Re: OT: Semi-OT: Romance Comparisons

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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