Note: A placement exam will be required when you arrive on site.

High Advanced

This course is designed for students who have completed or tested out of a minimum of five semesters (or seven quarters) of college-level Spanish. However, students must take a placement exam to determine the course level into which they will be able to enroll.

OBJECTIVES
The aim of this Course is to provide students with an understanding of the different stages and general tendencies within the overall development of the Spanish Language, together with the key linguistic transformations (phonetic, morpho-syntactic, lexical, etc.) which have contributed to the different configurations of Spanish, both with regard to Latin, its mother language, as well as to the remaining Romance Languages.

SYLLABUS
1. The Peoples and Languages of the Iberian Peninsula in the Pre-Roman Era. The Possible Influence of these Languages on the Peninsula’s Linguistic History.
2. Latin in Hispania: the Process of Cultural and Linguistic Romanization. The Specific Characteristics of Hispanic Latin.
3. The Germanic Invasions: their Influence and their Impact on the Evolution of the Romanic Peninsula. The Arabs in Spain: the Linguistic Consequences of their Presence.
4. The Primitive Romance Languages of the Peninsula: Similarities and Differences. Medieval Castilian: its Emergence as a Written Language during the Thirteenth Century.
5. The Linguistic Characteristics of Medieval Castilian: Phonetic and Phonological; Morphological and Syntactic; Lexical. The Evolution of Castilian in the Late Middle Ages. The Evolution of Literary Language in Medieval Castilian.
6. The Golden Age: from ‘Castilian’ to ‘Spanish’. The External Expansion of the Spanish Language. Spanish as the Language of Literature and Culture in the Classical Period.
7. The Main Linguistic Transformations affecting Spanish during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.
8. The Emergence of Modern Spanish. Grammatical and Academic Norms. The Development of Literary Language. Evolutionary Trends in Present-day Spanish. The Issue of the Unity of the Spanish Language.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
CANO AGUILAR, R. El español a través de los tiempos, Madrid: Arco Libros, 1988.
LAPESA, R. Historia de la lengua española, Madrid: Gredos, 1981 (9ª ed.).

ASSESSMENT
Two theoretical exams will be set, one mid-way through the Course and the other at the close of the semester. Reaching pass level, or higher, in the first of these exams will enable students to move on to the second stage of the Course, and, thus, to the second exam, without having to take into further account the content of the syllabus leading up to the first exam.