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Ever since the fundamental studies carried out by the great German Romanist Max Leopold Wagner (b. 1880–d. 1962), the acknowledged founder of scientific research on Sardinian, the lexicon has been, and still is, one of the most investigated and best-known areas of the Sardinian language. Several substrate components stand out in the Sardinian lexicon around a fundamental layer which has a clear Latin lexical background. The so-called Paleo-Sardinian layer is particularly intriguing. This is a conventional label for the linguistic varieties spoken in the prehistoric and protohistoric ages in Sardinia. Indeed, the relatively large amount of words (toponyms in particular) which can be traced back to this substrate clearly distinguishes the Sardinian lexicon within the panorama of the Romance languages. As for the other Pre-Latin substrata, the Phoenician-Punic presence mainly (although not exclusively) affected southern and western Sardinia, where we find the highest concentration of Phoenician-Punic loanwords. On the other hand, recent studies have shown that the Latinization of Sardinia was more complex than once thought. In particular, the alleged archaic nature of some features of Sardinian has been questioned. Moreover, research carried out in recent decades has underlined the importance of the Greek Byzantine superstrate, which has actually left far more evident lexical traces than previously thought. Finally, from the late Middle Ages onward, the contributions from the early Italian, Catalan, and Spanish superstrates, as well as from modern and contemporary Italian, have substantially reshaped the modern-day profile of the Sardinian lexicon. In these cases too, more recent research has shown a deeper impact of these components on the Sardinian lexicon, especially as regards the influence of Italian.

The language of chemistry has seldom been the object of study by linguists, who tend to prioritize literary works. Nevertheless, in recent years its study has developed at a different pace for each of the Romance languages. It is therefore important to describe the current state of research separately for French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Catalan. The work of historians of science, who have always dedicated particular attention to the language of chemistry, is particularly pertinent to this purpose. Toward the end of the 18th century, French chemists spearheaded a terminological revolution: traditional terms used in alchemy were replaced by a well-structured, systematic nomenclature that was quickly adopted by the scientific community, mainly through the translation of French chemical texts, many of which were pedagogical in nature. It is important to trace the dissemination process of new chemical nomenclature in each country and in each language, since it was not uniform. This new nomenclature is firmly based on the classical languages, particularly Greek, and it adopts a broad range of suffixes and prefixes for systematization. During the 19th century, this system steadily consolidated as the field of chemistry developed until a standardized international nomenclature was established. From a lexicographical standpoint, the treatment of chemical terms in both general and specialized dictionaries deserves attention. Traditional lexicography has mistakenly classified many chemical terms as Hellenisms, while from the early 21st century onward they have been recognized as Gallicisms thanks to research carried out by historians of scientific language. Finally, the procedures the Romance languages follow to coin chemical terms—both to name elements and chemicals and to express chemical combinations by means of word formation processes—must be taken into account.

Catalan is a Romance language closely related to Gallo-Romance languages. However, contact with Spanish since the 15th century has led it to adopt various linguistic features that are closer to those seen in Ibero-Romance languages. Catalan exhibits five broad dialects: Central, Northern, and Balearic, which pertain to the Eastern dialect block, and Northwestern and Valencian, which make up the Western. This article deals with the most salient morphosyntactic properties of Catalan and covers diachronic and diatopic variations. It also offers information about diastratic or sociolinguistic variations, namely standard and non-standard variations. Among the most characteristic morphosyntactic features are the following: 1. Catalan is the only Romance language that exhibits a periphrastic past tense expressed by means of the verb anar ‘go’ + infinitive (Ahir vas cantar ‘Yesterday you sang’). This periphrastic past coexists with a simple past (Ahir cantares ‘Yesterday you sang’). However, Catalan does not have a periphrastic future built with the movement verb go. 2. Demonstratives show a two-term system in most Catalan dialects: aquí ‘here’ (proximal) and allà or allí ‘there’ (distal); but in Valencian and some Northwestern dialects, there is a three-term system. In contrast with other languages that have a two-term system, Catalan uses the proximal demonstrative to express proximity either to the speaker or to the addressee (Aquí on jo soc ‘Here where I am’, Aquí on tu ets ‘There where you are’). 3. Catalan has a complex system of clitic pronouns (or weak object pronouns) which may vary in form according to the point of contact with the verb, proclitically or enclitically; e.g., the singular masculine accusative clitic can have two syllabic forms (el and lo) and an asyllabic one (l’ or ‘l): El saludo ‘I am greeting him’, Puc saludar-lo ‘I can greet him’, L’havies saludat ‘You had greeted him’, Saluda’l ‘Greet him’. 4. Existential constructions may contain the predicate haver-hi ‘there be’, consisting of the locative clitic hi and the verb haver ‘have’ (Hi ha tres estudiants ‘There are three students’) and the copulative verb ser ‘be’ (Tres estudiants ja són aquí ‘Three students are already here’) or other verbs whose behavior can be close to an unaccusative verb when preceded by the clitic hi (Aquí hi treballen forners ‘There are some bakers working here’). 5. The negative polarity adverb no ‘not’ may be reinforced by the adverbs pas or cap in some dialects and can co-occur with negative polarity items (ningú ‘anybody/nobody’, res ‘anything/nothing’, mai ‘never’, etc.). Negative polarity items exhibit negative agreement (No hi ha mai ningú ‘Nobody is ever here’), but they may express positive meaning in some non-declarative syntactic contexts (Si mai vens, truca’m ‘If you ever come, call me’). 6. Other distinguishing items are the interrogative and confirmative particles, the pronominal forms of address, and the personal articles.

Discussing the language of science and technology in the Romance languages is highly complex and challenging for several reasons. On the one hand, there are different fields to be included, namely computer sciences, engineering, mathematics, as well as physics and astronomy. On the other hand, English has become (or even has always been in the case of computer sciences) the lingua franca in all these fields, so there seems to be rather little to analyze from a synchronic perspective as far as the Romance languages are concerned, and accordingly there is rather little up-to-date linguistic research on it. In the beginning, that is, during the late 1980s, the focus was on specific phenomena, while modern research often deals with didactic aspects and language teaching. When it comes to the state of research in the different Romance languages, it turns out that it is mainly Canadians who are noted for playing a major role in the analysis of French technolectes. Numerous studies, some of which were conducted by German Romanists, center on the lexis and terminology of specific fields in French. As for Portuguese, most works have been published in Brazil, and lately the focal point seems to have primarily been placed on computer science and mathematics. Studies regarding Italian typically reveal a major interest in the general structure of terminology and its relation to everyday language use. Moreover, special emphasis is often placed on historical matters, especially the role of Galileo. Finally, the influence of specific text types as well as didactic aspects of special languages at different levels of education is also a subject of interest. With regard to Spanish, it should first be pointed out that, due to diatopic variation, it is hardly possible to talk about one single concept of the language of science and technology. Only a few comprehensive works on this area of research exist, yet many individual studies have been published in the last few decades, primarily on information science, especially the influence of English on Spanish, as well as on terminology in different fields. In Catalan, specialized languages emerged rather early, and their development has been systematically encouraged since the 20th century; the center of interest in current research is mainly on information science.

Catalan is a “medium-sized” Romance language spoken by over 10 million speakers, spread over four nation states: Northeastern Spain, Andorra, Southern France, and the city of L’Alguer (Alghero) in Sardinia, Italy. Catalan is divided into two primary dialectal divisions, each with further subvarieties: Western Catalan (Western Catalonia, Eastern Aragon, and Valencian Community) and Eastern Catalan (center and east of Catalonia, Balearic Islands, Rosselló, and l’Alguer). Catalan descends from Vulgar Latin. Catalan expanded during medieval times as one of the primary vernacular languages of the Kingdom of Aragon. It largely retained its role in government and society until the War of Spanish Succession in 1714, and since it has been minoritized. Catalan was finally standardized during the beginning of the 20th century, although later during the Franco dictatorship it was banned in public spaces. The situation changed with the new Spanish Constitution promulgated in 1978, when Catalan was declared co-official with Spanish in Catalonia, the Valencian Community, and the Balearic Islands. The Latin vowel system evolved in Catalan into a system of seven stressed vowels. As in most other Iberian Romance languages, there is a general process of spirantization or lenition of voiced stops. Catalan has a two-gender grammatical system and, as in other Western Romance languages, plurals end in -s; Catalan has a personal article and Balearic Catalan has a two-determiner system for common nouns. Finally, past perfective actions are indicated by a compound tense consisting of the auxiliary verb anar ‘to go’ in present tense plus the infinitive. Catalan is a minoritized language everywhere it is spoken, except in the microstate of Andorra, and it is endangered in France and l’Alguer. The revival of Catalan in the post-dictatorship era is connected with a movement called linguistic normalization. The idea of normalization refers to the aim to return Catalan to a “normal” use at an official level and everyday level as any official language.