The position of Ibero-Romance in the Romania and of Portuguese within Ibero-Romance
This chapter places major linguistic varieties within the Iberian Peninsula vis-à-vis each other and also in relation to the broader Romance context. The largely a-theoretical description is based on an ad hoc set of salient surface aspects, from phonetics to morphology and syntax. Rather than surveying the entire Romania in detail, the focus shifts more to the languages of the Iberian Peninsula, and within this domain, Portuguese will be emphasized, reversing the frequent choice of Castilian/Spanish as the Iberian pivot. This typological plus historical approach characterizes Portuguese not only in its intimate connections to other Ibero-Romance varieties, but also in its sometimes striking discrepancies from Spanish, and affinities with more distant Romance languages.