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The Monastic Rules of Visigothic Iberia - eTheses Repository ...

The Monastic Rules of Visigothic Iberia - eTheses Repository ...

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5.20 Conclusions<br />

This chapter has demonstrated the utility <strong>of</strong> the monastic rules as linguistic documents<br />

in the investigation <strong>of</strong> issues relating to language use and language change in <strong>Visigothic</strong><br />

<strong>Iberia</strong>. It has established that the texts can be taken as representative, at least to some extent,<br />

<strong>of</strong> the spoken language <strong>of</strong> the period in which they were written. <strong>The</strong> brief study <strong>of</strong> their<br />

Latinity has shown that on the one hand, they have much in common with Classical Latin,<br />

and issues <strong>of</strong> continuity between different stages <strong>of</strong> the Latin language should not be<br />

disregarded. On the other hand, they also reflect changes in the language that agree with the<br />

evidence <strong>of</strong> other studies <strong>of</strong> later Latin, as well as the linguistic evidence demonstrated by<br />

eventual changes in Romance.<br />

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