Adjectival Suffixes: From Latin to Romance

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franz Rainer
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Change Processes ◽  
Semantic Change ◽  
Semantic Categories ◽  
European Languages

All languages seem to have nouns and verbs, while the dimension of the class of adjectives varies considerably cross-linguistically. In some languages, verbs or, to a lesser extent, nouns take over the functions that adjectives fulfill in Indo-European languages. Like other such languages, Latin and the Romance languages have a rich category of adjectives, with a well-developed inventory of patterns of word formation that can be used to enrich it. There are about 100 patterns in Romance standard languages. The semantic categories expressed by adjectival derivation in Latin have remained remarkably stable in Romance, despite important changes at the level of single patterns. To some extent, this stability is certainly due to the profound process of relatinization that especially the Romance standard languages have undergone over the last 1,000 years; however, we may assume that it also reflects the cognitive importance of the semantic categories involved. Losses were mainly due to phonological attrition (Latin unstressed suffixes were generally doomed) and to the fact that many derived adjectives became nouns via ellipsis, thereby often reducing the stock of adjectives. At the same time, new adjectival patterns arose as a consequence of language contact and through semantic change, processes of noun–adjective conversion, and the transformation of evaluative suffixes into ethnic suffixes. Overall, the inventory of adjectival patterns of word formation is richer in present-day Romance languages than it was in Latin.

scholarly journals Internacjonalizacja w słowotwórstwie polszczyzny przełomu XX i XXI w. jako przykład jednostronnych kontaktów językowych

2019 ◽  
Vol LXXV (75) ◽  
pp. 179-192
Author(s):  
Krystyna Waszakowa
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Foreign Loans ◽  
Lexical Items

Internationalization in early 21th-century Polish word-formation: an example of unidirectional language contact. Summary: The article attempts to provide an answer to the questions concerning dimensions and aspects of morphological phenomena which result from the internationalization of the Polish lexical stock, both at the turn of the 21th century and in recent years. The main objective of the paper is to show how new foreign loans influence the formation of (i) new loan-based complex derivatives, (ii) new compound expressions that are becoming more dominant, and (iii) new types of hybrid lexical items. The current tendency to undergo internationalization is viewed by the author as inextricably bound with “linguistic globalization” processes, which finds its confirmation in modern European languages, including Slavic languages. Streszczenie: Artykuł podejmuje próbę odpowiedzi na pytanie dotyczące zakresów i aspektów zjawisk morfologicznych, które wynikają z internacjonalizacji leksyki polszczyzny zarówno przełomu XX i XX w., jak i w ostatnich latach. Głównym celem pracy jest ukazanie jak pod wpływem nowych zapożyczeń są tworzone (i) nowe derywaty słowotwórcze; (ii) nowe composita, które obecnie coraz wyraźniej stają się dominujące; (iii) nowe typy struktur hybrydalnych. Zjawiska te są widziane jako zależne od tendencji do internacjonalizacji, związanej z językowymi procesami globalizacji, znajdującymi potwierdzenie we współczesnych językach europejskich, w tym słowiańskich.

Borrowed Compounds, Borrowed Compounding – Portuguese Data

2020 ◽  
pp. 49-66
Author(s):  
Alina Villalva
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Direct Contact ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Specific Situation ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Smooth Path ◽  
European Family

Morphological compounding patterns in Portuguese are quite recent. This innovation was triggered by a particular case of language contact, which yielded a peculiar kind of borrowing, both lexical (neoclassical roots) and structural (neoclassical compounding). The introduction of this ‘innovative’ word formation resource may have found a smooth path into Portuguese through the similarity with prefixation, but the key to success was that the same kind of language contact probably took place simultaneously in many European languages. In the case of Portuguese, French (particularly during the 1700s and 1800s) and English (more recently) were the main source languages. The sudden abundance of data that produced a parallel neoclassical lexicon may have increased the pressure that favoured the emergence of root compounding in Portuguese. Beyond the language-specific situation, this case is also relevant for the reassessment of a general theory of borrowing and borrowing typologies (such as Thomason and Kaufman 1988), since it involves pairs of languages (like Ancient Greek and Portuguese) that were never in direct contact, because they existed in different synchronies, and belong to two different branches of the Indo-European family.

scholarly journals Meertaligheid en onderwijs van moderne talen in de 16de eeuw : Het gebruik van het partikel hola als mogelijk voorbeeld voor taalcontact in de Colloquia, et dictionariolum

2020 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-135
Author(s):  
Miriam Bouzouita ◽  
Ulrike Vogl
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
Parallel Language ◽  
Family Dinner ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Pragmatic Function ◽  
First Languages

Abstract Multilingualism and modern language teaching in the 16th century: the interjection hola as a possible case of language contact in the Colloquia, et dictionariolumIn this paper, we explore the semantic-pragmatic functions of the interjection hola in the Dutch, French and Spanish versions of the Colloquia, et dictionariolum, printed in Antwerp, as a possible case of language contact. The Colloquia, et dictionariolum, first printed in the 16th century, are parallel language textbooks designed for acquiring basic skills in up to eight languages. The first edition of the Colloquia was bilingual Dutch-French; Spanish was among the first languages added to the textbook. At the core of the textbook are dialogues related to everyday situations, such as shopping at the market or participating in a family dinner. Although these dialogues are commonly regarded as early sources of spoken forms of European languages, they are in fact instances of conversational mimesis i.e. they are representations of spoken language, intended for didactic purposes and, most importantly, adapted and translated over time by various authors.In our case study, we analyse first (h)ola’s semantic-pragmatic function(s) from a contrastive perspective. Subsequently, we explore a possible case of semantic-pragmatic extension in Spanish due to language contact. Generally speaking, (h)ola can fulfil a requestive function in Dutch, French and Spanish (cf. typology by Poggi 2009), viz. it was used to attract someone’s attention, a function that can be attested for the three languages in the Colloquia. Moreover, the dialogues of the Colloquia provide an example for (h)ola in a requestive-cessative function, used to tell someone to stop or slow down. This function has been described for both Dutch and French hola (also in English and German) but has, up until now, not been attested for the Spanish counterpart. A first explorative analysis of hola in the 16th-century Spanish CORDE-corpus does not yield any cessative occurrences either. Consequently, the cessative function of Spanish hola in the Colloquia might be due to the possible interference from Dutch or French (or both). However, in order to provide a more conclusive answer, a detailed study of the semantic-pragmatic functions of hola in the Germanic and Romance languages involved will be necessary.

Modern Greek V V dvandva compounds: A linguistic innovation in the history of the Indo-European languages

2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Ralli
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
High Rate ◽  
Compound Formation ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
European Languages ◽  
History Of ◽  
Internal Change ◽  
Contact Situation ◽  
Asian Languages

This paper deals with [V V] dvandva compounds, which are frequently used in East and Southeast Asian languages but also in Greek and its dialects: Greek is in this respect uncommon among Indo-European languages. It examines the appearance of this type of compounding in Greek by tracing its development in the late Medieval period, and detects a high rate of productivity in most Modern Greek dialects. It argues that the emergence of the [V V] dvandva pattern is not due to areal pressure or to a language-contact situation, but it is induced by a language internal change. It associates this change with the rise of productivity of compounding in general, and the expansion of verbal compounds in particular. It also suggests that the change contributes to making the compound-formation patterns of the language more uniform and systematic. Claims and proposals are illustrated with data from Standard Modern Greek and its dialects. It is shown that dialectal evidence is crucial for the study of the rise and productivity of [V V] dvandva compounds, since changes are not usually portrayed in the standard language.

Comparatives and Superlatives in the Romance Languages

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marleen Van Peteghem
Keyword(s):  
Romance Languages ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Equal Degree ◽  
European Languages ◽  
The Status ◽  
Comparative Constructions ◽  
Standard Of Comparison ◽  
Traditional Grammar ◽  
Standard Marker

Comparison expresses a relation involving two or more entities which are ordered on a scale with respect to a gradable property, called the parameter of comparison. In European languages, it is typically expressed through two constructions, comparatives and superlatives. Comparative constructions generally involve two entities, and indicate whether the compared entity shows a higher, lesser, or equal degree of the parameter with respect to the other entity, which is the standard of comparison. Superlatives set out one entity against a class of entities and indicate that the compared entity shows the highest or lowest degree of the parameter. Hence, comparatives may express either inequality (superiority or inferiority) or equality, whereas superlatives necessarily express superiority or inferiority. In traditional grammar, the terms comparative and superlative are primarily used to refer to the morphology of adjectives and adverbs in languages with synthetic marking (cf. Eng. slow, slower, slowest). However, while Latin has such synthetic marking, modern Romance languages no longer possess productive comparative or superlative suffixes. All Romance languages use analytic markers consisting of dedicated adverbs (e.g., Fr. plus ‘more’, moins ‘less’, aussi ‘as, also’) and determiners (e.g., Sp./It. tanto, Ro. atât ‘so much’). Superlatives are marked with the same markers and are mainly distinguished from comparatives by their association with definiteness. Another difference between comparatives and superlatives lies in the complements they license. Comparatives license a comparative complement, which may be clausal or phrasal, and which identifies the standard of comparison. As for superlatives, they license partitive PPs denoting the comparison set, which may be further specified by other PPs, a relative clause, or an infinitive clause. The Romance languages show many similarities with respect to the morphosyntactic encoding of comparatives and superlatives, but they also display important cross-linguistic differences. These differences may be related to the status of the comparative marker, the encoding of the standard marker, ellipsis phenomena in the comparative clause, and the dependence of the superlative on the definite article.

Sui testi romanzi medievali in grafia greca come fonte di informazione linguistica

2017 ◽  
Vol 133 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Maggiore
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Southern Italy ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
Medieval Romance ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Reliable Source ◽  
Greek Alphabet ◽  
Source Of Information

AbstractMedieval Romance texts in the Greek alphabet are generally considered a very reliable source of information about spoken vernacular varieties, mainly due to the intrinsic independence of their writers from the Latin graphic tradition. Nevertheless, as first observed by Alberto Varvaro and Anna Maria Compagna in 1983, these valuable documents, like any other kind of written evidence, are not immune from some degree of conventionality. This paper will focus on the problems raised by the codification of Romance languages in the Greek alphabet, which requires the study of multilingualism, language contact and coexistence of different (written and oral) cultural traditions. Exemplification will come from Italo-Romance texts produced in Sicily and Southern Italy before 1500, but also from texts of other Romance areas like the Gallo-Romance 13th Century

scholarly journals Evidentiality In Romance Languages. Explanatory Potential of a Concept and Its Applications In Pragmatics

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. e337
Author(s):  
Gerda Hassler
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Information Source ◽  
Epistemic Modality ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Superordinate Category ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Sources Of Knowledge ◽  
Factual Claim ◽  
Source Of Information ◽  
Linguistic Means

Defined narrowly, evidentiality pertains to the sources of knowledge or evidence whereby the speaker feels entitled to make a factual claim. But evidentiality may also be conceived more broadly as both providing epistemic justification and reflecting speaker’s attitude towards the validity of the communicated information, and hearer’s potential acceptability of the information, derived from the degree of reliability of the source and mode of access to the information. Evidentiality and epistemic modality are subcategories of the same superordinate category, namely a category of epistemicity. Since the first seminal works on evidentiality (Chafe and Nichols 1986), studies have for the most part centred on languages where the grammatical marking of the information source is obligatory (for example Willett 1988; Aikhenvald 2004). Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the study of the domain of evidentiality in European languages, which rely on strategies along the lexico‐grammatical continuum. Assuming a broad conception of evidentiality and defining it as a functional category, we study linguistic means that fulfil the function of indicating the source of information for the transmitted content of a certain proposition in Romance languages.

Diachronic features of Romanian in a broader comparative setting

2019 ◽  
pp. 217-222
Author(s):  
Alexandru Nicolae
Keyword(s):  
Structural Properties ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Romance Language ◽  
Syntactic Theory ◽  
Syntactic Change ◽  
History Of ◽  
Diachronic Development

Chapter 6 highlights the novel theoretical and empirical facts brought about by the word order changes that occurring in the passage from old to modern Romanian, showing how the diachrony of Romanian may contribute to a better understanding of the history of the Romance languages and of the Balkan Sprachbund, as well as to syntactic theory and syntactic change in general. One important dimension of diachronic variation and change is the height of nouns and verbs along their extended projections (lower vs higher V- and N-movement). The two perspectives from which language contact proves relevant in the diachronic development of word order in Romanian, language contact by means of translation and areal language contact, are discussed. The chapter also addresses the issue of surface analogy vs deep structural properties; once again, Romanian emerges as a Romance language in a Balkan suit, as Romance deep structural properties are instantiated by means of Balkan word order patterns.

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