Vowel Length From Latin to Romance

This book investigates the changes that affected vowel length during the development of Latin into the Romance languages and dialects. In Latin, vowel length was contrastive (e.g. pila ''ball'' vs. pila ''pile'', like English bit vs. beat), but no modern Romance language has retained that same contrast. However, many non-standard Romance dialects (as well as French, up to the early 20th century) h...