Angelo Costanzo (The Ohio State University)
The role of language contact in the expansion of a
Romanian conjugational (sub-)class
In Romanian, Catalan and Italian, the verbal class descending from the Latin 4th conjugation (infinitives in -ĪRE) is heavily populated by verbs conjugated with the Latin inchoative affix ĪSC/ĒSC (eg. It. capisco ‘understand1SG’, Cat. llegeixo ‘read 1SG’, Rum. doresc ‘want 1SG’. Paradigmatically, the three languages show the same distribution of the affix throughout the present paradigm; it appears in the singular, as well as the 3PL, forms. For example, Rom. a iubi ‘love INF’, has iubesc ‘love 1SG/3PL’, iubeşti ‘love 2SG’, and iubeşte ‘love 3SG’ conjugated with the affix, but iubim ‘love 1PL’, iubiţi ‘love 2PL’ without. While the majority of 4th conjugation verbs in these languages follow this pattern, not all do. Rum. a dormi ‘sleep INF’ for instance, has dorm ‘sleep 1SG’, rather than *dormesc. In descriptions of the conjugational classes of these languages, the class descended from the Latin 4th conjugation, has been traditionally broken down into two classes, one of which is conjugated with the reflex of the inchoative affix, and the other conjugated without it.
When comparing the members of this 4th conjugation inchoative class in these three languages, it is clear that there is little consistency to which specific verbs make up this class. In fact, many of the verbs that show this affix in Romanian have no cognates in other Romance languages as they are loanwords resulting from intense contact in the Balkans (e.g. a citi ‘read INF’, cf. Bulg. чета ‘read’). While a great number of the members of this class are of Slavic/Greek/Hungarian, etc. origin, others do have their origins in Latin (e.g. construesc ‘construct 1SG/3PL’ < Lat. CONSTRUŌ). According to Petrucci (1999), the Romanian verbs borrowed from Slavic languages became part of the –i (4th conjugation) class. However, what determined their entrance into the specific inchoative subclass is unclear.
Unlike in Catalan or Italian, it is clear that language contact had a great role in populating this verbal subclass. Further investigation shows that Romanian is not completelyalone in this aspect, as it has been claimed that Latin verbs of early Germanic origin entered not just the Italian 4th conjugation, but specifically this 4th conjugation ‘subclass’ conjugated with the inchoative affix (e.g. It. guarisco ‘heal 1SG’ is of Germanic origin, see Anderson & Rochet 1979). However, the influence of Slavic on Romanian was much more intense, and the effects have been more widespread.
Analogy is clearly at work here, as the borrowings of various Balkan origins were conjugated following a previously established pattern as they entered Romanian. Looking at the specific facts regarding the broadening of this class definitely gives us insight into how analogical change works. While looking at standard languages is valuable, it is necessary to look at dialects that have not been affected by standardization. Previous work on analogical change in verbs in non-standard Catalan dialects shows that the precise membership of verbs in this specific class varies from place to place and from speaker to speaker. Different speakers analogize in different ways, and data from non-standard Romanian dialects from Atlasul Lingvistic Român give us insight into the inherent variability in the categorization of foreign elements into a language.
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Anderson, James M. & Bernard Rochet (1979) Historical Romance Morphology. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International.
Costanzo, Angelo (forthcoming) Variable Extension of Velar Augments in Dialectal Catalan. Manuscript, OSU
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Petrucci, Peter R. (1999) Slavic Features in the History of Rumanian. München: Lincom Europa.