History and evolution of the Romance languages

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I think that the analysis of the way Romance languages passed from vulgar Latin to the today French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian and other languages is interesting because the historical conditions separed the areas of their evolution.

When appeared the changes?

What were the causes?

Which is the contribution (if any) and influence of the substratum in each Romance language?

What are the documents which contains parts of texts in hybrid aspects between Latin and today languages?

I will start by posting an answer from another forum:

Until the 6th-7th century pChr, from Spain to Romania, was spoken Latin. There were of course local and maybe even dialectal differences, but it was undoubtly a single language. Only when this huge territory was devided into smaller areas and when these areas, confined within administrative borders, began to have their own history, the former dialects evolved to languages. The substratum languages of these regions played absolutly no role in the process of the coming into being of the Romance languages.The language of the autochtonous only influence the conquerors' language at the beginning of their settlement. Then its influence stops. So, concerning the former Dacian space: we could say that right after the conquest, and perhaps during a century from this moment on, the Latin spoken here (by Roman colonists as well as by autochtonous, this means by Romans born here) received certain influences from the Dacian language, before this one got extincted. Yet these inflences were not too strong. We didn't discovered yet any Dacian word in the Latin inscriptions (found by thousands) [except for kaga, a word discovered not in a Roman, but in still Greek-Getian community, in Tomis]. 

Lets remember a law: in traditional societies (and by that I mean societies before the modern inventions of the press, mass-media a.s.o. which changend for good the evolution of all languages) any language confined within boundaries (physical or administrative or of whatever nature) was in a constant evolution to that degree that, after a variable span of time, it was changed into another language. The more troubled was that people's history, the deeper and the faster its language changed. For example: in the 9th century English was a Germanic languages with a rich declention, with 4 grammatical cases, with 7 classes of verbs, each one with its own conjugation...in a word a synthetic language, as today's Russian or as ancient Latin. The numerous invasions that followed transformed this language to what it is today in only 500 years. In the 15th century English was practically as the modern English. 

After we have settled these matters, lets summarize our topic: everywhere over the ancient Roman Empire the Latin language was imposed all at once, not gradually, once a territory was conquered and transformed into province. A certain time in each region the local Latin suffered some influences from autochtonous languages. These influences were rapidly wiped out from the literary Latin (by lexical circulation and by the conscience of the litterate people that they belonged to the same culture), but it seems to me right to suppose that in the vulgar Latin the substratum elements were more numerous and more consistent. After the formation (with time, this is 3-4 centuries) of local varieties of the Latin [consisting less in specific words than in specific pronounciations and merely specific names (the proper names have a huge importance in individualising languages)], the substratum element started decreasing and it kept fading until today. Everywhere over the whole Empire. From now on there were other new influences which took places at different times in the evolution of the Romance languages. And, as I said above, Romance languages changed mainly without any external influence at all: internal evolution is a historical low. The really important process is the divergent evolution of the proper (literary) Latin and the vulgar Latin or, more appropriate, the vulgar varieties of Latin, because there were more of them. This vulgar Latin is very hard to reconstruct because we have few documents. For the first centuries pChr we only find scattered vulgar pronounciations in the inscriptions raised by illiterate people. From the 4th century we have a pupil's (or maybe teacher's) book containing a list of "incorrect" (= vulgar) words and their correct pronounciations: the so called Appendix Probi. As Romanists observed long ago, there are precisely the "incorrect" forms that survived until today. Probus says auris non oricla, but rom. ureche comes from oricla, vetus non veclus, but rom. vechiŭ comes from vet(u)lus a.s.o. But the differences we are able to perceive today are still too small to positively state the existence of vulgar languages rather then vulgar jargons. Only as far as the 8th century vulgar texts started to appear. The oldest are the Reichenau Glosses: words belonging certainly to a Romance language but yet too close to Latin to assign them to one of the modern Romance languages. Here you are some examples: tundi meo capilli, radi me meo colli, indica mih � quomodo � nomen habet � homo iste. Only a century later the Strassbourg Oaths can be defined as French. But look what French it was:

Pro Deo amur et pro Cristian poblo et nostro commun saluament, d'ist di in auant, in quant Deus sauir et podir me dunat, si saluarai eo cist meon fradre Karlo, et in a(d)iudha et in cadhuna cosa, si cum om per dreit son fradra saluar dift, in o quid il mi altresi fazet, et ab Ludher nul plaid nunquam prindrai qui, meon uol, cist meon fradre Karle in damno sit.