This introduction to Medieval Spanish, or Old Spanish, closes a long-standing gap in the literature. Focusing on the internal history of the Spanish language, it traces its phonetic, grammatical, and lexical development from classical and vulgar Latin to Medieval Spanish. The characteristics of the Old Spanish language are also illustrated through a presentation and commentary of suitable text excerpts that represent its different stages of development.
Hip-hop and rap music have been a central part of youth cultures all around the world for decades. While every country has its own scene with a specific social and cultural context, the global hip-hop phenomenon also allows young people to integrate their regional identities within an increasingly international environment. The inclusion of rap and hip-hop lyrics in foreign language teaching makes a unique, transcultural approach possible that connects directly to the students' interests.This guidebook offers both teachers and students a wealth of authentic rap and hip-hop lyrics that can be used in Spanish and French as foreign-language classes. They can serve as exercises for listening and reading comprehension of all levels or as templates for entire teaching units. The accompanying website (www.rapromania.de) lends itself to the integration in various forms of multimedia teaching and learning.
This book is a general introduction to the structures of the different medieval Romance vernaculars most commonly known as Old or Medieval Spanish, as preserved in texts from Spain from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. After discussing general methodological questions concerning the description and analysis of an earlier historical stage of a modern language, the individual chapters in the first part of the book describe the orthography, phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary of medieval Hispano-Romance. Steven N. Dworkin offers the first systematic description of the language in English, and compares its structures with those found in the modern variety. In the second part of the book, the features of medieval Hispano-Romance are exemplified in an anthology of selected texts, one from each of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, accompanied by linguistic commentary. The volume will be of interest to scholars and students of Romance linguistics, Spanish historical linguistics, and Spanish medieval literary and cultural studies.
No other grammatical phenomenon causes as many problems in teaching and learning as the subjunctive. Most grammars devote as many pages to the presentation of the rules as to the exceptions. This becomes even more frustrating when dealing with the differences, not only between different language families, but even within the Romance language family alone, since it seems that each language shapes the functional area of the subjunctive individually. The aim of this volume is therefore to reconsider the representation of the subjunctive in Romance languages in a crosslinguistic and contrastive way. First, an overview of research in this area from the beginnings to the latest neurolinguistic findings will explore the complexity of the issue. Next, specific phenomena of the subjunctive at the interface of its functional domain with the indicative will be illustrated by means of appropriate case studies. On this basis, an attempt is made to trace the polyfunctionality and the differing uses in the Romance languages and beyond to a common pattern with language-specific margins. This allows us to explain, not only contrastive differences, but also the decline of the subjunctive in some domains and languages, as well as demonstrate the range of substitution possibilities. Finally, the view is extended to other language families and new impulses for foreign language teaching are presented. With contributions from: Tobias Gretenkort, Sebastian Buchczyk, Ingo Feldhausen, Michel Favre, Helene Rader, Liane Ströbel, Aurélie Scheffer
Gerrit Bos (Ph.D. 1989) is Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies at the University of Cologne. He has published extensively in the fields of Jewish studies, Islamic studies, and medieval science and medicine in Arabic and Hebrew texts. In July 2023, he celebrated his 75th birthday. On this occasion, his colleagues and students presented him with a Festschrift containing over twenty original papers. They deal with various topics belonging to his wider fields of interest ranging from the Ancient Orient, Jewish and Islamic theology and philosophy, medicine and natural sciences in medieval Islamicate and European countries, to Romance philology and linguistics.
