«¿Cómmo vos á ydo, el mi leal amigo?» Las preguntas sobre el estado del interlocutor en la diacronía del español

Spanish is the fourth-most-widely spoken language in the world and a language of ever-increasing importance in the United States. In what will likely become the introduction to the history of the Spanish language, David A. Pharies clearly and concisely charts the evolution of Spanish from its Indo-European roots to its present form. An internationally recognized expert on the history and development of this language, Pharies brings to his subject a precise sense of what students of Spanish linguistics need to know. After introductory chapters on what it means to study the history of a language, the concept of linguistic change, and the nature of language families, Pharies traces the development of Spanish from its Latin roots, all while keeping technical language to a minimum. In the core sections of the book, readers are treated to an engaging and remarkably succinct presentation of the genealogy and development of the language, including accounts of the structures and peculiarities of Latin, the historical and cultural events that deeply influenced the shaping of the language, the nature of Medieval Spanish, the language myths that have become attached to Spanish, and the development of the language beyond the Iberian Peninsula, especially in the Americas. Focusing on the most important facets of the language's evolution, this compact work makes the history of Spanish accessible to anyone with a knowledge of Spanish and a readiness to grasp basic linguistic concepts. Available in both English and Spanish editions, A Brief History of the Spanish Language provides a truly outstanding introduction to the exciting story of one of the world's great languages.

This chapter describes a multimedia module on the history of the Spanish language designed for an advanced Spanish class for Latinx students. The module touches on some of the milestones and historical characters related to the development of the Spanish language. The goal of the module is to provide ample learning and reflection opportunities for students to not only question and problematize the status quo and language ideologies related to the Spanish language in the U.S. (Leema and Serafini, 2016), but also to understand the linguistic, cultural, social, and political processes that have led to and given shape to what we call today “the Spanish language.” In each section of the module, students engage with a variety of multimedia texts where they explore the richness of the language through its historical changes, geographical variations, and social dimensions. The module also explores how the Spanish language is represented in the media and the internet. For each section, students do a series of individual and collaborative assignments where they reflect upon the dynamism of the Spanish-speaking communities around the world and their role—as Spanish speakers in the U.S.—in the writing of the “latest chapter” of the history of the language. The final collaborative assignment is a creative project where, based on the historical or learning journey they have taken in the module, students design a new logo and motto for the Spanish language as a counternarrative of those wielded by the Real Academia de la Lengua Española.

Reviewed by: A Brief History of the Spanish Language Diana L. Ranson Pharies, David A. A Brief History of the Spanish Language. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2007. Pp. xiv + 298. ISBN-13: 978-0-226-66683-9, ISBN-13: 978-0-226-66682-2 In this book, David A. Pharies takes up the gauntlet of whether one can produce an introductory textbook on the history of the Spanish language with the goal of ensuring the survival of historical Romance linguistics as a discipline, a topic recently [End Page 208] discussed in a critical cluster of La corónica under the foreboding title "Historical Romance Linguistics: The Death of a Discipline?" (vol. 31.2) and two subsequent forums in response to that question (vols. 32.2 and 34.1). This is a serious challenge, but fortunately Pharies, a leading expert on the history of the Spanish language, is equal to the task. Having diagnosed the greatest danger to the discipline as students' perceptions that historical Spanish linguistics is boring and impenetrable, Pharies offers his own brief and self-contained volume as an antidote to existing materials that overwhelm the reader with details and assume too much background knowledge, in keeping with the proposal he outlined in "A Strategy for Reinvigorating Romance Historical Linguistics in the United States" (222-225). Brevity and self-containment, achieved without sacrificing academic rigor, are the defining features of this new work. Pharies hopes that, by selecting only the most interesting and important topics and by giving readers the tools they need to understand them, he can "appeal to the many people who, although sincerely interested in Spanish and its history, have been intimidated by traditional histories" and "produce a work that is appropriate to the conditions and needs of a one-semester college course on the history of Spanish" (xii). By doing this, he hopes to awaken his readers' interest in these topics and motivate and prepare them to engage in further study. The desired brevity and self-containment are achieved by limiting the number of details rather than the number of topics, which go well beyond those found in a typical historical grammar. The introduction and first four chapters of the book provide the background essential to understanding the nucleus of the book, namely the phonological, morphological, and syntactic changes presented in chapters 5-7. The introduction presents information on language history and reasons to study the history of Spanish, while chapter 1 acquaints readers with language change, its inexorability, categories, causes and mechanism. Chapter 2 traces the genealogy of Spanish back to the Italic branch of Indo-European, and chapter 3 traces the external history of the Iberian Peninsula forward from pre-Roman times to the thirteenth century. Chapter 4 is a primer on Latin phonology, morphology and syntax, an essential starting point for subsequent developments in these areas in Spanish, the subject of chapters 5-7. These are organized so that the phonological changes from Latin to Medieval Castilian are presented in chapter 5 while the morphological and syntactic changes during this same period appear in chapter 6. The phonological, morphological and syntactic changes from Medieval Castilian to Modern Spanish are the focus of Chapter 7. The final two chapters of the book, chapter 8 on the history of the Spanish lexicon, [End Page 209] which also includes an excellent section on etymology, and chapter 9 on Spanish dialectology complete the presentation of the most interesting topics in the history of Spanish. The goal of self-containment is also addressed by supplemental materials at the end of the book: a section on the "rudiments of Spanish phonetics and phonology", a glossary of linguistic terms (whose mention in the text is set in boldface), nine maps (to which it would be useful to add rivers) and, finally, an index of Spanish words cited and a subject index. Pharies mentions several omissions made intentionally for the sake of brevity. The most notable of these occurs in his treatment of phonological changes. Rather than offering a complete set of vocalic and consonantal changes, Pharies presents in chronological order twenty-two numbered changes from Latin to Medieval Castilian in chapter 5 and then seven more changes...

Reviewed by: Evolución e historia de la lengua española Steven N. Dworkin María Jesús Torrens Álvarez. Evolución e historia de la lengua española. Manuales de formación de profesores de español 2/L. Madrid: Arco/Libros, 2007. 309 pp. ISBN: 978-84-7635-712-5 At first glance it may seem strange that a book dealing with the development and history of the Spanish language should appear in a series of “Manuales de formación de profesores de español 2/L”. Its author, María Jesús Torrens Álvarez, has solid credentials as a scholar in Hispanic philology and in the teaching of Spanish as a second language. In the former category she is probably best known for her edition and linguistic study of the Fuero de Alcalá. The premise underlying the book under review is that an understanding of the main features of the evolution of the language will aid the instructor in teaching selected structures of Spanish to the language learner. Historical linguists have long observed that structures that synchronically on the surface seem to be irregular and unpredictable, and are taught as such to language learners, actually reflect regular processes of historical change. To offer just a handful of examples, such verb-stem alternations as vuelvo ∼ volvemos ← volver, [End Page 376] siento ∼ sentimos ∼ sintieron ← sentir, digo ∼ dices (OSp. dizes) ← decir; so-called “irregular” verb forms as pret. dijo, hizo ← decir, hacer; or the participles dicho, hecho all result from regular processes of sound change in the passage from Latin to Spanish. Such knowledge may help the instructor to understand better the background of such forms, and thus aid in their effective presentation to the student. The author is not suggesting that language teachers bring such historical knowledge directly into the language classroom. Historians of the Spanish language can approach the subject matter from the mutually complementary perspectives of internal and external history. The former, known as historical grammar (gramática histórica), involves the description and analysis of the changes in the phonology, morphology, and syntax that mark the evolution from spoken Latin to medieval or modern Spanish. In contrast, external history (historia de la lengua), examines the development over time of the language against the relevant historical, political, social and cultural background. It tends to emphasize the history of the Spanish lexicon, especially borrowings from the languages with which the Latin-Spanish continuum has come into contact over its history. The traditional exemplar of this approach has long been the various editions of Rafael Lapesa’s venerable Historia de la lengua española. Readers can now profitably consult the chapters in the collective Historia de la lengua española, coordinated by Rafael Cano Aguilar. In her book, Torrens Álvarez has chosen to present both the internal and external history of Spanish. Given its pedagogical goal, this book makes no claim to be an original contribution to our knowledge of the history of the Spanish language. Rather, it offers its intended audience a clear summary of selected features of the internal and external history of Spanish, based on the contents of the standard manuals and works on Spanish historical grammar and language history identified in her bibliography (303–09). The first part, “Evolución de la lengua española”, comprises nine chapters. After a brief introduction to the goals and the structure of the book, Torrens Álvarez offers an overview of some key notions concerning the nature of language change and a survey of relevant processes of phonetic change. The author devotes the next two chapters to sound changes in the passage from Latin to Spanish. After describing the key differences between the vowel systems as preserved in classical Latin and the stage she labels latín tardío (without specifying this term’s chronological limits), namely the loss of vowel quantity and the development of an accent of intensity, the [End Page 377] author presents the evolution of the individual vowel phonemes. She follows the traditional practice of studying separately stressed and unstressed vowels, with particular attention to the diphthongization of the stressed open-mid vowels, to the vowel-raising provoked by a nearby palatal, and the apocope...

Reviewed by: A history of the Spanish language by Ralph Penny Joseph T. Farquharson A history of the Spanish language. 2nd edn. By Ralph Penny. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xx, 398. ISBN 0521011841. $29.99. Several new features have been added that make this2nd edition of Penny’s work more user-friendly. While the first edition had no maps, six maps have now been included, and many of the illustrations and examples that were set off from the text by indentation and special formatting have been put in tabular form, which enhances their appearance and readability. A list of the maps is provided on p. xi, and one for the tables cover spp. xii–xiv. The list of references (332–40) has been expanded to include approximately forty additional materials with the latest source consulted being from 2001. This reflects the author’s use of contemporary research to strengthen the quality of his work. Ch. 1, ‘Introduction’, is a brief overview of the external history of Spanish, charting the language from its Indo-European roots through Proto-Romance, to its present-day geographic spread and diversity. The author includes lengthy discussions on the dialectal varieties that have helped to contribute to present-day Spanish (modern Castilian), and on the historical and current relation of Peninsular Spanish to that of Latin America. Ch. 2, ‘Phonology’, presents an ambitious treatment of some aspects of Spanish historical phonology, taking into consideration processes such as assimilation and dissimilation (34–35), merger (37–38), lenition (74–84), and several others. P treats at length the development and changes of the vowel and consonant systems. Ch. 3, entitled ‘Morpho-syntax’, takes us through various morphosyntactic processes including case-and gender-marking. The chapter is subdivided more or less on the basis of the traditional word classes (noun, adjective, article, adverb, verb, etc.). The section on verbs is the most extensive and the author takes us through discussions of areas such as voice, aspect, person, and number, and the evolution of the tense and mood system of the language. As the title suggests, the ‘lexis’ is the focus of Ch. 4, and P commences by outlining the various language varieties (Mozarabisms, Amerindianisms, Lusisms, Italianisms, Anglicisms, Gallicisms, Occitanisms, and Catalanisms) that have contributed to Spanish over the centuries. We are also provided with quite an extensive treatment of word-formation processes (prefixation, derivation, and composition). In Ch. 5, ‘Semantics’, P deals succinctly with the semantic aspects from a paralinguistic angle, looking at the historical, social, and psychological causes of change in meaning over time. The book closes with Ch. 6, the ‘Past, present and future’ of Spanish, which focuses on the external history and the actual state of Spanish. The addition of a glossary of technical terms (322–28) and a section containing ‘topics for discussion and further reading’ (329–31) brings the work closer to the textbook P promises. The word index (341–90), in addition to the Latin words of the first edition, now includes words with Old and Modern Spanish spellings and Greek and Arabic words. P’s book has been an invaluable source for students of Spanish since its first appearance, and this edition is more user-friendly than the former. It should continue to provide insights and challenges [End Page 285] for Romance linguists, Hispanicists, historical linguists, and others interested in aspects of the grammar of Spanish. Joseph T. Farquharson University of the West Indies, Mona Copyright © 2005 Linguistic Society of America

Historical linguistics studies language relationships and the histories of languages and language families. Using the methods and tools of historical linguistics, anthropologists and historians are able to sketch out the broad histories of the earlier societies that spoke the ancient ancestral forms of modern‐day languages. More importantly, these techniques enable scholars to reconstruct the ancient histories of the numerous culture words of those languages and, from the word histories, to recover a great many details of culture and social relations in those long‐ago societies. This entry describes key ways in which scholars apply these methods and it presents examples of how the findings of linguistic historical reconstruction can be correlated with the discoveries of archaeology and, in consequence, be given solid calendar dates.

An American Language is a political history of the Spanish language in the United States. The nation has always been multilingual and the Spanish language in particular has remained as an important political issue into the present. After the U.S.-Mexican War, the Spanish language became a language of politics as Spanish speakers in the U.S. Southwest used it to build territorial and state governments. In the twentieth century, Spanish became a political language where speakers and those opposed to its use clashed over what Spanish's presence in the United States meant. This book recovers this story by using evidence that includes Spanish language newspapers, letters, state and territorial session laws, and federal archives to profile the struggle and resilience of Spanish speakers who advocated for their language rights as U.S. citizens. Comparing Spanish as a language of politics and as a political language across the Southwest and noncontiguous territories provides an opportunity to measure shifts in allegiance to the nation and exposes differing forms of nationalism. Language concessions and continued use of Spanish is a measure of power. Official language recognition by federal or state officials validates Spanish speakers' claims to US citizenship. The long history of policies relating to language in the United States provides a way to measure how U.S. visions of itself have shifted due to continuous migration from Latin America. Spanish-speaking U.S. citizens are crucial arbiters of Spanish language politics and their successes have broader implications on national policy and our understanding of Americans.

The period between 1485 and 1660 – from the end of the War of the Roses to the Restoration of the monarchy – may be termed the English Renaissance. Though the European Renaissance dates from a much earlier period (roughly the late 14 th to the 16 th centuries), its full effect on England becomes visible only in the 16 th century, reaching a peak with the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. John Milton (1608–1674) is often described as the last Renaissance poet of England. The English language grew during the 16 th century. While Latin and Greek words had always influenced words in English (especially in terms of etymology), the French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian languages had contributed to it too. But, with the geographical expansion of the world, words from the languages of Africa, Asia and North America also entered the lexicon (language historians have suggested that 12,000 new words entered the English language between 1500 and 1650). The period also invented new ways of using words. Prefixes such as ‘ non sense’, ‘ un comfortable’ and ‘ dis robe’, suffixes such as ‘laugh able ’ and ‘immatur ity ’, and compound words such as ‘Frenchwoman’ and ‘heaven-sent’ began to appear during this period. Shakespeare's contribution to this re-invention and expansion of the English language was, as can be imagined (and as Frank Kermode has demonstrated in his Shakespeare's Language , 2000), spectacular. Early Tudor Period (1485–1550) The most important writings of the early Tudor period were prose histories (commonly called Chronicles), biographies, religious and polemical (i.e., argumentative) tracts, and poetry.

The paper aims to identify the historical meaning of paroemias (proverbs and sayings) with feminine agioanthroponyms in the Spanish language. The scientific originality of the research lies in the fact that it uses the historical approach to the analysis of paroemiological units with feminine agioanthroponyms for the first time which allows revealing the history of their creation, identifying the semantics, linguocultural features, connotations, transformations. As a result, it has been proved that the history of the Spanish language and culture development is closely connected with the history of the Catholic Christian Church. The study of paroemias with agioanthroponyms allows revealing the history of their development in the Spanish language, as well as identifying religious meanings through semantic characteristics.

Since the 80s, the use of digital corpora has greatly spurred on the study of the history of the Spanish language, especially given that all the evidence for language change over time is derived exclusively from examining old texts. Internet access to Spanish historical digital corpora makes carrying out a detailed search of certain Spanish morphological and syntactic 34features relatively easy and efficient. In this chapter, we will compare and contrast the three most important Spanish historical databases available on the Internet – namely, the two corpora prepared by the Royal Spanish Academy, Corpus Diacrónico del Español (CORDE), Corpus del Nuevo Diccionario Histórico (CDH); and Mark Davies’ Corpus del Español (CE). Included in this review are brief comments about several other interesting but less comprehensive corpora: Biblioteca Digital de Textos del Español Antiguo (BiDTEA), Corpus Hispánico y Americano en la Red: Textos Antiguos (CHARTA), Corpus de Documentos Españoles Anteriores a 1800 (CODEA+ 2015), Corpus Diacrónico del Español del Reino de Granada (1492–1833) (CORDEREGRA), Oralia Diacrónica del Español (ODE), Biblia Medieval, Corpus Léxico de Inventarios (CorLexIn). Accordingly, our intent is to give a useful panorama of the major digital resources available for doing research about the history of the Spanish language.

If one takes a birds-eye tour of the social history of the languages spoken in the Iberian Peninsula, from the Antiquity to the present, there are several key features that can be clearly perceived. Latin, for instance, stands out in this timeline for its role as protagonist during a period of 2000 years. One can also note the importance of linguistic demography, the cycles of which determine the social presence of languages as well as how we view them, since it is these cycles that affect the configuration and extension of the geographic varieties of each language. Linguistically speaking, Spanish history demonstrates the influence that France has had in different times and diverse areas: the importance of Provencal literature, the arrival of European culture by way of the Camino de Santiago and through ecclesiastical reforms, the Medieval re-population movements, or the influence of the French model in linguistic politics of the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, what stands out most clearly when considering the mosaic of languages that have come together in the Peninsula over the course of time is the naturalness and normality with which these languages have co-existed on an everyday basis, whether neighboring languages, co-offcial languages sharing the same territory, mixed languages, or languages that mutually influence each other. The case of the Basque Territory is particularly representative due to its secular bilingualism, with the co-existence of extremely different languages from Indo-European and other varieties in the Pre-Historic Age, to modern-day Basque and Castilian. We should not lose sight of the fact that it was a bilingual monk who penned what we consider some of the first testimonies of the Basque language. The aim of this article is to present some of the most important moments in the social history of the Spanish language as it relates to its neighboring languages.

Fossil records suggest that 500,000 years ago (at the least) humans’ ancestors had developed the vocal anatomy and neurological control necessary for language. It is theorised that the vocal sounds made by our ancestors became important in evolutionary terms because of their role in the establishment and maintenance of social relationships. These pre-linguistic sounds included singing and ‘duetting’. The loud, long bouts of sounds made by mated pairs of gibbons (the arboreal apes living in the tropical rain forests of south-east Asia) possibly represented ‘songs’ that were the substrate from which human singing ultimately emerged. The use of pre-linguistic sounds to aid communication eventually evolved into the words of language. This chapter explores the processes of writing with a particular focus on three key developments in the history of language. The first is the development of the alphabet, one of humans’ most significant inventions. As a precursor to this section, I review some of the important changes that began with cave pictures and ended with writing. One precursor is exemplified in the story of the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone, which was important for so many reasons in relation to understanding the development of writing. A comparison is also made with the first known writing of music. The second key development in the chapter is the advent of the printing press, a new technology that revolutionised access to written language. And the third key development is the point at which digital text became a reality in many millions of people's lives. Until recently it was theorised that the Aurinacian deposits (from the Aurignac area in France) of engraved and painted materials, which were composed in the period between 25,000 BC and 10,000 BC in the late Old Stone Age, were the oldest examples of art. These beginnings coincided with the time that humans became the dominant hominid species. The larger brain size that humans had compared to other animals was linked to dominance of their habitat. Big brains may also have been a causal factor in the emergence of language. But in 2014 a new discovery was made that upturned the idea that cave paintings started in Europe, something that had puzzled scientists in view of the known spread of humans out of Africa.

In this book, Hoda Yousef dives into the history of literacy in Egypt at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. This work is far from being a general survey of the evolution of literacy as a practice that is confined to the sphere of education; rather, Yousef explores the most delicate issues relating to literacy, providing detailed historical interpretations of politics, social norms, and gender and class relations. The investigation extends from history to linguistics, from social consciousness to political activism, from informal structures of thought to formal policy making. Among the questions that shape the discussion in the book: How did “public literacies”— as a set of practices and discourses—evolve? How did this concept acquire several different definitions in various historical contexts? How did the discussion about literacy reshape gender relations and, in general, how did it extend from being simply a practice of reading and writing to an issue that is related to political, social, and religious discussions, as well as to the very nature of social organization in Egypt? The interaction and intersection between literacy, as a key concept of modernity, along with other topics in the intellectual discourse in Egypt, such as tradition, the public sphere, institutions, nationalism, and gender practices, are explored in depth. The author's investigation is made both diachronically and synchronically, from past to present along with comparisons of a variety of forms of the same idea in a given time.The historical context in which the concept of literacy is examined was a period of extreme transition in Egypt that witnessed the domination of the idea of progress as a paradigm that formed the ideological roots of modernity. In this general framework, Hoda Yousef traces the changing nature of “literacy” and its transition to the center of discourse on politics and society. Here, the new function that this concept acquired as a result of its association with the idea of progress added few modern layers that delivered a sense of optimism for a brighter future. Yousef identifies the emergence of a public discourse on the issue of literacy in the context of the rise of nationalism as a collective endeavor for improving the material and moral condition of the political community. The author focuses on the changes to the social relationship with the written word: from being a communal practice—such as group readings of newspapers and the community scribe—to being personal. This transition, as she argues, is demonstrated in the history of “literacy.” Transitions in this concept took place against the background of shifts in literacy spaces, influenced by the rise of modern print, the profession of journalism, and the rise of the Arabic language media, and as a consequence the formation of new structures of authority. Literacy is described as being a key concept for the Egyptian national project: it “was not just a neutral technology or a set of skills” (33), but was a method for shaping the image of the country. All social and political agents discovered the importance of Arabic literacy, including the colonial power, and tried to control and define its content and its function. In this context, the struggle around language becomes an extremely politicized issue, especially because it is associated with ideas like independence and national sovereignty. This integral interaction between literacy, language, and nationalism was defined not only by external challenges, but also in relation to internal dynamics—like creating a common dominator between Muslims and non-Muslims in Egypt.Hoda Yousef emphasizes this process of politicization. By the end of the nineteenth century, she argues, illiteracy was perceived as a national problem that was associated with “backwardness,” “ignorance,” and underdevelopment. She shows how this structure of ideas became very powerful and expanded from the intellectual circles to politics. Government programs were set and reforms were implemented in the tradition religious schools (kuttab) to educate the masses. During this period, mass education was perceived as a necessity for development and, in the particular context of colonialism, as a sign of the capacity for self-rule. However, this politicization, as Yousef illustrates, was deeply immersed in social norms and had a deep influence on gender and class relations: “for women, literacies had very different implications. To write in public was to become observable, named, and known beyond an immediate social sphere” (11). This engagement was characterized by the emergence of “mistresses of the pen,” and the women's movement that struggled to reclaim its right in shaping the civic life of modern Egypt. Yousef identifies a similar class-based transition, with the rise of a new urban and native middle class of effendiyya. The book shows how gendered and class-based literacies, in their complexities, filled an important function in redefining the Egyptian public sphere and thus contributing to the temporal meaning of authority. The new sphere created the modern category of the “public writer,” which becomes a profession that embeds a sense of civic duty for public good.One of the most important contributions of Yousef's research is the connection she makes between the history of ideas and the history of language. She cautiously links the transitions in the sphere of ideas to the conceptual shifts in political and social language. Thus, the evolution of this new category of “public writer” is examined in light of the earlier forms of agency that existed in Arab and Islamic history. The transition from the medieval category arbab al-qalam (masters of the pen), which includes all those who traditionally mastered literacy and served as scribes, to the new category of “public writers” is presented in detail. A similar linguistic examination is presented in the semantic transition from terms such as ummi (unlettered) to ummiyya (illiteracy). This word that was embedded in early Islam with a positive meaning, referring to a “state of innocence and purity,” became, at the beginning of the twentieth century, associated with great evils and ignorance.The historical interpretation in the book concludes with the modern stabilization of the concept of literacy/illiteracy and with its definition as social good/public enemy. Despite Yousef's comprehensive discussion, one might raise a few questions regarding the meaning and practice of literacy as it was formed within the different ideologies in Egypt: was there any difference in understanding and theorizing this concept between the ideologies of the period, such as the Egyptian national, Pan-Arab, or Pan-Islamic intellectuals? The models of intellectual agency these ideologies generated require further discussion. Here, the linguistic dimension of these transformations, as they manifest themselves in terms such as muthaqqaf (public intellectual), is definitely worth attention. The emergence of intellectualism as a modern category corresponds with the core subjects of this book.Among the many merits of this book is its convincing argument regarding the pivotal place the concept of literacy should occupy in any scholarly treatment of the history and sociology of modernity. Presenting the complexities of this concept and its practice between gender boundaries, national demands, local traditions, and its institutionalization in the shade of the nation-state make this book essential not only for social historians but also for those who study the history of ideas in the Egyptian and Arabic context.

The Peninsular Expansion of Castilian

The solecistic use of se los (se las) for se lo (se la) in cases where se represents a plural indirect object is frequent in Latin-American Spanish and has been amply noted, discussed and condemned by grammarians. Occasional suggestions that the form may be encountered in Spain are to be found, but direct references are in general conspicuous by their absence. Hanssen (Gramática histórica, Buenos Aires 1945, 76) records similar examples in the fifteenth-century Navarrese Crónica de Eugui, and Gilí y Gaya (Curso superior de sintaxis española, 4th ed., Barcelona 1954, 210) has drawn attention to the modern Aragonese use of ya, se les he dicho for ya se lo he dicho [a ellos, a ellas]. It is my present aim to show that such contamination of the direct object pronoun by an accompanying plural indirect object pronoun is a feature which is not only common in Aragonese and Navarrese during the Middle Ages, but one which could well be considered as typical of these dialects. BSS Subject Index: SPAIN — LANGUAGES — SPANISH LANGUAGE & ITS HISTORY — GENERAL