The material is both scarce and scanty, despite the richness and variety of the dialects spoken in all parts of the Roman empire. Reconstruction must in many cases resort to the com parative method. Thus, take the name for "finch" in various romance languages, pincione in Tuscan, pintsuni in Sicilian, pinson in French, pinso in Catalan, pinson in Spanish; comparison of these differing forms shows that all are derived from a common prototype which can be reconstituted as pincionem. Again if we take the words for "to advance," avanzare in Italian, avaunzer in the Engadine dialect, vantsd in Frioulan, avansar in Provençal and Catalan, avancer in French, there can be do doubt as to the legitimacy of our reconstituting a prototype verb abantiare formed from the Latin ante.
General Characteristics of the Romance Languages. —After an evolutionary process occupying some three centuries Popular Latin had taken on an individual character according to the different regions of the Romanic world in which it was spoken, and the dawn of "romance" may be regarded as coinci dent with the 8th century.
The Romance languages retained only negli gible traces of the idioms originally spoken in their various terri tories before the advent of Latin. In French not more than fifty words can be traced back to Celtic ; in Spanish the number of Iberian terms is no greater; in Northern Italian there are but infinitesimal relics of Osco-Umbrian and Celtic; in Southern Italian and Sicilian a few traces of Greek. As regards the Rhetic and Rumanian words which are ascribed to the primitive tongues of the Damns, Thracians and Illyrians, the identification rests on practically indemonstrable hypotheses. The most important additions to the vocabularies of the romance languages come, for the occidental portion, from Germanic, Greek and Arabic, and, for the oriental portion, from Slavonic. The Germanic contribution embraces terms dealing with war, military art, costume, rural life and parts of the body, a few abstract terms and a great quantity of proper names. It is peculiarly important in French by reason of the Frankish invasion of Gaul and the influence exerted by the Merovingian and Carolingian kings who were of Germanic origin. The Greek element during the middle ages, was of only slight importance, and was restricted to terms brought back by the Crusaders in the Ilth and 12th centuries, or incorporated as a result of the commercial relations between Orient and Occident. The influx of Greek words was accelerated in the 14th century and with the 19th century became very abundant. The Arabic element is particularly important in Spanish, Portuguese and Provencal; many terms have percolated into Italian, and about three hundred are extant in Modern French. Finally at various periods other languages have supplied
contributions, and there has been a continuous interpenetration between the different romance languages themselves. All romance languages contain (a) popular words, i.e., derived by slow evo lution from Popular Latin: (b) words of learned formation, i.e., borrowed direct from ancient or modern languages. In some cases the same original word has yielded two derivatives belonging to a or b respectively.
The general law applying to all romance lan guages is that the incidence of the tonic accent remains as in Popular Latin. All popular words are therefore stressed at the same point as they were eighteen centuries ago ; as in some romance languages the vowels have persisted much as they were during the imperial epoch, a modern Italian or Spaniard pro nounces some words almost exactly as did a subject of Marcus Aurelius or Commodus. The atonic or intertonic vowels have weakened, or in some of the romance languages disappeared (except a). Proparoxytones have tended to become paroxytones, but many have survived in Italian and Rumanian, a few in Spanish ; a small number existing in Old French were gradually eliminated during the middle ages. French and Portuguese have evolved nasal vowels unknown in Latin; the ii sound, also unknown in Latin, is found in French, Provencal, and the Northern Italian and Engadine dialects. Initial consonants have, in general, suffered no change. In Spanish, however, b has developed into an intermediary sound between b and v, whilst c e or i is
pronounced like English voiceless th and j has become a velar fricative. In French c + a has given rise to the sound ch, (e.g., campum > champ) and g a to the sound j (e.g.,
gaudia > joie) ; h has totally disappeared. The intervocalic con sonants have proved less resistant ; b has passed to v in all romance languages (even when orthographed b as in Spanish and Gascon, it is pronounced with the intermediary sound). Final m and n have disappeared apart from some rare exceptions (Sp. quien, F. rien) and ns has been reduced to s, processes of which signs are already visible in classical Latin. (Rumanian offers many peculiarities : see RUMANIAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE.) 3. Morphology.—The following features set forth the double character which prevailed in the evolution of the romance lan guages (a) the modification of the declension and conjugation system, (b) the development of the analytical tendencies of romance as opposed to the synthetic character of classical Latin.