<b>Koineization in Medieval Spanish</b> . By Donald N. Tuten. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2003. Pp. ix, 345. ISBN 3110177447. $96.33 (Hb).

Reviewed by: Koineization in Medieval Spanish by Donald N. Tuten Peter Trudgill Koineization in Medieval Spanish. By Donald N. Tuten. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2003. Pp. ix, 345. ISBN 3110177447. $96.33 (Hb). The dialect situations in the Iberian Peninsula and anglophone North America have a number of similarities. In the varieties of English spoken along the east coast of Canada and the United States, from Newfoundland and the Maritimes down to Georgia, we find a dialect continuum with considerable regional variation and relatively small dialect areas. As one travels west, however, regional dialect differences increasingly diminish so that by the time the west coast is reached, there is relatively little regional dialect variation and larger dialect areas. Similarly, along the northern edge of Iberia, from the Atlantic via the southern edge of the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean, there is also a dialect continuum with considerable linguistic variation and small dialect areas. Traveling from west to east, one encounters the Ibero-Romance varieties Galician, Asturian, Castilian, Aragonese, and Catalan. The degree of regional variation is much greater than in eastern North America, to the extent that Galician, Castilian, and Catalan are considered distinct languages, and Asturian and Aragonese also have claims to separate language status (Trudgill 2004a). The resemblance with North America, however, lies in the fact that as one travels south toward the southern coastal areas of Andalusia and Murcia, the degree of dialectal differentiation diminishes and dialect areas become bigger. These parallels are not a coincidence. Both the east coast of North America and the north coast of Iberia have been settled by speakers (of English and Ibero-Romance respectively) for longer than the areas with less variation. And, crucially, it was expansion out of these longer-settled areas (westward and southward respectively) which led to the dialect mixture and thus the leveling out of regional differences. The North American dialect mixture occurred as settlers from different parts of the east coast gradually moved westward, following the frontier of colonization. And the Iberian mixture occurred, several hundred years earlier, as a result of the reconquest of the peninsula by Ibero-Romance-speaking Christians from the Arabic and Berber-speaking Moslem Moors, a process which lasted from the ninth to the fifteenth century. As Penny (1991, 2000) was the first to point out, the southward Iberian expansion and the dialect mixture that went with it account for a number of historical developments in the history of Spanish, and therefore for a number of the characteristics of the modern language. According to Penny’s thesis, there were three major phases in the development of Spanish during which dialect mixture led to koineization, and then rekoineization of already koineized varieties. As Tuten describes it, the first phase lasted from the ninth to the eleventh century and focused on the city of Burgos in north central Spain, where Ibero-Romance speakers from all over northern Spain—but especially northern Castile, Asturias, Navarre, and Leon—came together as part of the southward expansion. Basque speakers were also involved, so there was some language contact as well as dialect contact. The second phase of koineization took place between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries and focused on the central city of Toledo. Here again dialect mixture occurred on a large scale, and there was also a limited amount of (related) language contact as French and Occitan speakers joined the fight against the Moors. Finally, the third phase, which took place between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, focused on the southwestern city of Seville. Once again, considerable dialect mixture occurred as populations speaking different dialects moved in from the north to replace the Moors. What T has done in this important book is to take Penny’s thesis and flesh it out with a detailed study of a number of linguistic features, both phonological and grammatical, and a detailed reconstruction of their development. The book is of such general interest that it is a pity that the many and lengthy quotes from Spanish authors have not been translated into English with, perhaps, the originals in an appendix. This oversight is likely to cause problems for, say, Japanese experts on dialect contact or Polish students of historical...

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