CHANGE IN LANGUAGE

Vulgar Latin, as we've seen, is that form of Latin from which the Romance languages originated. “Proto-Romance” is an equivalent name for it, an appropriate term to introduce at this point. Although identical in reference, “Vulgar Latin” and “Proto-Romance” are not interchangeable terms. They both indicate the same variety of the language, but they view it from different angles. Whereas “Vulgar Latin” emphasizes the difference from Classical Latin, the deviations from the variety that was the standard, “Proto-Romance” sees the same matter from the vantage point of the future, what Vulgar Latin ultimately developed into. Our subject now is Proto-Romance.

Up to this point, we have encountered illustrations of Vulgar Latin for the most part casually, as chance offered them in particular texts, and they represented sound changes more than anything else. But if we are to continue and track Vulgar Latin along its path to becoming French, Spanish, and Italian, then we need a more systematic and fuller treatment, in order to do justice to the scope of the changes that took place in sounds, forms, and syntax. Interesting themes that emerge from such a treatment are the inter-relatedness of these different aspects, and the remarkable combination of inheritance and innovation that distinguishes the story. In this part of the book, I sketch those significant changes to Classical Latin that are shared by our three Romance languages. In the next part, in contrast, I draw attention to their divergences from one another.