Oooops!

[BARudes at aol.com]

Alan,

Most of my reference works on Romanian and Rheto-Romance are at my university
office, whereas I am at home until Friday.  I will give you a more detailed
response then.  Meanwhile, here is what the Dictionarul Explicativ al Limbii
Roma^ne (Bucharest: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste Roma^nia, 1975)
has to say on the subject of the Romanian forms:

Page 993: Umbla, umblu, v. I. Intranz. I.1. A se deplasa dintr-un loc in
altui (to move from one place to another); a merge (to go); ... [Var. : (inv.
si pop. (learned and local) i^mbla vb. 1] - Lat. ambulare].

If I remember correctly, the dialectal form i^mnare (which by the way is a
noun, not an infinitive since Latin infinitives became Romanian nouns
(compare Romanian avere 'possessions' and French avoir 'have'); infinitives
in Romanian are rare (normally found only after forms of the verb a putea 'be
able' in the standard dialect) and lack the infinitive suffix of Latin
(Proto-Romance)) is a regular, dialect internal development (assimilation),
of  umbla/i^mbla 'go, move' .  Thus, the Romanian forms can be derived
directly from ambulare without any intermediate Proto-Romance form *amDlare.
I also believe (but will have to check) that there is some question about
whether this verb was inherited directly from Proto-Romance or is a later
(learned) addition to the language.

I will get back to you on the Rheto-Romance forms.

Blair