History of the Spanish Language

This course will deal mostly with Spanish historical grammar. It puts special emphasis on the relation between basic theoretical aspects of the linguistic change and how it is presented in the historical grammar of Spanish. The course would study in particular the evolution of the language at the morphosyntactic and phonetic levels. At the end of the course the student will be able: a) to know the basic principles that govern the processes of linguistic change; b) to identify a general taxonomy of sound changes; c) to know the fundamental processes of phonic evolution of vowels and consonants in the historical grammar of Spanish, and d) to know the major morphosyntactic changes in the history of Spanish. (1 unit)

Required Texts: Concepción Company & Javier Cuétara Priede, Manual de gramática histórica (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2008); Paul Lloyd, Del Latín al Español (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1993).