Lecture
How the ancestors of Charlemagne invented the French language: From Germanic superstrate hypothesis to Germanic substrate hypothesis
- Date
- 12 July 2018
- Time
- Series
- Summer School 2018 evening lectures
- Address
- Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 0.03
Abstract
Despite the renewed interest in language contact and contact-induced change, an interesting problem on the crossroads between Germanic and Romance historical linguistics remains unsolved. This is the issue of the Germanic-like features in French that have alternatively been explained as contact-induced, inter genus drift and mere coincidence. In this talk, I will aim to bypass some of the traditional complications to the problem and put a new focus on the role that the northeastern border dialects of French may have played in the prehistory of the French language.