OT: Semi-OT: Romance Comparisons

Ok, I happened upon the luck of having a project in my Level 1 Latin
class to make a poster upon which I must compare the Romance languages
(I could have picked from a lot of other things, including musical,
mathematical, and zoological terms derived from Latin). I would
definately like to do French, Spanish, and Rumanian, as I know French,
Spanish is widely spoken (especially in this area), and Rumanian is
fairly different and yet fairly accessible as well. I am thinking about
adding another language or two to the list, such as Catalan or Occitan,
but I'm not sure.

I have also decided to put a comparison chart of the numbers in the
different languages and also the perfect tense. Is it true that, as I
have read somewhere, that all the Romance languages threw out the Latin
past and perfect tenses and made new ones? I know that the French past
and perfect tenses aren't anything like the Latin ones, but is this true
with all the other Romance languages?

Also, are there any books you would recommend which would have
information on this topic? I suspect that the local college library will
have some linguistics books (they even had /Historical Linguistics/ by
Theodora Bynon, but it was in Spanish). If necessary, I could also order
a book online from Amazon or the like.

Vxutu,
Jonathan

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