[8] Researchers such as Wilhelm Meyer-Lübke characterised Vulgar Latin as to a great extent a separate language, that was more or less distinct from the written form.

Research in the twentieth century has in any case shifted the view to consider the differences between written and spoken Latin in more moderate terms.

[13]Herman also makes it clear that Vulgar Latin, in this view, is a varied and unstable phenomenon, crossing many centuries of usage where any generalisations are bound to cover up variations and differences.

Over time this—along with other factors that encouraged linguistic and cultural assimilation, such as political unity, frequent travel and commerce, military service, etc.—led to Latin becoming the predominant language throughout the western Mediterranean.

[25] Until then Latin appears to have been remarkably homogeneous, as far as can be judged from its written records,[26] although careful statistical analysis reveals regional differences in the treatment of the vowel /ĭ/, and in the frequency of the merger of (original) intervocalic /b/ and /w/, by about the fifth century CE.

[28] Similarly, the verb loqui, meaning 'to speak', was replaced by a variety of alternatives such as the native fabulari and narrare or the Greek borrowing parabolare.

[29] Classical Latin particles fared poorly, with all of the following vanishing in the course of its development to Romance: an, at, autem, donec, enim, etiam, haud, igitur, ita, nam, postquam, quidem, quin, quoad, quoque, sed, sive, utrum, vel.

The term ille may have evolved from its initial demonstrative function, broadening to convey semantic prominence by directing the attention of the audience towards particular referents which the speaker intended to highlight.

This usage of the term is found in the Itinerarium Egeriae, which recounts the travels of the Christian pilgrim—and the author—Egeria: the author utilizes the demonstrative to mark words that are crucial to the meaning of the text.

[46] During this time period, the term also developed anaphoric functions as an extension of the original demonstrative usage: Late Latin authors would substitute more basic mentions of a referent with ille and added more descriptive information.

One example of such a development appears in the writings of the 6th-century Gallo-Roman historian Gregory of Tours, who wrote "Ductus itaque sanctus Eugenius ad regem, cum illo Arrianorum episcopo pro fide catholica decertavit," meaning "The holy Eugenius was led to the king, and debated with the that Arrian bishop in defense of the Catholic faith.

[51] Alongside its emphatic usage, the original Classical Latin ipse was also used to clarify referents if the text risked introducing ambiguity regarding the subjects and objects involved.

"[51] In the less formal speech, reconstructed forms suggest that the inherited Latin demonstratives were made more forceful by being compounded with ecce (originally an interjection: "behold!

In Petronius's work, one can find balneus for balneum ("bath"), fatus for fatum ("fate"), caelus for caelum ("heaven"), amphitheater for amphitheatrum ("amphitheatre"), vinus for vinum ("wine"), and conversely, thesaurum for thesaurus ("treasure").

French (le) lait, Catalan (la) llet, Occitan (lo) lach, Spanish (la) leche, Portuguese (o) leite, Italian language (il) latte, Leonese (el) lleche and Romanian lapte(le) ("milk"), all derive from the non-standard but attested Latin nominative/accusative neuter lacte or accusative masculine lactem.

In Portuguese, traces of the neuter plural can be found in collective formations and words meant to inform a bigger size or sturdiness.

French celui-ci / celle-ci / ceci ("this"), Spanish éste / ésta / esto ("this"), Italian: gli / le / ci ("to him" /"to her" / "to it"), Catalan: ho, açò, això, allò ("it" / this / this-that / that over there); Portuguese: todo / toda / tudo ("all of him" / "all of her" / "all of it").

[57] There also seems to be a marked tendency to confuse different forms even when they had not become homophonous (like the generally more distinct plurals), which indicates that nominal declension was shaped not only by phonetic mergers, but also by structural factors.

[57] As a result of the untenability of the noun case system after these phonetic changes, Vulgar Latin shifted from a markedly synthetic language to a more analytic one.

[58] The dative case lasted longer than the genitive, even though Plautus, in the 2nd century BC, already shows some instances of substitution by the construction "ad" + accusative.

[62] Even though Gaulish texts from the 7th century rarely confuse both forms, it is believed that both cases began to merge in Africa by the end of the empire, and a bit later in parts of Italy and Iberia.

In some cases, compounds were created by combining a large number of particles, such as the Romanian adineauri ("just recently") from ad + de + in + illa + hora.

This led to an unusual development; phonetically, the ending was treated as the diphthong /au/ rather than containing a semivowel /awi/, and in other cases the /w/ sound was simply dropped.

The fact that the future and conditional endings were originally independent words is still evident in literary Portuguese, which in these tenses allows clitic object pronouns to be incorporated between the root of the verb and its ending: "I will love" (eu) amarei, but "I will love you" amar-te-ei, from amar + te ["you"] + (eu) hei = amar + te + [h]ei = amar-te-ei.

In Spanish, Italian, Romanian and Portuguese, personal pronouns can still be omitted from verb phrases as in Latin, as the endings are still distinct enough to convey that information: venio > Sp vengo ("I come").

In Vulgar Latin a second copula developed utilizing the verb stare, which originally meant (and is cognate with) "to stand", to denote a more temporary meaning.

The semantic shift that underlies this evolution is more or less as follows: A speaker of Classical Latin might have said: vir est in foro, meaning "the man is in/at the marketplace".

In Italian, stare is used mainly for location, transitory state of health (sta male 's/he is ill' but è gracile 's/he is puny') and, as in Spanish, for the eminently transient quality implied in a verb's progressive form, such as sto scrivendo to express 'I am writing'.

The historical development of the stare + ablative gerund progressive tense in those Romance languages that have it seems to have been a passage from a usage such as sto pensando 'I stand/stay (here) in thinking',[citation needed] in which the stare form carries the full semantic load of 'stand, stay' to grammaticalization of the construction as expression of progressive aspect (Similar in concept to the Early Modern English construction of "I am a-thinking").

Relics of SOV word order still survive in the placement of clitic object pronouns (e.g. Spanish yo te amo 'I love you').