LL-L "Language varieties" 2009.10.13 (02) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 13 October 2009 - Volume 02
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From: Daniel Prohaska <daniel at ryan-prohaska.com>
Subject: "Language varieties" 2009.10.12 (04) [EN]

Mark,

As far as I can make out Romanian also lost a great number of nominal
inflections, or what would you say <lup> as opposed to Latin <lupus>
represents? I think the partial retention of a case system I Romanian has
two reasons, one owing to internal developments and the other owing to
external influence. Romanian, unlike other Romance language post-positions
the article, meaning the definite article was placed behind the noun it
describes rather than before (similar to the Scandinavian languages). So,
“the wolf” was not *ille (iste) lupus as in most other Romance languages,
but *lupus ille. The nominal endings and their meaningfulness were somewhat
“protected” by this use of the article, so while Romanian un lup “a wolf”
has no nominal ending, it reappears in lupul “the wolf”.

The other reason is that Romanian was in contact with case distinguishing
languages such as South Slavic and Greek, though we know little about Dacian
and its possible function of a substrate language.

The Western-/ Eastern-Romance split is arbitrary. There are several Italian
dialects that don’t fit into either box, as you said, but there’s also
Dalmatian, which, though heavily influenced by the Venetian, shows an
eastern Romance consonantism, while having a more western Romance vocalism.

The date of the Romans abandoning a province is less important it seems in
the initial development of the Romance language than the date Latin was
introduced in a particular province. Ibero- and Gallo-Romance show
conservatism in certain early features of development of spoken Latin in
comparison to colonies established later, while Romanian is relatively
progressive and more so, Italian itself, even if later developments carry
the resulting Romance language further away (French) from Latin
phonologically than the early-progressive varieties (Italian, Romanian). Of
course, some early-conservative varieties stay conservative, like Sardinian.
As a summary, I would say, the same tendency towards analytic structure is
there in Romanian as is found in the other Romance languages, but obviously
slower in development.

Dan
From: Brooks, Mark <mark.brooks at twc.state.tx.us>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2009.10.12 (03) [EN]
“Yes, Ron and Sandy, an interesting idea.  Let me go on to argue with myself
for a moment ;-).  Let’s take the case of the Romance languages.  We could
say that they descended from the language spoken in the Roman Empire.  That
language evolved into many different ones, but for the sake of my example,
let’s look at the major Western Romance languages and one of the Eastern
ones.  Italian seems to fit into both in some ways, but for the purpose of
my argument, let’s put it in the Western group.

As far as I can tell Spanish, French, Catalan, Portuguese, et al. lost the
case endings on nouns.  At least let’s say that in a general sense.  But,
Romanian has retained some up until today.  Now, Romanian surely had as much
(or even more) contact with other languages as the Western group.  In fact,
I believe Rome withdrew from Dacia (present day Romania more or less) even
earlier than it did from the Western provinces.  So, what would explain
that?  Of course, each language has its own characteristics just like people
do, but assuming that the tendency to analytic structure applies
universally, it seems to have somewhat by-passed Romanian.

True, Romanian has lost some of the cases and might still have the
“analytic” change going on, but I wonder about the difference.

Mark Brooks“
 ----------
From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language varieities

Hi, Dan!

It’s so good to hear from you!

You went pretty much where I thought I’d go in responding to Mark’s
question, except you did it more eruditely than I would have done it.

Since Dacian (often considered connected with Thracian) was an early
Indo-European language it is not unreasonable to guess that it had a fairly
complex sort of morphology.

Another thing we need to consider is that in Roman times the gap between the
classically based written Latin language and the everyday spoken (“vulgar”)
Latin language kept widening. What led to this is another question, but we
might assume that the second-language use and eventual adoption of Latin by
originally non-Romans played a role. My point is that, aside from
Romanian-internal developments (in which Greek and Slavic substrata and
contacts appear to have played a part), the unwritten Latin language from
which Romanian developed may have already undergone certain types of
simplifications. Similar things appear to have happened in the case of
Romance languages elsewhere, though in those cases substrata and influences
came from other sources, such as Celtic, Iberian and Vasconic.

Regards,

Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

•

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