Volume 138, Issue 1

The origin and development of the compound suffix - ARÍA in (Latin and) Romance has repeatedly been addressed in works on the history of Romance word formation, without however reaching a broad consensus. In the present article, the problem is discussed again from a pan-Romance perspective and on a broad factual basis. The first chapter argues that the compound suffix’s second element, i.e. - ÍA , was already highly polysemous in (late) Latin and that the Romance languages inherited this polysemy. It is therefore misguided to treat the semantic fragmentation of the suffix as a process that took place independently in the single Romance languages. We then turn to a description of the single Romance languages and dialects, treating first the state of the art for each of these and then presenting the different patterns that can be observed, especially in the older stages. The next chapter looks at the single patterns one by one, discussing to what extent they are present in each Romance language and at the dialectal level. The lexemes that turned out to be crucial from a diachronic perspective receive special attention. The final chapter summarizes the main findings, which depart in important ways from traditional wisdom.

The study of the contents of the manuscript Rep. I 30B of Leipzig University Library, a codex catalogued in the 19th century but almost ignored, provides new evidence of known translations into Spanish and of others hitherto unknown. In the first case we find Seneca’s Epistulae morales ad Lucilium translated or commissioned for translation by Fernán Pérez de Guzmán, several chapters of Tacitus’s Annales and the Oratio Demosthenis according to the text by Pere Torroella. In the second, a new version (the second) of the false epistolary between Seneca and Saint Paul, a work that allowed Saint Jerome to introduce the Cordovan philosopher in his list of De viris illustribus and an plot that even made some medieval authors think about the conversion of the old Seneca to Christianity. In order to reach these conclusions, a careful textual analysis is performed. An edition of this second translation of the apocryphal epistolary is included at the end of the article.

A poet’s choice of rhythmic patterns is affected by three factors: a universal set of metrical constraints, common to all languages; the metrical grammar and lexical structure of the poet’s own language; and the poet’s personal style. The first aim of this paper is to analyse how these three factors influence the frequency of different stress patterns in the customary metre of Ausiàs March (1400‒1459): the decasyllable with caesura a minore (4+6 syllables). The second aim is to compare March’s schemes of stress with the patterns used by Vicent Andrés Estellés (1924‒1993) in his alexandrines in the 1971 book Llibre de meravelles ( Book of Wonders ). The comparative analysis shows that the same metrical constraints operate in both authors and that their weight is equivalent. This equivalence can be seen first in the similarity of their arrangement of patterns in terms of frequency, which shows a clear preference for models that are rhythmically better; and second in the similarity of the proportions of their use of different schemes. The twofold coincidence indicates that March and Estellés, in spite of the vast distance in time between them, share the same metrical grammar. All that separates them is March’s slight inclination toward patterns of binary rhythm compared to Estellés’s preference for ternary rhythm. This difference, which is independent of the metre used by the authors, must be attributed to their stylistic preferences.

Salamanca, University Library, MS 1877 (1469–1470) is a miscellany made up of genetically independent works, all in Castilian: the Fuero real by Alfonso X; a translation of the Barlaam et Josaphat ; sayings of the desert fathers taken from the Vitae patrum of Pelagius and John; a translation of John of Rupescissa’s Vade mecum in tribulatione ; segments of three French Arthurian romances ( Libro de Josep Abarimatia , Estoria de Merlín and Lançarote ); a short catechism with no known direct source. But it is also miscellaneous because, as usually occurs in these compilations, the collected works belong to different textual genres: code of law; oriental didactic literature; hagiographic and apocalyptic discourses; Arthurian romance; catechetical compendium. Taking materialist philology as a theoretical framework, this article will propose a unitary reading of the manuscript from the hypothesis that among its dissimilar components there are semantic ties that give it a specific coherence and meaning. We will claim that the codex explores a series of exemplary variations destined to reprove the excess of irascible ( saña ) and concupiscible ( codicia ) appetites that those who dedicate themselves to active life tend to experience against the virtues of justice and prudence that are essential to access contemplative life .

Predicative or pronominal relative clauses in Spanish take a pronominal category as their head. These configurations show some grammatical traits and a geographical variation which have not yet been inquiried into. These structures, as it is argued in this paper, may host two different types of resumptive pronouns: what will be called asymmetric resumption, triggered by subject-object asymmetries; and resumption as a case-matching mechanism, available in non-matching semi-free relative clauses. As for the head of the construction, dialects of Peninsular Spanish are grouped into those which resort to the explicit pronoun and those which show a propensity to use the implicit pronominal category. The variant headed by the implicit pronoun is similar in some respects to relative clause extraposition, but some new data are brought to the fore that distinguish one construction from the other.

This work offers an in-depth description of the main morphosyntactic (and lexical) features found in present Salvadoran Spanish, a lesser-known Central American variety. Text corpora and sociolinguistic surveys help us to provide an updated grammatical overview, which takes into account most categories: nouns and adjectives, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, prepositions and locutions, and illustrates with examples taken both from formal and informal settings. By comparing these features with previous grammatical descriptions, this study helps in identifying some common American features —such as the use of hasta (que) and una mi amiga — as well as some specific patterns —such as the prominence of - ado and - oso suffixes, utualito adverb, algotro pronoun and old expletive lo — in present-day Salvadoran Spanish, some of which remain to be incorporated in the Academy grammar ( simasito adverb, al no más + infinitive locution).

The central aim of this paper is to trace back the celtization of the Iberian Peninsula, mainly on the basis of toponymic evidence. On this basis, there is evidence for two waves of celtization. As we shall see, the manifestation of Celtic in the south-western part of the peninsula is more consistent with the Celtic from the West hypothesis than with the traditional viewpoint that the Celts came exclusively from Central Europe. In this connection, special attention is paid to the putative celticity both of the Tartessian language and of the suffix - essos . Likewise, Renfrew’s hypothesis that Indo-European originated in Asia Minor is in full harmony with the apparent origin of - essos in Asia Minor .

The article intends to reconstruct the linguistic history of a particular fishing gear called marruffo , which is still used in the Gulf of Naples and in a few places of the North Tyrrhenian coasts. The marruffo is a fishing trap used by fishermen to preserve the catch while awaiting sale. Conical in shape, it looks like a large basket with a lid, in which fish or crustaceans of various types are placed. Starting from the 1871 work by the naturalist Achille Costa, entitled La pesca nel golfo di Napoli , the attestations of marruffo in Campania, Sardinia and Corsica are outlined. I put forward the hypothesis that the object arrived on the Tyrrhenian coasts as a consequence of migrations of fishermen from the Neapolitan area to the islands of Tuscany, Sardinia and Corsica between the 18th and 19th century. Since in southern Italy the name marruffo also indicates a jug for wine or water, I hypothesize that the word was extended from the lexicon of everyday life to the fishing lexicon throughout a process of resemantization, as it was demonstrated for other similar cases.

The article discusses the origin of Sardinian thurpu ‘blind’, which some authors consider as part of the Prelatin autochthonous stratum (Wagner, Tagliavini, Rohlfs), whereas others assume that it is borrowing from Southern Italian Greek (Ribezzo, Tuttle). In conclusion, the second hypothesis seems more likely, even if the Greek term may well have been present in Sardinia before the arrival of the Romans.