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Re: OT: Semi-OT: Romance Comparisons

From:Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>
Date:Friday, April 23, 2004, 22:52
Tamas Racsko wrote:

> On 22 Apr 2004 Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> wrote: > > > Oddly enough, Italian seems to subgroup better with "Eastern Romance" > > as exemplified by Romanian. > > I think the situation is much more odd: the dialects lying north > of the La Speza - Rimini line are rather members of the Western > Romance, while the southern idioms show mainly Eastern > characteristics.
Interesting-- could it have to do with ancient Celtic and/or later Germanic influence (the Langobardi)?? Perhaps the southern idioms ("Eastern characteristics") are what Western Rom. would have looked like without the Germanic influx?? Just speculating.......
>
(snip)
> > Latin perfect [...] survives in Romanian, but I'm not sure whether as > > a perfect or a preterite > > The Romanian has no "classical" perfect. The following preterites- > perfects exist in this language: > - Imperfect: used in narratives; rarely in colloquial; > - Simple Past: denotes short actions in the past (the effect on the > present is indifferent); rarely in colloquial; > - Compound Past: the only vivid preterite in colloquial;
So a bit like French, although French IIRC still uses the imperfect, but its simple past (< amavi, dixi) also has given way to the compound past (avoir aimé etc.)
> - Pluperfect: indicates a past action prior to another past action. > > The diacronic sketch of the Romanian verbal system is the > following: > > I. Indicative (Indicativul): > a. Present (Prezentul) < Lat. ind. praesens imperfectum > b. Imperfect (Imperfectul) < Lat. ind. praeteritum imperfectum
Here clearly amo - amabam, dico - dicebam et al.
> c. Simple Past (Perfectul simplu) < Lat. ind. praesens perfectum
Would these be the amavi - debui- dixi etc. forms?
> d. Compound Past (Perfectul compus) < Lat. habeo + part. perfectum
> e. Pluperfect (Mai mult ca perfectul) < Lat. conj. praet. perfectum
My knowledge of the terms is rusty. Which Lat. forms?? amavissem, dixissem etc?? That's the tense that most often survives, rather than amaveram, dixeram etc.
> f. Future (Viitorul) - three possible forms: > (i) < Lat. volo + Rom. infinitive [literary-formal] > (ii) < Lat. habeo + Rom. subjunctive [colloquial-informal] > (iii) < Lat. volet (invariable) + Rom. subjunctive [Balkanism!] > [colloquial-informal] > II. Subjunctive (Conjunctivul): > a. Present < Lat. si + *ind./act. praesens imperfectum [Balkanism!] > III. Conditional-Optative (Condit,ional-optativul): > a. Present < **auxiliary of unknown origin + Rom. infinitive > IV. Imperative (Imperativul): > a. Present < Sg2: Lat. imperativus I, Pl2 Rom. Present Pl2
Most interesting; thank you. Romanian has always been a major gap in my knowledge of Romance linguistics.
> > > ** The paradigm of the conditional auxiliary is: Sg1 "as,", Sg2 > "ai", Sg3 "ar", Pl1 "am", Pl2 "at,i", Pl3 "ar". It has no > satisfactory etymology but Sg2, Pl1, Pl2 seem to be contracted > forms of the verb "a avea" 'to have', and Pl3 is same as Sg3. > Sg1 is an enigma, however, the marker of the Albanian optative > is "-sh-" (that is "s," in Romanian orthography)...
Does this compare at all with the Italian, where the future is infinitive stem + present forms of avere, while the conditional is inf.stem + preterite (Lat. perf.) forms --- as opposed to Span and I think Fr., where the conditional uses the endings of the _imperfect_ -- Ital. amare: Fut. amer/ò -ai, -a Cond. amer/ei, -esti, -ebbe Span. amar: Fut. amar/é -ás -á Cond. amar/ía, -ías -ía
>
It's always struck me that all the Rom. languages felt the need to develop a conditional tense, and that most of them viewed it as somehow a "past" of the "future". Of course Engl. will/would ~ shall/should are historically related in the same present/past way.

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Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>