The Oxford History of Romanian Morphology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Maiden ◽  
Adina Dragomirescu ◽  
Gabriela Pană Dindelegan ◽  
Oana Uţă ◽  
Rodica Zafiu
Keyword(s):  
Morphological Traits ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Verb Morphology ◽  
Historical Romance ◽  
Finite Form ◽  
Case System ◽  
Distinctive Morphology ◽  
Morphological Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
Morphological System

Romanian is one of the most morphologically complex Romance languages. This book is the first ever comprehensive and accessible account of how that morphological system evolved. Here are some of the most salient morphological traits distinctive of this language: it possesses an inflexional case system; unlike other Romance languages, it has an inflexional vocative; the morphological marking of number reached such a level of unpredictability that, for most nouns (and for many adjectives), the form of the plural must be independently specified alongside that of the singular; in addition to masculine and feminine, it seems to possess a third gender, often referred to as a ‘neuter’; its verb system contains a non-finite form, which apparently continues the Latin supine; the infinitive has undergone a morphological split such that one form functions now purely as a noun, while the other remains purely a verb; the distinctive morphology of the subjunctive has largely disappeared; lastly, noun and verb morphology are deeply permeated by the effects of successive sound changes, which have created remarkably complex patterns of allomorphy. The origins of many of these developments are problematic, indeed controversial. Moreover, they are problematic in ways that are of interest not only to broader historical Romance linguistics but, even more broadly, to morphological theory tout court. The Oxford History of Romanian Morphology shows how the features listed here are relevant to students and scholars interested in historical morphology generally no less than they are to Romance linguists.

The Romance Verb

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Maiden
Keyword(s):  
Romance Languages ◽  
Functional Determinant ◽  
Historical Romance ◽  
Determining Factors ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Identical Material ◽  
Self Replication ◽  
Morphological System ◽  
Morphological Patterns

This book is the first ever comprehensive comparative–historical survey of patterns of alternation in the Romance verb that appear to be autonomously morphological in the sense that, although they can be shown to be persistent through time, they have long ceased to be conditioned by any phonological or functional determinant. Some of these patterns are well known in Romance linguistics, while others have scarcely been noticed. The sheer range of phenomena that participate in them far surpasses what Romance linguists had previously realized. The patterns constitute a kind of abstract leitmotif, which runs through the history of the Romance languages and confers on them a distinctive morphological phsyiognomy. Although intended primarily as a novel contribution to comparative–historical Romance linguistics, the book considers in detail the status of patterns that appear to be, in the terminology of Mark Aronoff, ‘morphomic’: a matter of ‘morphology by itself’, unsupported by determining factors external to the morphological system. Particular attention is paid to the problem of their persistence, self-replication, and reinforcement over time. Why do abstract morphological patterns that quite literally do not make sense display such diachronic robustness? The evidence suggests that speakers, faced with different ways of expressing semantically identical material, seek out distributional templates into which those differences can be deployed. In Romance, the only available templates happen to be morphomic, morphologically accidental effects of old sound changes or defunct functional conditionings. Those patterns are accordingly exploited and reinforced by being made maximally predictable.

Morphomic patterns, suppletion, and the Romance morphological landscape

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Maiden
Keyword(s):  
Romance Languages ◽  
Verb Morphology ◽  
Lexical Meaning ◽  
History Of

This chapter uses especially cases of suppletion in the history of Romance languages to illustrate the role of morphomic patterns in diachrony. It also places Romance verb morphology in the wider context of Romance inflexional morphology, including those of the noun and of the adjective. It observes that suppletion practically never assumes anything but a morphomic distribution and is practically limited to the verb. Comparison is made with some Italo-Romance and Daco-Romance varieties where suppletion is indeed (occasionally) found in the noun and adjective (and is usually not morphomic). The evidence suggests that speakers, faced with different ways of expressing identical lexical meaning, exploit whatever patterns of root allomorphy happen to be already available in the language. In the Romance verb these are only morphomic; in the noun and adjective such patterns are scarcely found at all, but where they are they tend to be aligned with number.

The Romance languages and the Romance verb

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Maiden
Keyword(s):  
Morphological Data ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Verb Morphology

In the first part of the chapter the Romance languages are defined, and the (largely negative) significance of the distinction between a language and a dialect for the morphological data is discussed. The sources for the data on verb morphology are reviewed, and some criteria for assessing the validity of these data are examined. Finally, a comparative–historical structural sketch of the morphology of the Latin and Romance verb is given.

Shakespeare’s Portrayal of a Tyrant

Moreana ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 50 (Number 193- (3-4) ◽  
pp. 40-53
Author(s):  
Peter Milward
Keyword(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
The Winter's Tale ◽  
Winter's Tale ◽  
Historical Romance ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sir Walter Raleigh ◽  
The Ideal

The theme of tyranny, so central (as we have seen in two recent issues of Moreana) to the writings and the experience of Thomas More, is hardly less central to the plays and the memory of William Shakespeare. This centrality appears not so much in the plays of his Elizabethan period as in those of the subsequent Jacobean period, especially in the final romances by way of warming up to his presentation of the historical romance of Henry VIII. There, however, the tyranny of the king, though notably emphasized by Sir Walter Raleigh in his contemporaneous History of the World, is strangely muted, as also is his un-Shakespearian character, but it comes out strongly in the two preceding romances of The Winter’s Tale and Cymbeline, once we read them, as they require us to read them, as “topical allegories”. Then, to the characters of the jealous Leontes and the wrathful Cymbeline, we may add the threatening personality of Antiochus at the beginning of Pericles, as yet another figure (based on a widespread rumour) of the quintessential tyranny of Henry VIII. At the same time, this figure of the victimizer calls to be qualified by the complementary figure of the victim, the heroine in these romances, not only Hermione and Perdita, Thaisa and Marina, and Imogen, but even or especially in Desdemona as victimized by her jealous husband Othello. Then, in the above mentioned “topical allegory” of these Jacobean plays, she stands as well for the ideal of the Virgin Mary as for the memory of Catholic England at the heart of the dramatist.

Localizing cross-linguistic variation in Tense systems: On telicity and stativity in Swedish and English

2012 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-70
Author(s):  
Björn Lundquist
Keyword(s):  
Romance Languages ◽  
Linguistic Variation ◽  
Verb Morphology ◽  
Reference Time ◽  
Lexical Aspect ◽  
Temporal Interpretation ◽  
Viewpoint Aspect ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Made In

It is well known that the aktionsart/lexical aspect of a predicate influences the temporal interpretation and the aspectual marking of a sentence, and also that languages differ with respect to which aktionsart properties feed into the tense-aspect system (see e.g. Bohnemeyer & Swift 2004). In this paper, I try to pin down the exact locus of variation between languages where the stative–dynamic distinction is mainly grammaticized (e.g. English, Saamáka) and languages where the telic–atelic distinction is mainly grammaticized (e.g. Swedish, Chinese and Russian). The focus will be on the differences between English and Swedish, and I will argue that these two languages crucially differ in the nature of Assertion Time (or Topic/Reference Time, Klein 1994, Demirdache & Uribe-Etxebarria 2000): whereas the assertion time in English is always punctual in imperfective contexts, assertion time in Swedish can extend to include minimal stages of events. The Assertion Time is introduced by a (viewpoint) aspect head that is present in both languages, but not phonologically realized. The difference can thus not be ascribed to the presence or absence of overt tense, aspect or verb morphology, or to a special tense value, as argued in one way or other by, for example, Giorgi & Pianesi (1997), Demirdache & Uribe-Etxebarria (2000) and Ramchand (2012). Once this factor (i.e. the nature of Assertion Time) has been isolated, it becomes evident that all verbs in English and Swedish, regardless of telicity or dynamicity, can be assigned either a perfective or an imperfective value. Moreover, I will argue that the English progressive–non-progressive (or ‘simple’) distinction is independent of viewpoint aspect (i.e. the perfective– imperfective distinction) made in, for example, the Romance languages.

scholarly journals {Tener/llevar} + participio en el castellano de los Siglos de Oro y algunas notas interlingüísticas

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (16) ◽  
pp. 87
Author(s):  
Patricia Fernández Martín
Keyword(s):  
Golden Age ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Spanish Language ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Chronicles Of The Indies ◽  
History Of

El objetivo del presente trabajo es profundizar en la historia del funcionamiento de las construcciones castellanas {tener/llevar} + participio, tomando como centro de estudio la lengua de los siglos xvi y xvii y estableciendo ciertas comparaciones, a lo largo del texto, con otras lenguas romances, en especial el asturiano. El punto de partida se encuentra en la idea de que los problemas que crean estas construccionesse deben esencialmente a la doble naturaleza del participio (adjetival y verbal), solo comprensible inserta en un continuum entre el puro adjetivo y el puro verbo. Para ello, comenzaremos estableciendo, en el marco teórico, nuestro concepto de perífrasis verbal de participio y su aplicación a las construcciones que nos ocupan en el español de los Siglos de Oro. En una segunda parte, analizaremos el funcionamiento de dichas estructuras en el español clásico, empleando un corpus formado por tres génerosdiscursivos, escritos entre 1519 y 1656, que componen sendos subapartados (novelas picarescas, epístolas y crónicas de Indias). La principal conclusión es que los géneros discursivos no afectan a las construcciones de participio en la misma medida en que puede afectar a otros fenómenos gramaticales, como los pronombres personales.The aim of this work is to deepen in the history of the Spanish structures{tener/llevar} + participle, taking into account the language of the 16th and 17th centuries and offering certain comparisons with other Romance languages, specially Asturian. The starting point lies in the idea that the problems that create these constructions are essentially due to the dual nature of the participle (between a verb and an adjective), which can be only understood into a continuum, whose ends are the pure adjective and the pure verb. For that, we will start setting our concept of participial periphrases in the theoretical framework, as well as its applicationto the Spanish language spoken in the Golden Age. Then, we analyze how these structures work in that Spanish, using a corpus formed by three discourse genres (picaresque novels, letters and chronicles of the Indies), whose texts were written between 1519 and 1656. Finally, all of which allows to conclude that the discourse genres do not affect the appearance of the constructions of participle in the same extent that it may affect other grammatical phenomena, such as personal pronouns.

Looking for Regional Words in Late Seventeenth-Century England: Bishop White Kennett and his Glossary to Parochial Antiquities (1695)

Sederi ◽  
2009 ◽  
pp. 153-174
Author(s):  
Javier Ruano García
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Morphological Traits ◽  
Additional Data ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Lexical Diversity ◽  
Regional Dialects ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Descriptive Account ◽  
History Of

The analysis of regional dialects in the Early Modern period has commonly been disregarded in favour of an ample scholarly interest in the ‘authorised’ version of English which came to be eventually established as a standard. The history of regional ‘Englishes’ at this time still remains to a very great extent in oblivion, owing mainly to an apparent scarcity of sources which supply trustworthy data. Research in this field has been for the most part focused on phonological, orthographical and morphological traits by virtue of the rather more abundant information that dialect testimonies yield about them. Regional lexical diversity has, on the contrary, deserved no special attention as uncertainty arises with regard to what was provincially restricted and what was not. This paper endeavours to offer additional data to the gloomy lexical scene of Early Modern regional English. It is our aim to give a descriptive account of the dialect words collated by Bishop White Kennett’s glossary to Parochial Antiquities (1695). This underutilised specimen does actually widen the information furnished by other well known canonical word-lists and provides concrete geographical data that might help us contribute to complete the sketchy map of lexical provincialisms at the time.

The Odd Man Out in a Pioneer Cemetery at Seccombe Lake Park, San Bernardino, California

2020 ◽  
pp. 90-113
Author(s):  
Patricia M. Lambert
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Native American ◽  
Morphological Traits ◽  
The Other ◽  
European Ancestry ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Community Members ◽  
San Bernardino ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 19Th Century

In 1989, a pioneer cemetery associated with the 19th-century Latter-Day Saints colony in San Bernardino, California, was discovered during the construction of a baseball field. Among the remains of 12 individuals recovered from the cemetery were those of a young man of about 22 years, whose burial treatment differed notably from the other intact interments at the site. Unlike these coffin burials, Burial 5 was found in a sprawling position, apparently tossed unceremoniously into the grave pit. Dental morphological traits identified the genetic affinities of this man as Native American, perhaps a member of the local Cahuilla or Serrano tribes, whereas the other individuals appeared to be of European ancestry, an interpretation consistent with records kept by community members. A possible identity for this individual came from a journal account describing the shooting of an “Indian” by the local sheriff, who was then brought to the fort, died, and was buried before his fellow tribesmen arrived to determine what had transpired and perhaps to claim his remains. This chapter explores the identity and life history of this young man in the context of the history of the valley and the pioneer community in which he met his death.

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