Diehl's three-volume Inscriptiones Latinae Veteres and J. D. Vives's Inscripciones cristianas de las Espanas romana y visigoda for its heterogeneous dataset. Gaeng's work forms a valuable contribution to the study of the dissolution of the Latin declensional system in the shift from Latin to Romance.

Classical Latin appears to be without regional dialects, yet Latin evolved in little more than a millennium into a variety of different languages. This book argues comprehensively that Latin in fact never lacked regional variations and examines the changing patterns and causes of this diversity throughout the Roman period.

A major history of many of the developments undergone by the Latin language as it changed into Romance languages. A distinction is made between linguistic change emanating from higher social/educational groups ('change from above') and that emanating from lower social/educational groups ('change from below').

This book makes available for the first time in paperback the results of an important interdisciplinary conference held at Rutgers University in 1989. Eighteen internationally known specialists in linguistics, history, philology, Latin, and Romance languages tackle the difficult question of how and when Latin evolved into the Romance languages of French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Catalan. The result is a stimulating and open exchange that offers the most up-to-date and accessible coverage of the topic. Contributors are Paul M. Lloyd, Tore Janson, J&ózsef Herman, Alberto Varvaro, Thomas D. Cravens, Harm Pinkster, John N. Green, Roger Wright, Marc Van Uytfanghe, Rosamond McKitterick, Katrien Heene, Michel Banniard, Birte Stengaard, Carmen Pensado, Thomas J. Walsh, Robert Blake, Ant&ónio Emiliano, and Marcel Danesi.