The relexification of diminutives has been one of the most productive ways to create new words in the Romance languages. The phenomenon is defined as the historical reanalysis of a lexical item composed of root plus diminutive suffix, whereby the original semantic value of the suffix is bleached over time and its combined form is subsequently reanalyzed as part of a new single morphological root carrying new meaning. This study provides a quantitative lexicographic analysis of the entirety of diminutives that have relexified in the history of Italian. When compared to results for Spanish by Ryan and Parra-Guinaldo (2016), data of this study suggest that Italian followed a very different trajectory of diminutive relexification from Latin than that for Spanish. Specifically, Italian appears to have developed a preference for the alternate ad hoc diminutive suffixes -ino/a and -etto/a (based on non-diminutive Latin forms) at a much earlier period than did Spanish, allowing for greater absorption and the time necessary for relexification. Contrastively, lexicographic data for Spanish suggest that Spanish instead continued to favor reflexes of the original Latin diminutive suffixes. The reasons proposed for this divergence is the relatively early colonization of the Iberian Peninsula and continued preference for traditional Latin diminutive endings over innovative endings that were being adopted Empire-wide, beyond Castile, including other regions of Hispania Keywords: morphology, lexicon, diminutives, Italian, Spanish

No abstract

Student error analysis is an area of investigation that can shed light on how students learn. It can also serve as a pedagogical tool to increase students’ awareness of the most common types of errors to avoid. Quality of student output, however, isn’t solely determined by the number of errors students make, but also the extent to which students successfully employ certain other discourse-related strategies to improve their compositions. This paper argues that, aside from grammatical concerns, and at least from a discourse point of view, students already possess much of the knowledge they need in order to write better compositions. Both second (L2) and heritage (HL) learners of Spanish typically already possess some advanced writing skills in English, but we have observed that when attempting to write in Spanish, many of these same students will resort to more remedial means of presenting and/or expressing their ideas. In other words, unaware that so many discourse skills are transferable from English to Spanish, students will not necessarily apply the same strategies, or at least to the same degree, as they would if writing a similar essay in English. This paper, therefore, provides ten tips that students can draw on to improve both the presentation and expression of their ideas in compositions. Recommendations are divided into two categories, the first being aspects a student should always keep in mind when approaching any piece of writing, while the second are negative tendencies that are quite common, but which a student should necessarily avoid.

This study marks the third phase of a larger project on diminutive relexification across the Romance languages and provides a quantitative lexicographic analysis of diminutives that have relexified in the history of Neapolitan. When compared to previous results for Spanish and Italian, namely, Phases I and II of the larger study, data suggest that Neapolitan has favored relexification with the -i(e)llo suffix, in both Latin and modern periods, and although much like Italian and Spanish that have relexified with modern non-L-form reflexes such as -ino/-ín and -etto/-ito, it is unlike Italian in that Neapolitan has favored -i(e)llo over -ino, making -etto slightly more common than -ino. The paper concludes that Neapolitan, like its Spanish and Italian counterparts, also supports the early Pan-Romance Diminutive Diasystem as asserted previously by the authors (2021). The theory suggests that the same array of both L-form and non-L-form diminutive endings have served for purposes of diminutivization Romance-wide, but each language differs in accordance with the degree of contact between each region and the center of the Empire during the Latin era, as well as any ensuing contact among each other during the post-Latin period. Such was the four-hundred-year Spanish rule and occupation over the Kingdom of Naples, and the influence Spanish exerted on the Neapolitan lexicon during this period. Keywords: morphology, lexicon, diminutives, Neapolitan, Italian, Spanish

One of the most controversial questions with respect to the Itinerarium Egeriae is its author's provenance, and whether this can be determined on linguistic grounds. The purpose of this paper is twofold: 1) to provide a central synopsis and account of previous relevant work that has been conducted on the manuscript; and 2) address one of the most contested and controversial questions with respect to whether its origin can be determined on linguistic grounds. In this paper, I revisit this conundrum by addressing two major flaws I find in the methodology employed to date: 1) the Romanisms sought after are for the most part only either hispanisms or gallicisms; and 2) the scrutiny of the data is not rigorous enough, since these are usually selected merely on the basis of lexical resemblance with modern reflexes, disregarding the fact that many of these may not even qualify as regionalisms in the first place. I resolve this problem by following Adams's (2007) shrinkage theory, where the only plausible regionalisms are innovations, namely those terms that can only be found in texts later than the Classical period; but I disagree with his view on Egeria's provenance as the problem would remain inconclusive, and I demonstrate that there is compelling evidence for an Iberian origin.