Determiners and the deictic system

How did the definite article evolve morphologically from Latin ILLE? What is the determiner al and how did it evolve? What is the history of the indefinite article? How does locative and adverbial deixis work? What is the function of the formatives -a, -le, and -și?

The verb

What is the general structure of the Romanian verb? What are the verb’s inflexion classes and where do they come from? How is the verb’s inflexional paradigm structured? What is the nature of the extensive allomorphy found in lexical roots? Where do suppletive patterns come from? What is the morphological history of non-finite forms? What are ‘morphomic’ patterns and how did they emerge in the verb? What is the morphological history of auxiliary verbs? What is the history of novel periphrastic constructions involving auxiliary verbs and non-finite verb forms?

Conclusion

This chapter offers a concluding overview of some of the major characteristics of Romanian historical morphology. Among these are allomorphy, gender marking, case marking, the inflexional marking of definiteness, auxiliaries, and derivational affixes. Particularly interesting and distinctive in Romanian are the vocative, the supine, and the unusually rich pronominal system. Attention is also paid to the effects of language contact. The chapter reflects on the sensitivity of Romanian morphology to the feature of animacy.

Nouns and adjectives

What are the principal characteristics of the inflexional marking of number, gender, and case in Romanian nouns and adjectives? What role do ideas of ‘animacy’ and ‘mass’ play in the system? What are the patterns of desinential number marking? What are the origins and the nature of the so-called Romanian neuter (or genus alternans)? How is case marking expressed? How have patterns of root allomorphy been created, and then levelled? What is the status of morphological invariance? What are the origins and nature of the inflexional marking of the vocative?

Introduction

This chapter presents the aims and overall structure of the volume. There follows an overview of the history of Romanian. Essential information is given as to the nature and history of the Romanian writing systems. Particular attention is paid to the relationship-ancient and modern, past and present-between writing and phonology. The chapter concludes with a sketch of the major typological characteristics of Romanian morphology.

Pronominal and indefinite structures

What are the nature and the history of the distinction between stressed and clitic pronouns? What are the morphological characteristics of clitics and combinations of clitics? How did morphological markers of distance and respect emerge in pronouns? How are gender, number, and case expressed in pronouns? What is the nature of relative and interrogative pronouns? What is the history of indefinite pronouns? What is alde and where does it come from?

Word formation in diachrony

How are affixes structured and segmented? What is the range of diminutive and augmentative suffixes? What suffixes are ethnic and agentive in Romanian? How do suffixes mark distinctions of sex? What suffixes mark abstract nouns, adjectives, and verbs? What are the prefixes of Romanian? What is the nature of Romanian prefixoids and suffixoids? How are compound nouns, adjectives, and verbs formed? What is the morphological history of numerals?

Possessives

How is the morphological paradigm of pronouns organized? To what extent is the system conservative and to what extent has it been reorganized? What is the structure and history of the stressed forms of the first and second persons? What is the structure and history of the stressed forms of the third person? What is the nature of Romanian possessive affixes?