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

Advanced

This course is designed for students who have completed or tested out of a minimum of four semesters (or six 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.

OVERVIEW

This course will study the Spanish language from a historical point of view. It will involve a review of the different stages in the formation of Spanish, from the origins of the language to current and modern Spanish. Special emphasis will be placed on medieval castellano (12th-15th Centuries) and on the Spanish of the Siglos de Oro (16th-17th Centuries). Also covered will be historical grammar and the evolution of the language from vulgar Latin to current times (phonetics, morphology, and historical syntax) so that students may obtain the following objectives:

1. The understanding that the Spanish language is in constant evolution. This is evidenced by a process of changes that it still taking place.

2. Facilitating the comprehension of various linguistic phenomena of modern-day Spanish and the different norms of Spanish pronunciation (castellana, meridional, andaluza, americana, etc.), the article "el" and feminine sustantive (el agua), the use of "vos" in certain regions, etc.

3. The interpretation of written texts from each stage of the Spanish language like "El Poema del Mio Cid", "La Celestina", "Dialogo de la Lengua", etc.

PROGRAM

1. Introduction to the history of Spanish; basic concepts:
a. sincrony and diacrony
b. stages in the evolution of the language

2. Classic Latin; Vulgar Latin; Linguistic characterization

3. The Iberian Peninsula before the arrival of Latin
a. Linguistic situation
b. Pre-Roman languages
c. Linguistic substrata

4. The arrival of Latin in the Iberian Peninsula
a. Romanization
b. The Latin of España
c. Linguistic abstractions

5. Other "Invaders" besides the Romans; Linguistic superstrata
a. Visigoths
b. Arabs

6. Historical Grammar
a. Basic concepts; La YOD; EI WAU
b. Evolution of the vocalic system from Latin to Spanish
c. Evolution of the consonantic system from Latin to Spanish

7. Stages in the evolution of Spanish
a. Era of origins (until the 12th Century); graphics in primitive Spanish
b. Medieval Castilian (13th - 15th Centuries); Alfonsi normalization; vocalic apocope
c. Classic Spanish in the Siglos de Oro (16th - 17th Centuries); readjusting to the consonantic system
d. Modern Spanish (from the 18th Century); orthographic reformations of the Real Academia de la Lengua Española

8. Principal grammatical transformations from Latin to Spanish

9. Revision of the concept of "cultism"

EVALUATION

Partial exam 30%
Final exam 30%
Participation and classwork 20%
Final project 20%

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GARCÍA V ALLE, Adela, La variación nominal en los orígenes del español. Madrid. CSIC. 1998.

CANO AGUILAR, Rafael(1988), El español a través de los tiempos, Madrid, ArcoLibros, última edición.

GARCÍA VALLE, Adela, EL notariado hispánico medieval. Consideraciones histórico-jilológicas y diplomáticas. Anejo XXXVI de Cuadernos de Filología. Universidad de Valencia. 1999.

LAPESA MELGAR, Rafael, Historia de la Lengua Española, Madrid, Gredos, 1983.