Author(s): Santiago López Moreda

Publisher: Akal

Publication Date: 2019

Binding: Paperback

Pages: 320

Language: es

The linguistic empire of Latin, proudly praised by Lorenzo Valla in the prologue to his Elegantiae, "Latinized" other languages but also "plundered" neighboring ones, including Amerindian and Eastern languages encountered in the 15th and 16th centuries. The reasons why and how new meanings and new terms arise to designate new realities are studied from the doctrine established by grammarians on the subject, and from the reasons that have led speakers to do so. Latin, in a process it would never abandon, enriched its lexical heritage with its own resources (modification, development, and composition) and with the assimilation of foreign terms, foreignisms, meanings considered native when the use of the objects they named was widespread in the Roman world. Latin grammarians and lexicographers (Varro, Cicero, Quintilian, Nonius Marcellus), Christians (Jerome, Augustine, Isidore of Seville), medieval glosses and cartularies, chronicles and diplomatic documents, medical authors (Peter of Spain), and the works of the most relevant humanists (Valla, Beccadelli, Pontano, Perotti, Thomas More, Nebrija, Erasmus, Vives, Budé) appear throughout these pages, leading up to Portuguese (Góis) and Hispanic (Marineo Sículo, Martí de Anglería, Calvete de la Estrella) historians who "Latinized" the new realities of the New World. The author also explains numerous neologisms that appeared from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Thus, this work becomes an essential reference for anyone wishing to know the moment, origin, and justification of the neologisms that emerged during that period.