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Re: Romanian, the closest Neo-Latin (Romance language) to Latin

Posted: 2008-10-08, 21:51
by KingHarvest
The lot of scholars I was searching for in order to see on what your claim was based are actually just one unkown user who wrote that review on amazon.com.


Wait, since when are professors infallible? If a “lay” person presents evidence that contradicts a professor’s work, why is it necessarily wrong? Scholars are people, too, and they make mistakes. In this case the person I cited, as I didn’t have time to go searching for scholarly reviews but remembered this well-written review (no, I’m not the writer of the review, don’t be absurd) from Amazon. The fact that you dismissed the review out of hand simply because it was “kilometric” and on Amazon says volumes about your views on the scholarly method. The writer raised valid criticisms of not only the information that Possner raised but also of her methods. It is insulting that you then post a review that offers not a single fact corroborating the writer’s opinion. Bravo! BTW, in the English speaking world, it’s normal for all of the Romance languages to be grouped into one department and does not have any bearing on the professors’ knowledge of the Romance language that is not their own specialty, so you might as well stop highlighting that every other post.

Oh, of course, you "forget" two Italian tenses


You said passato remoto and trapassato remoto are used in the Standard written Italian while they do not exist in the spoken language. I replied of course they exist in the spoken language and the native italian speakers from southern Italy who speak Italian (not their regional dialect) generally used them a lot, even more than the standard written language does.


Well, this is a PURE crap. What's the next? I did never see a commercial made in order to preserve the subjunctive mood. And most of the Italian speakers use the subjunctive mood continuously. If there is some Italian who is inable to use it correctly, that's a problem of personal culture. The subjunctive is dying??? LOL Pure clownery. Again you are talking about something you do not know.


Do you have trouble counting? I said one, and one that, I might add, is not exactly necessary for any normal discourse in Standard Italian. Frankly, as far as I can tell, you’re the only person who is convinced that the subjunctive and the passato remoto and trapassato remoto are fixtures of actual speech. Not only do all my native born Italian professors say so, but so do all my Italian friends I talk to online. Except in the southern dialects and Standard Italian spoken by speakers of southern Italian, the passato remoto and trapassato remoto are purely literary tenses, they are only used in speech to convey the appearance of great erudition. I’ve been shown enough commercials made by the Italian government promoting the use of the subjunctive, heard enough people lamenting the lack of use of the subjunctive by young people, and seen enough movies where it’s used sporadically at best to feel that you live in some ivory tower world where speech is exactly like it is written in books.
I talked about the indicative and subjunctive past tenses in Italian and Rumanian.


We were talking about the indicative.

I SAY "EX TE QUAERO"! 1.) I copied my examples from a very important Latin grammar continously riedited and that has been tested by personages such as Maria Corti and Umberto Eco


Umberto Eco is not a Latinist, though I do not deny that he is a very intelligent man. Maria Corti certainly isn't a Latinist either. Ex before a consonant is highly emphatic, e is the normal way for the preposition to appear before a consonant.

3.) even the children know QUAERO is the right verb for TO ASK IN ORDER TO KNOW. Quaero, is, quaesivi or quaesii, quaesitum, quaerere: to ask in order to know. (first year of the high schools).


Ask is not the basic meaning of quaero, it’s basic meaning is to seek, ask is only an extended meaning of it. Rogo, on the other hand, is the normal verb for to ask. There’s a reason why we have such words as interrogative and not interquaeritive. I have to ask, as well, how could you ask in order to not know?

When you show something, call it by the right name. You would like to show the Latin INFINITIVE CLAUSES and their relation with the Italian language, namely the consecutio temporum of the infinitive clauses (while I showed the much more complex and refined consecutio temporum of the subjunctive mood in the subordinate clauses as regards Latin and Italian).


Oh, le sigh. I was talking about indirect discourse/statement, which is, in fact, what you will find this information listed under in English grammars of Latin since that is what we call it in English. We tend to prefer not to use the native Latin names for particular clauses.
But the infinitive is even more used. So, the right example is:


To claim that the infinitive construction is more commonly used is omitting one important fact (and I should’ve used “I say that he sees you,” etc. in order to prevent you from misrepresenting facts): such an infinitive clause can only be used when the subject of the main and the subordinate clause are the same. Of course, “dico di vederti” is also not actually a continuation of Latinate grammar but coincidence. With the loss of the gerund as a true verbal noun as it was recruited to be used in progressive tenses (which is also so very un-Latinate, I might add), the infinitive was used to replace it. In actuality, what it’s saying is, “I speak concerning seeing you,” not, “I say me to see you,” which is the Latinate rationale.

And why "ho detto" instead of "dissi"?


Because Italians say “ho detto,” not “dissi.”

George Perkins Marsh


Forgive me if I’m not convinced by the opinion of a 19th century diplomat. No doubt a polyglot, but not a trained linguist. Especially at a time when linguistics was concerned solely with historical linguistics, well before Saussure brought linguistics into the study of modern languages.

Re: Romanian, the closest Neo-Latin (Romance language) to Latin

Posted: 2008-10-08, 22:58
by obler9
modus.irrealis wrote:
obler9 wrote:
modus.irrealis wrote:I actually find comparing languages inherently interesting (no matter what nefarious purposes they might be used for), so to follow up on this, you mean something like with (all corrections welcome):

Latin: dico quid faciam / dicabam quid facerem
French: je dis ce que je fais / je disais ce que je faisais
Italian: dico che faccio / dicevo che facevo [?]

in the Romanian version would have the same verb used for "do" whatever the tense of "dico"?

Consecutio temporum of the Latin and Italian subjunctive mood

So yes that is what you meant and yes the Romanian version would use the same word for "do" whatever the tense of "dico"?


Rumanian can’t exprime something that is expressed by Latin subjunctive verb tenses that have been lost in the supposed evolution of Rumanian from Latin. But that have been kept in the other Romance languages where they have as well as in Latin a great syntactical importance: the imperfect subjunctive and the pluperfect subjunctive. If we add that Rumanian also lacks in syntactical constructions with the infinitive mood, it is more than clear the Rumanian syntax is the most distant from the Latin one: loss of the consecutio temporum and reduction of the infinitve mood within the sentence. The only “good” think of the Rumanian syntax (“good”, I mean, in a comparison with Latin) it is its relative freedom of construction.

modus.irrealis wrote:
obler9 wrote:The italian translation you made is the version with the subordinate structure. But Italian has both, the INFINITIVE AND the subordinate structure in a construction like the one you show. There are both commonly used. But the infinitive is even more used. So, the right example is:

L: dico me videre te (present infinitive)
I: dico di vederti / dico di vedere te (present infinitive)


Are you really saying that dire in Italian can take an infinitive construction with di to mean "say that"? And it's not just like French dire with de plus infinitive, meaning "tell (someone) to"


I am rather saying that it is unfaithfull to the similarity of the consecutio temporum of the Italian infinitive clauses and the one of the Latin infinitive clauses to put examples showing Italian subordinate structures where Italian commonly uses also the infinitive structures.
If we add this similarity to the similarities between the Italian and the Latin consecutio temporum of the subjunctive clauses and the characteristic freedom of the Italian syntax in comparison with the syntax of the other Romance languages, it becomes more than clear the Italian syntax is the closest one to the Latin syntax.
Italian is the closest language to Latin. Don't forget it.




modus.irrealis wrote:And about Posner, there are some pretty damning reviews. For example from a review by Roy Harris:
'The unorthodoxy of my approach', says Dr Posner in her Preface, 'has almost inevitably led me to say some unorthodox things.' It is not, however, its unorthodoxy (nowhere very conspicuous) which will prevent Romance linguists from recommending this paperback to their pupils, but the number of points which are muddled, misleadingly formulated, or just plain wrong.


About Posner I say that no scientist or scholar is omniscient and I accept Posner made some mistake in her works. This fact does not change she’s an illustrious professor. And that’s different from saying she’s the last of the ignorants. I would wonder what she knows that I do not know rather than showing there is some dettail I know better than her. I find rather funny, instead, your obsession with Posner… She’s not the basis of my thesis. On the contrary you can’t find all the informations I gave you on Rumanian in the Posner’s work. Just something on the real nature of the so called rumanian “neuter”: but this is a rather banal argument within the rumanian grammar. And I did not learn what I know about Rumanian and my own language by her, obviously. I needn’t Posner in order to show the so called rumanian “neuter” is not a neuter gender and it is irrelated with Latin: this is not something new and she’s not the only scholar I quoted about. This is not a part of the unorthodox side of her. And this is not who criticized her showed as wrong. And of course she is not the one who invented all of a sudden what is well known: within the National languages, the closest language to Latin is obviously Italian. You can delete all the quotes from her I posted if you prefer, leaving the quotes from all the other scholars I quoted. You can even delete all the quotes I posted. But the truth does not change. I didn’t learn anything from the works I quoted: just I needed some text written in an english that is better than mine in order to make my explanations clearer. So when I started to search for these textes, I knew the kind of contents I needed. I needn’t quotes in order to demonstrate what is obvious, I needn’t quotes in order tho demonstrate the brown is darker than the yellow: but if I have to demonstrate it with a language that is not mine, namely english, some english text can help me.
Now. What are we talking about? What’s the point of this thread and the point of my replies? Why none did ever reply in 2 years to the author of this thread while as soon as I showed the truth people started to reply (to me)?
Are you able to deny Italian is the closest language to Latin? Do you want to deny Italian is the closest language to Latin (because it doesn’t even seem this is your purpose)?

On the contrary, if we consider that the Romance languages are ITALIC languages spoken by the descendants of populations that learnt a Language of the Italics whose descendants continued to reproduce and evolve (and sometime involve) basically in Italy, we can even state, in some way, the Romance languages are Italian dialects.

Let’s make the comparison between Italian and Rumanian as regards the closness of these languages to Latin. “X” means closer to Latin.

Lexicon: Italian X; Rumanian -
Phonetics: Italian X; Rumanian -
Syntax: Italian X; Rumanian -
Noun morphology: Italian -; Rumanian X
Verbal System: Italian X; Rumanian -
Ortography: Italian X; Rumanian -

Everything is said. I don’t think it is so difficult.

ITALIAN IS THE CLOSEST LANGUAGE TO LATIN

Re: Romanian, the closest Neo-Latin (Romance language) to Latin

Posted: 2008-10-08, 23:27
by KingHarvest
Rumanian can’t exprime something that is expressed by Latin subjunctive verb tenses that have been lost in the supposed evolution of Rumanian from Latin. But that have been kept in the other Romance languages where they have as well as in Latin a great syntactical importance: the imperfect subjunctive and the pluperfect subjunctive.


That’s just silly. The subjunctive expresses absolutely nothing different. The only difference between the subjunctive and the indicative in Italian that the subjunctive is supposed to be used in certain subordinate clauses, it has no meaning beyond this. Now, the conditional is a mood that can actually change the meaning of a sentence.

The only “good” think of the Rumanian syntax (“good”, I mean, in a comparison with Latin) it is its relative freedom of construction.


Romanian declines nouns (easily the most salient difference between Latin and the Romance languages) which allows very free word order (like Latin and unlike Italian), and we should disregard this? Methinks this smacks of a bias! And frankly, I don't appreciate the use of moral qualifiers to describe languages' idiomatic forms of expression.

I find rather funny, instead, your obsession with Posner… She’s not the basis of my thesis.


Oh, but to a very significant degree she is! She’s the one who stated that the verb is the most distinguishing feature of Romance languages, and are we not discussing the verb? Besides that, your argument is a strawman. If your sources are flawed, your argument is flawed.

Just something on the real nature of the so called rumanian “neuter”: but this is a rather banal argument within the rumanian grammar. And I did not learn what I know about Rumanian and my own language by her, obviously. I needn’t Posner in order to show the so called rumanian “neuter” is not a neuter gender and it is irrelated with Latin:


That is a misrepresentation of the facts as a whole. The Romanian neuter is descended from Latin’s neuter, but it behaves like a masculine in the singular and like a feminine in the plural. I can see where an argument could come from saying that Romanian has no true gender-neutral grammatical gender, but to deny that it is not Latinate is outright lying.

I didn’t learn anything from the works I quoted: just I needed some text written in an english that is better than mine in order to make my explanations clearer. So when I started to search for these textes, I knew the kind of contents I needed. I needn’t quotes in order to demonstrate what is obvious,


I’m going to assume that you didn’t read any of the texts you quoted from. Anyone who thinks that a person who claims that there is no representation of Latin’s third declension in the modern Romance Languages and that –t was one of the endings of Latin’s first person singular is a good, strong source clearly does not know much of what they’re talking about or how to determine the merits of a source.

the Romance languages are Italian dialects.


No, they most certainly are not.

Lexicon: Italian X; Rumanian –


None of the Romance languages vocabulary parallel Latin’s all that well, not to mention the large number of unattested, presumably Vulgar Latin lexemes in the Romance languages.

Phonetics: Italian X; Rumanian –


As of when? 9th century BC? 5th century BC? 1st century AD?
Syntax: Italian X; Rumanian -


I would be more inclined to go with the language that can actually mimic Latin word order and decline nouns, myself.

Verbal System: Italian X; Rumanian –


Closer to each other than to Latin!

Ortography: Italian X; Rumanian –


Entirely irrelevant.

Re: Romanian, the closest Neo-Latin (Romance language) to Latin

Posted: 2008-10-09, 0:03
by modus.irrealis
obler9 wrote:Rumanian can’t exprime something that is expressed by Latin subjunctive verb tenses that have been lost in the supposed evolution of Rumanian from Latin.

What do you mean by "supposed"?

But that have been kept in the other Romance languages where they have as well as in Latin a great syntactical importance: the imperfect subjunctive and the pluperfect subjunctive.

That's a strange meaning of "kept". Italian lost the Latin imperfect subjunctive, did it not? Then shifted the pluperfect subjunctive to the imperfect subjunctive and created a new pluperfect subjunctive from a perfect construction that Latin did not have (at least for transitive verbs). That's hardly "kept."

modus.irrealis wrote:Are you really saying that dire in Italian can take an infinitive construction with di to mean "say that"?

I went to the library and answered my own question and it's interesting that Italian does have this construction, although it seems limited from the examples I saw to cases where the subject of the saying verb is also the subject of the infinitive.

obler9 wrote:Are you able to deny Italian is the closest language to Latin? Do you want to deny Italian is the closest language to Latin (because it doesn’t even seem this is your purpose)?

I deny that. In fact the idea of "closest language to Latin" is rather meaningless to me. Explain to me how you measure closeness in an objective way. It's easy to see how subjectivity can enter into things (you say keeping the sequence of tenses is more important than cases but someone else will disagree), but how do you keep things objective.

And then, it's actually a difficult thing to evaluate. Is it important that a language have conserved the feature in that it has always existed in the language as passed form generation to generation or is it fine if the feature was reintroduced later on by people who wanted to make their language more like Latin (something that can and has occurred in non-Romance languages so should those be taken into account as well?). For example Italian has the -issimo suffix but it looks to me like it's not something that has been conserved (since the short i remained as i instead of becoming e -- I could be wrong but it's just an example) -- should it count as a similarity?

On the contrary, if we consider that the Romance languages are ITALIC languages spoken by the descendants of populations that learnt a Language of the Italics whose descendants continued to reproduce and evolve (and sometime involve) basically in Italy, we can even state, in some way, the Romance languages are Italian dialects.

Well all Romance languages are Italic languages but there's no way they can be considered Italian dialects, at least not without discarding even a pretence to a scientific outlook.

Let’s make the comparison between Italian and Rumanian as regards the closness of these languages to Latin. “X” means closer to Latin.

Just to concentrate on phonetics and vowels in particular, we have (correct me if I'm wrong):

Latin: i ī e ē a ā o ō u ū
Italian: i e ε a o ɔ u
Romanian: i e ɨ ə a o u

All three are just different. I don't see how you can say that Italian is any closer than Romanian -- both of them share (the same) five vowels with Latin, have added two new vowels, and have lost the quite crucial length distinction that Latin had. You might subjectively say that the open vowels ε and ɔ are more Romance compared to the "Slavic sounding" ɨ and ə but that's only because those two vowels are found in many Romance languages. It has nothing to do with Latin.

So structurally, Italian does not seem closer, and I suspect you'd have a similar result if you looked at historical development of the vowels, i.e., both Italian and Romanian are just different from Latin.

Re: Romanian, the closest Neo-Latin (Romance language) to Latin

Posted: 2008-10-09, 1:45
by KingHarvest
That's a strange meaning of "kept". Italian lost the Latin imperfect subjunctive, did it not? Then shifted the pluperfect subjunctive to the imperfect subjunctive and created a new pluperfect subjunctive from a perfect construction that Latin did not have (at least for transitive verbs). That's hardly "kept."


He also keeps going on about the "great syntactical importance of the past subjunctives" in Italian when there's absolutely none. The subjunctive can't express any idea on it's own, it only appears in specific subordinate clauses. You couldn't express any difference of meaning by saying, "Pensavo che fuisse arrivato" (subjunctive) versus "Pensavo che era arrivato," (indicative) "I thought that he had come." Which is why it's dying out in Italian.

Re: Romanian, the closest Neo-Latin (Romance language) to Latin

Posted: 2008-10-09, 4:23
by obler9
KingHarvest wrote:
Rumanian can’t exprime something that is expressed by Latin subjunctive verb tenses that have been lost in the supposed evolution of Rumanian from Latin. But that have been kept in the other Romance languages where they have as well as in Latin a great syntactical importance: the imperfect subjunctive and the pluperfect subjunctive.


That’s just silly. The subjunctive expresses absolutely nothing different. The only difference between the subjunctive and the indicative in Italian that the subjunctive is supposed to be used in certain subordinate clauses, it has no meaning beyond this. Now, the conditional is a mood that can actually change the meaning of a sentence.



:shock:


1)That's not silly at all if that "something" is first of all the Latin consecutio temporum and we are talking about similarities with the Latin language.

2) Again. There is a limit... I ask you not to talk about issues you do not know, namely my language.
The Italian subjunctive is not just structural but also "semantical". The subjunctive exprimes a "possibility", it is used when you are talking about an uncertain event or an event that is not objective. It also exprimes a doubt, a fear, a wish, an order, etc... As well as in Latin!
This is why is right to say the Verbal system is extremely important in order to determinate the “latinity” of a language.
The Italian language is extremely affective and these "dettails" determinate its peculiarities. This is why, as well as our ancestors, we use the pluperfect subjunctive rather than the pluperfect indicative.
So once again you are COMPLETELY wrong! Once again you dare to talk about issues you do not know.

3)The Italian subjunctive is not used only in the subordinate clauses, but also in some main clauses.

"Ch'io mi sbagli?" (doubt) "Potessi averti fra le mani!" (wish), etc..

Did you forget something else? :lol:

KingHarvest wrote:
The only “good” think of the Rumanian syntax (“good”, I mean, in a comparison with Latin) it is its relative freedom of construction.


Romanian declines nouns (easily the most salient difference between Latin and the Romance languages) which allows very free word order (like Latin and unlike Italian), and we should disregard this? Methinks this smacks of a bias! And frankly, I don't appreciate the use of moral qualifiers to describe languages' idiomatic forms of expression.


Noooo…. What a disappointment! “Rumanian declines nouns”? Rumanian has a noun ending more in comparison with the other Romance languages: the genitive/dative ending (syncretism of the genitive with the dative: one of the most salient trait of the Balkan Linguistic Union: see Albanian, Bulgarian, Slavic Macedonian, ecc.). That’s all! Russian has a true declension. Is Russian close to Latin?
Think of this: I need 5 minutes in order to speak Italian saying, i.g, “Caneil” instead of “del cane” (this is the “relevant difference”) while a Rumanian would need several years in order to pronunce the Rumanian words using an Italian pronunciation, and the Italian subjunctive tenses (that have an affective value, as weel as in latin, not only a syntactical importance: so it’s very difficult to learn “the feelings” of a language), and the Italian syntax, etc.. I mean the factors making Italian closer to Latin.
Your observation is really superficial: “the most salient difference between Latin and the Romance languages”. I do not agree at all. The most salient difference between Latin and the Romance Languages is actually phonological: the Romance languages lost the vowel lenght! The Latin poetry is based on the “quantity” of the words, if you lost this factor, you have not latin poetry anymore. The loss of the declension in all the Romance languages (or the reduction to one peculiar ending only, that is practically the same) itself is a conseguence of the dramatic loss of the vowel lenght.

But, although all the National Romance languages lost the vowel lenght, there is only one National Romance language that has kept the phonological and semantic distinctive sense of the Latin consonant lenght, and this language is the Italian language!

KingHarvest wrote:which allows very free word order (like Latin and unlike Italian), and we should disregard this? .

What? The one ending more rumanian has? LOL
Of course Rumanian, as I said, has a quite free word order (very?) in comparison with the other Romance Languages, with the exception of Italian!

Unlike Italian?????

The Italian word order is one of the most free within the european languages. And I am amazed you state to know something about Italian while you say all these craps.

1) Ho dato la palla a Marco
2) La palla ho dato a Marco
3) A Marco ho dato la palla
4) A Marco la palla ho dato

The Italian grammar considers, in accordante with the context, all these constructions correct. Besides in the spoken language we can see an even more widespread freedom of arrangement of the sentences within the talks. This is due the affective values of the Italian language, where the various words are emphasized in accordante with their position: as well as in Latin. My example regards a very little sentence.
If we go to see the written language and the Italian authors we notice a lot of “inversiones” an incredibile number of possible arrangements of the clauses within the period: as well as in Latin. If we see the poets, the freedom of the syntax is more than impressive.
I don’t think there is a language on the western side of this world with a so free syntax.


KingHarvest wrote:
I find rather funny, instead, your obsession with Posner… She’s not the basis of my thesis.


Oh, but to a very significant degree she is!


No, she’s not. Once more you are completely wrong. I used her as a source just as regards the so called Rumanian neuter gender that actually is not a neuter gender. But the funny thing is that there I quote her together with an other Linguist. She is not the basis of my thesis for the simple reason that she does not say what I say about the Rumanian language. This is called logic.
So, if you disagree with her, you do not automatically disagree with me.

KingHarvest wrote:She’s the one who stated that the verb is the most distinguishing feature of Romance languages

Look, when she said “Verb morphology is one of the most diagnostic features for recognizing a Romance language”, she’s absolutely right. Just read above, read again the corrections I made as regards your craps on the Italian subjunctive.

KingHarvest wrote: Besides that, your argument is a strawman. If your sources are flawed, your argument is flawed.

No, no. The point is that you found a bad review on the internet about her, then you found convient to assume she was my previous source. Actually you will never find my observations about Rumanian in her book. So my sources are not flawed since she is one of my effective sources only as regards the part on the Rumanian neuter gender. And it’s funny this is the part with which it seems you agree….. So I think the discussion here is becoming really ridicolous.


KingHarvest wrote:
Just something on the real nature of the so called rumanian “neuter”: but this is a rather banal argument within the rumanian grammar. And I did not learn what I know about Rumanian and my own language by her, obviously. I needn’t Posner in order to show the so called rumanian “neuter” is not a neuter gender and it is irrelated with Latin:


That is a misrepresentation of the facts as a whole. The Romanian neuter is descended from Latin’s neuter.


“Also doubtless a result of Slavic contact is the existence of a so-called neuter gender in Rumanian” (Graham Mallinson, “Rumanian”, in “The Romance Languages”, p. 400)

Maybe Graham Mallinson misinterpreted the facts as whole too.

KingHarvest wrote: it behaves like a masculine in the singular and like a feminine in the plural. I can see where an argument could come from saying that Romanian has no true gender-neutral grammatical gender


That’s true. In fact it is not a neuter, but a group of ambigenous nouns.





KingHarvest wrote: I’m going to assume that you didn’t read any of the texts you quoted from.

It’ not very important what “you are going to assume”. I assumed you talk about the Italian verb morpholgy without knowing it at all. I assumed you talked about the Italian syntax and once more I showed how you do not know anything about issues you dare to treat. You do not know in Italian there is a trapassato remoto and a passato remoto. But 5 minutes later, all of a sudden, you “know” they do not exist anymore in Italian (????). You do not know what is the role of the subjunctive mood within the Italian language, but you dare to talk about the role of the Italian subjunctive…
You do not even know in Latin “quaero” is the normal verb to ask in order to know and “peto” is the normal verb for ask in order to get. You do not even know it is more than normal to write “ex” before a consonant instead of “e”. But then, all of a sudden (since I showed you were wrong), you invented the crap of the “emphasis”…


KingHarvest wrote:
Lexicon: Italian X; Rumanian –


None of the Romance languages vocabulary parallel Latin’s all that well, not to mention the large number of unattested, presumably Vulgar Latin lexemes in the Romance languages.


No Romance Language respects completely the Latin word semantics. But the Italian vocabulary is the richest in terms of words inherited directly from Latin. Since you are a champion in banalities, I see you are inable to deny the most widespread datum about the closness of Italian to Latin. Talking about semantics, also the Italian vocabulary is the most faithfull to the original manings (in comparison with the other romance languages, especially Rumanian)

KingHarvest wrote:
Phonetics: Italian X; Rumanian –


As of when? 9th century BC? 5th century BC? 1st century AD?


Is this considered humourism in the States? If it is , tell me it, so that at least I can pretend to laugh.
Since there is no Romance language that is closer to the Classical pronunciation than to the Vulgar one, of course the Romance language that is the closest to the Vulgar pronunciation is also the closest to the previous ones. What about the absence of the geminated consonants (even as value merely ortographic), the absence of the consonant lenght and the presence of “slavicizing” inflections (and graphemes) in Rumanian?

KingHarvest wrote:
Syntax: Italian X; Rumanian -


I would be more inclined to go with the language that can actually mimic Latin word order and decline nouns, myself.


_And you should be completely wrong, as always. Because that is named noun morphology and the language that has just one ending more is not automatically the language with the most free syntax, as I showed you above. The Italian syntax is extremely free as regards the word arrangement, and I don’t know if there is a language more free from this point of view than Italian.
_Then we have to consider how the verbal system and the verb tenses make the syntax of the various romance languages close to the latin one.
Rumanian completely lost the latin consecutio temporum and it lacks in syntactical construction with the infinitive mood (again: Balkan Linguistic Union). These two data make Rumanian syntax too distant from the Latin syntax.
In terms of syntax, Italian is again the closest Language to Latin.

KingHarvest wrote:
Verbal System: Italian X; Rumanian –


Closer to each other than to Latin!

True or not this is not so important… Rumanian has not the present participle, the imperfect subjunctive, the pluperfect subjunctive. It has a perfect subjunctive that is not even conjugated. These are really serious lacks for a comparison with Latin. And of course these lacks seriously touch the Rumanian syntax.

“In its evolution, Romanian simplified the original Latin tense system in extreme ways” (Yves D’hulst, Martine Coene, Larisa Avram, “Syncretic and analytic tenses in Romanian”, in “Balkan Syntax ans Semantics”, pag. 366)



KingHarvest wrote:
Ortography: Italian X; Rumanian –


Entirely irrelevant.

Absolutely not. First of all ortography and phonetics mirror each other. And even when this does not always happen, ortrography becomes even more important! Think of french: the french language lost the phonetical value of the geminated consonants and the final –s; nonetheless these are still marked in the written language when they have and an ortographical and a grammatical value.

Re: Romanian, the closest Neo-Latin (Romance language) to Latin

Posted: 2008-10-09, 4:30
by modus.irrealis
modus.irrealis wrote:Just to concentrate on phonetics and vowels in particular, we have (correct me if I'm wrong):

Latin: i ī e ē a ā o ō u ū
Italian: i e ε a o ɔ u
Romanian: i e ɨ ə a o u

All three are just different. I don't see how you can say that Italian is any closer than Romanian -- both of them share (the same) five vowels with Latin, have added two new vowels, and have lost the quite crucial length distinction that Latin had. You might subjectively say that the open vowels ε and ɔ are more Romance compared to the "Slavic sounding" ɨ and ə but that's only because those two vowels are found in many Romance languages. It has nothing to do with Latin.

On second thought, the Latin might be more accurate (phonetically at least) as ī ɪ ē ε a ā ɔ ō ʊ ū which might allow someone to claim that all of the Italian vowel qualities occur in Latin, but then you'd also have nothing in Italian matching the lax/tense difference in Latin. But I don't know what the latest scholarly consensus is on whether this lax/tense difference belonged to Classical Latin or is just something that developed in certain areas in Vulgar Latin.

That also reminds me, though, about the possibility of another vowel in (some period of) Latin that explains alternate forms like maximus/maxumus or optimus/optumus. Wouldn't ɨ make a good candidate for such a vowel? In fact, W. S. Allen in Vox Latina thinks it might represent [ɨ] from an earlier [ʉ]. So a possible point for Romanian there?

Re: Romanian, the closest Neo-Latin (Romance language) to Latin

Posted: 2008-10-09, 5:30
by obler9
KingHarvest wrote: Frankly, as far as I can tell, you’re the only person who is convinced that the subjunctive and the passato remoto and trapassato remoto are fixtures of actual speech. Not only do all my native born Italian professors say so, but so do all my Italian friends I talk to online.

Subjunctive with all its tenses is present in the actual present speech. It's not so used as a long time ago: that's extremely different from saying it is dying. On the contrary in Italy people who are not able to use correctly the subjunctive mood are automatically marked as ignorants.
As regards the passato remoto and the trapassato remoto they are rarely used by the northern Italian speakers, but they are commonly and continuosly used by the southern Italians speakers: this in the unformal spoken language; in the formal spoken language and the written one, these tenses are normally used everywhere.


KingHarvest wrote:Except in the southern dialects and Standard Italian spoken by speakers of southern Italian, the passato remoto and trapassato remoto are purely literary tenses, they are only used in speech to convey the appearance of great erudition.


This is just silly indeed. I can say, except in the Standard Italian spoken by speakers of northern Italian, the passato remoto and trapassato remoto are commonly used!
By the way the are not "literary tenses" for the northern Italian speakers: they are formal. "Literary" sounds exaggerated. Since when the southern Italians have become b-class speakers? I've a friend of Bari and for him it is extremely natural to use the passato remoto. To me it sounds very elegant because I live in Milan. But there it is absolutely normal.


KingHarvest wrote:I’ve been shown enough commercials made by the Italian government promoting the use of the subjunctive

I did never see in my life such of commercial made by the Italian government. And what you are saying about makes me laugh.
KingHarvest wrote:heard enough people lamenting the lack of use of the subjunctive by young people

Yes, it's not used so much as in past, but it is commonly used practically by every Italian. Less then a long time ago. But I repeat that today in Italy a person who does not use correctly the conjunctive mood is marked as an ignorant, while a person which uses it everytime he cans do it, is marked as a very educated man.


KingHarvest wrote:
I SAY "EX TE QUAERO"!

3.) even the children know QUAERO is the right verb for TO ASK IN ORDER TO KNOW. Quaero, is, quaesivi or quaesii, quaesitum, quaerere: to ask in order to know. (first year of the high schools).

Ask is not the basic meaning of quaero, it’s basic meaning is to seek, ask is only an extended meaning of it.


You say this because you opened a Latin vocabulary and you found the first translation for quaero that is putted there is not "ask". But you don't learn a language reading the vocabulary, but also the grammar and following the teachers.
When you ask in order to know, the right verb is QUAERO, when you ask in order to get the right verb is PETO (first year of the high schools).

KingHarvest wrote:There’s a reason why we have such words as interrogative and not interquaeritive.

This example is just funny.
What about the word "question"? From which latin verb you think it derives? Exactly from quearo. As well as the word "query".





KingHarvest wrote:With the loss of the gerund as a true verbal noun.

This is not true, we use the gerund in order to reproduce something very similar to the latin "absolute ablative"
For example:
Avendola vista, è fuggito: Since he saw her, he ran away.
Vedendola, fuggì: since he saw her, he ran away
Impazzisco guardandoti: I get mad while I see you
I don't think this usage of the gerund is allowed in all the romance languages, but I think something similar is allowed in english by the participle. Tell me.

KingHarvest wrote:
And why "ho detto" instead of "dissi"?


Because Italians say “ho detto,” not “dissi.”


Since when the Italian nation as whole is represented by the northern Italians only? The northern Italians say "ho detto", but the southern Italians say "dissi".
So the Italians as whole say both: dissi and ho detto.
KingHarvest wrote:
George Perkins Marsh


Forgive me if I’m not convinced by the opinion of a 19th century diplomat. No doubt a polyglot, but not a trained linguist. Especially at a time when linguistics was concerned solely with historical linguistics, well before Saussure brought linguistics into the study of modern languages.

I can forgive you as regards your relation with him, but I can't forgive you as regards your knoweledge of the Italian language. Because a person who is studing Italian normally... has to know how exceptionally free the Italian syntax is in comparison with the other Languages, romance and not only romance.

Re: Romanian, the closest Neo-Latin (Romance language) to Latin

Posted: 2008-10-09, 5:49
by KingHarvest
3)The Italian subjunctive is not used only in the subordinate clauses, but also in some main clauses.

"Ch'io mi sbagli?" (doubt) "Potessi averti fra le mani!" (wish), etc..

Did you forget something else? :lol:


Haha, this is hilarious. Those are both subordinate clauses that are taken out of context. I can't remember the technical term off the top of my head, but they're along the lines of, "If you so much as touch me...," without finishing with a main clause.

Noooo…. What a disappointment! “Rumanian declines nouns”? Rumanian has a noun ending more in comparison with the other Romance languages: the genitive/dative ending (syncretism of the genitive with the dative: one of the most salient trait of the Balkan Linguistic Union: see Albanian, Bulgarian, Slavic Macedonian, ecc.). That’s all! Russian has a true declension. Is Russian close to Latin?


Actually, Romanian has three cases. The fact still remains: Romanian declines nouns, the other Romance languages don't. And yes, Russian is close to Latin in the grand scheme of things.

Think of this: I need 5 minutes in order to speak Italian saying, i.g, “Caneil” instead of “del cane” (this is the “relevant difference”) while a Rumanian would need several years in order to pronunce the Rumanian words using an Italian pronunciation, and the Italian subjunctive tenses (that have an affective value, as weel as in latin, not only a syntactical importance: so it’s very difficult to learn “the feelings” of a language), and the Italian syntax, etc.. I mean the factors making Italian closer to Latin.


This is my favorite quote from you thus far :lol:

Your observation is really superficial: “the most salient difference between Latin and the Romance languages”. I do not agree at all. The most salient difference between Latin and the Romance Languages is actually phonological: the Romance languages lost the vowel lenght! The Latin poetry is based on the “quantity” of the words, if you lost this factor, you have not latin poetry anymore. The loss of the declension in all the Romance languages (or the reduction to one peculiar ending only, that is practically the same) itself is a conseguence of the dramatic loss of the vowel lenght.


:lol: Natural Latin verse was based on stress, the meters of Classical Latin were grafted directly onto Latin from Greek and there are huge problems with this that were never really resolved satisfactorily. Vowel length also wasn't that big a deal in Classical Latin as it differentiated very few words (in contrast to Ancient Greek, for example), the several words that malum could represent and distinguishing a couple cases depending on what time period you lived in are really all that come to mind. You could certainly get by quite easily speaking very understandable Latin without really distinguishing between long and short vowels. On the other hand, completely ignoring the case system of Latin would render you incomprehensible. So to try and give the length of vowels more importance than the case system is just absurd.

The Italian grammar considers, in accordante with the context, all these constructions correct. Besides in the spoken language we can see an even more widespread freedom of arrangement of the sentences within the talks. This is due the affective values of the Italian language, where the various words are emphasized in accordante with their position: as well as in Latin. My example regards a very little sentence.
If we go to see the written language and the Italian authors we notice a lot of “inversiones” an incredibile number of possible arrangements of the clauses within the period: as well as in Latin. If we see the poets, the freedom of the syntax is more than impressive.
I don’t think there is a language on the western side of this world with a so free syntax.


Haha, you should get out more then if you really believe that. Italian's word order is pretty strict, especially in comparison with languages in Europe that have a case system. Just look next door to Greece :D

No, she’s not. Once more you are completely wrong. I used her as a source just as regards the so called Rumanian neuter gender that actually is not a neuter gender. But the funny thing is that there I quote her together with an other Linguist. She is not the basis of my thesis for the simple reason that she does not say what I say about the Rumanian language. This is called logic.
So, if you disagree with her, you do not automatically disagree with me.


Haha, I'm going to go quote what you quoted from her that I took umbrage with.

--“Verb morphology is one of the most diagnostic features for recognizing a Romance language” (Rebecca Posner, “The Romance Languages”, 1996, Cambridge University Press,p. 39)



Here's even the URL in case you get lost :D
http://www.unilang.org/viewtopic.php?p=466895#p466895

Look, when she said “Verb morphology is one of the most diagnostic features for recognizing a Romance language”, she’s absolutely right. Just read above, read again the corrections I made as regards your craps on the Italian subjunctive.


That's no proof of being Romance. Proof of being Romance is that it descended from Latin, plain and simple.

No, no. The point is that you found a bad review on the internet about her, then you found convient to assume she was my previous source. Actually you will never find my observations about Rumanian in her book. So my sources are not flawed since she is one of my effective sources only as regards the part on the Rumanian neuter gender. And it’s funny this is the part with which it seems you agree….. So I think the discussion here is becoming really ridicolous.


Oh, the conversation was absurd from the start, don't try to convince anyone otherwise.

That’s true. In fact it is not a neuter, but a group of ambigenous nouns.


Or the fact that in Vulgar Latin the singular of neuters resembled the masculine and in the plural it resembled the feminine.

You do not know in Italian there is a trapassato remoto and a passato remoto.


You really do have a reading comprehension problem, don't you?

You do not even know in Latin “quaero” is the normal verb to ask in order to know and “peto” is the normal verb for ask in order to get. You do not even know it is more than normal to write “ex” before a consonant instead of “e”. But then, all of a sudden (since I showed you were wrong), you invented the crap of the “emphasis”…


Or, you know, because I actually know Latin and can use my dictionaries and grammars and study Latin in College, I might know what I'm talking about. We never said anything about peto before, so I don't know what you're going on about there. Anyhow, let's take a look at the Oxford Latin Dictionary:

rogo ~are ~avi ~atum, tr. [*roga (OHG> rahha, AS. raca, see REGO) + -O3] 1 To ask (a person a question)

quaero ~rere ~s(i)i or ~sivi ~situm, tr., (intr.). [dub.] Orthog.: quair- CIL I.II; quer- 4.1604 1 To try to find, search for, hunt for, seek. b to look for (mentally), try to discover.

Or maybe you prefer Lewis and Short?

rogo, avi (rogassint, for rogaverint, C.), atus, are, to ask, question, interrogate

quaero, sivi, situs, ere [QUAES-], to seek, look for

Talking about semantics, also the Italian vocabulary is the most faithfull to the original manings (in comparison with the other romance languages, especially Rumanian)


But once again, these meanings are much more closely related to their cognates in the Romance languages than they are to Latin.

Is this considered humourism in the States? If it is , tell me it, so that at least I can pretend to laugh.
Since there is no Romance language that is closer to the Classical pronunciation than to the Vulgar one, of course the Romance language that is the closest to the Vulgar pronunciation is also the closest to the previous ones. What about the absence of the geminated consonants (even as value merely ortographic), the absence of the consonant lenght and the presence of “slavicizing” inflections (and graphemes) in Rumanian?


I'm not sure why you would think I was joking, it was an important point. Latin phonology wasn't some monolithic thing that stayed the same for centuries, it was constantly in flux and changing.

Absolutely not. First of all ortography and phonetics mirror each other. And even when this does not always happen, ortrography becomes even more important! Think of french: the french language lost the phonetical value of the geminated consonants and the final –s; nonetheless these are still marked in the written language when they have and an ortographical and a grammatical value.


English is the language most closely related to Latin, then, as it preserves the spellings that are the most similar to Latin's.

Re: Romanian, the closest Neo-Latin (Romance language) to Latin

Posted: 2008-10-09, 6:02
by obler9
modus.irrealis wrote:
But that have been kept in the other Romance languages where they have as well as in Latin a great syntactical importance: the imperfect subjunctive and the pluperfect subjunctive.

That's a strange meaning of "kept". Italian lost the Latin imperfect subjunctive, did it not? Then shifted the pluperfect subjunctive to the imperfect subjunctive and created a new pluperfect subjunctive from a perfect construction that Latin did not have (at least for transitive verbs).


You are right on this. That's a part of the course from Latin to the Romance languages. For example the Rumanian imperfect indicative was shifted from the pluperfect subjunctive that was not replaced anymore, and so on..

But what is important to see are the verbal tenses that a given Romance language shares with Latin. And so the usage of the verbal tenses within the syntax in order to see how a given Romance syntax is similar to the Latin one. This is the point and this is what I treated. Because if the original form has not been always kept, it's notable that the need of certain contructions has been kept in some Romance languages and not in others. This is why I used the word "kept".

Re: Romanian, the closest Neo-Latin (Romance language) to Latin

Posted: 2008-10-09, 6:15
by obler9
KingHarvest wrote:He also keeps going on about the "great syntactical importance of the past subjunctives" in Italian when there's absolutely none. The subjunctive can't express any idea on it's own, it only appears in specific subordinate clauses. You couldn't express any difference of meaning by saying, "Pensavo che fuisse arrivato" (subjunctive) versus "Pensavo che era arrivato," (indicative) "I thought that he had come." Which is why it's dying out in Italian.




1)The Italian subjunctive is not just structural but also "semantical".
The subjunctive exprimes a "possibility", it is used when you are talking about an uncertain event or an event that is not objective. It also exprimes a doubt, a fear, a wish, an order, etc... As well as in Latin!

This is why is right to say the Verbal system is extremely important in order to determinate the “latinity” of a language.

The Italian language is extremely affective and these "dettails" determinate its peculiarities.
This is why, as well as our ancestors, we use the pluperfect subjunctive rather than the pluperfect indicative.


2)The Italian subjunctive is not used only in the subordinate clauses, but also in some main clauses.

"Ch'io mi sbagli?" (doubt) "Potessi averti fra le mani!" (wish), etc..

3)Again the same damned crap! The Italian subjunctive is not dying! Simply it is not so much used in the spoken language as in the written language! An other fact it is that it is less used than a long time ago. But still today a speaker that is not able to use the subjunctive mood correctly in Italy is automatically marked as an ignorant.
Even the children correct their friends that say “se verrebbe mi divertirei” instead of “se venisse,mi divertirei”. The subjunctive is commonly used. You do not get the point about: many speakers do not use it everytime the phraseological and syntactical context claims its usage. But this doesn’t mean at all that the speakers never use it…..

Re: Romanian, the closest Neo-Latin (Romance language) to Latin

Posted: 2008-10-09, 7:32
by obler9
KingHarvest wrote:
3)The Italian subjunctive is not used only in the subordinate clauses, but also in some main clauses.

"Ch'io mi sbagli?" (doubt) "Potessi averti fra le mani!" (wish), etc..

Did you forget something else? :lol:


Haha, this is hilarious. Those are both subordinate clauses that are taken out of context. I can't remember the technical term off the top of my head, but they're along the lines of, "If you so much as touch me...," without finishing with a main clause.

These are Italian main clauses with the subjunctive mood. They make a sense alone, they needn't to be supported by an other clause. If you do not know the Italian language I do not know what I can add. Ask to your supposed Italian friends.



KingHarvest wrote:
Think of this: I need 5 minutes in order to speak Italian saying, i.g, “Caneil” instead of “del cane” (this is the “relevant difference”) while a Rumanian would need several years in order to pronunce the Rumanian words using an Italian pronunciation, and the Italian subjunctive tenses (that have an affective value, as weel as in latin, not only a syntactical importance: so it’s very difficult to learn “the feelings” of a language), and the Italian syntax, etc.. I mean the factors making Italian closer to Latin.


This is my favorite quote from you thus far


That's foundamental indeed. Since that shows how the Rumanian peculiarites as reagards its relation with Latin are nothing relevant in comparison with the Italian peculiarities as regards the relation between Italian and Latin.

Rumanian has practically one noun ending more: the genitive/dative (the vocative is very rare). That's not relevant as you would like to say.

KingHarvest wrote:
Your observation is really superficial: “the most salient difference between Latin and the Romance languages”. I do not agree at all. The most salient difference between Latin and the Romance Languages is actually phonological: the Romance languages lost the vowel lenght! The Latin poetry is based on the “quantity” of the words, if you lost this factor, you have not latin poetry anymore. The loss of the declension in all the Romance languages (or the reduction to one peculiar ending only, that is practically the same) itself is a conseguence of the dramatic loss of the vowel lenght.


Natural Latin verse was based on stress, the meters of Classical Latin were grafted directly onto Latin from Greek and there are huge problems with this that were never really resolved satisfactorily.

Mpff... The Latin poetry is the classical poetry. If you are able to understand the principles of the metrics of the Saturnian verse, you solved an old philological issue!

KingHarvest wrote:
The Italian grammar considers, in accordante with the context, all these constructions correct. Besides in the spoken language we can see an even more widespread freedom of arrangement of the sentences within the talks. This is due the affective values of the Italian language, where the various words are emphasized in accordante with their position: as well as in Latin. My example regards a very little sentence.
If we go to see the written language and the Italian authors we notice a lot of “inversiones” an incredibile number of possible arrangements of the clauses within the period: as well as in Latin. If we see the poets, the freedom of the syntax is more than impressive.
I don’t think there is a language on the western side of this world with a so free syntax.


Haha, you should get out more then if you really believe that. Italian's word order is pretty strict, especially in comparison with languages in Europe that have a case system. Just look next door to Greece


Actually to have a declension does not mean to act like Latin and to be freer than a language that does not use the noun declension.

Italian syntax is by far the most free among the Romance languages, and probably one of the most free in the western world.

"Italian's word order is pretty strict" LOL. What's the next?
1) Ho dato la palla a Marco
2)A Marco ho dato la palla
3)La palla ho dato a Marco
4) A Marco la palla ho dato.....

This just with a sentence composed by 3 elementes. Try to do the same with English.


KingHarvest wrote:
You do not even know in Latin “quaero” is the normal verb to ask in order to know and “peto” is the normal verb for ask in order to get. You do not even know it is more than normal to write “ex” before a consonant instead of “e”. But then, all of a sudden (since I showed you were wrong), you invented the crap of the “emphasis”…


Or, you know, because I actually know Latin and can use my dictionaries and grammars and study Latin in College, I might know what I'm talking about. We never said anything about peto before, so I don't know what you're going on about there. Anyhow, let's take a look at the Oxford Latin Dictionary:

rogo ~are ~avi ~atum, tr. [*roga (OHG> rahha, AS. raca, see REGO) + -O3] 1 To ask (a person a question)

quaero ~rere ~s(i)i or ~sivi ~situm, tr., (intr.). [dub.] Orthog.: quair- CIL I.II; quer- 4.1604 1 To try to find, search for, hunt for, seek. b to look for (mentally), try to discover.

Or maybe you prefer Lewis and Short?

rogo, avi (rogassint, for rogaverint, C.), atus, are, to ask, question, interrogate

quaero, sivi, situs, ere [QUAES-], to seek, look for”…


In fact I told you what you did: you just read the first meaning showed by the dictionary. That's the usual error the ones who does not know Latin does.

Quero is the normal verb for ask in order to know; while peto is the normal verb for ask in order to get.
The word "question" from "Quaerere"... But don't worry, the ones who studied Latin know it.

If you really study Latin at the college there are two possibilities: you are not very intelligent; your professors suck.

Re: Romanian, the closest Neo-Latin (Romance language) to Latin

Posted: 2008-10-09, 7:42
by loqu
obler9 wrote:Italian syntax is by far the most free among the Romance languages, and probably one of the most free in the western world.

"Italian's word order is pretty strict" LOL. What's the next?
1) Ho dato la palla a Marco
2)A Marco ho dato la palla
3)La palla ho dato a Marco
4) A Marco la palla ho dato.....

This just with a sentence composed by 3 elementes. Try to do the same with English.


Just tell me, how is that freer than Portuguese, Spanish and Catalan?

1) Dei a bola ao Marcos
2) Ao Marcos dei a bola
3) A bola dei ao Marcos
4) Ao Marcos a bola dei
5) Dei ao Marcos a bola (this one is possible also in Italian, though you forgot)
6) A bola ao Marcos dei (ditto)

1) Di la pelota a Marcos
2) A Marcos di la pelota
3) La pelota di a Marcos
4) A Marcos la pelota di
5) Di a Marcos la pelota
6) La pelota a Marcos di

1) Vaig donar la pilota a en Marc
2) A en Marc vaig donar la pilota
3) La pilota vaig donar a en Marc
4) A en Marc la pilota vaig donar
5) Vaig donar a en Marc la pilota
6) La pilota a en Marc vaig donar

Tell me, which possibility is there in Italian that these three don't have?

Re: Romanian, the closest Neo-Latin (Romance language) to Latin

Posted: 2008-10-09, 13:11
by modus.irrealis
Even English can get four orders in this case:

I gave Mark the ball
I gave the ball to Mark
the ball I gave to Mark
to Mark I gave the ball

although the last two are highly marked (but I wonder if that's not also true of some of the orders in the Romance languages) and it depends on the verb chosen -- you can't have the first order with, say, "donate."

But now I'm interested in knowing with a more basic construction, say something like "Maria loves Mark", what the possible orders are. I'd expect Spanish to win here because it can distinguish the direct object with "a" so I would assume you can say "a Marco ama Maria" but would the same OVS order be possible in other languages, say Italian "Marco ama Maria" or would this always have to mean "Mark loves Maria"? Is it possible if there is no ambiguity, e.g. can you say in Italian "i suoi fratelli ama Maria"? And does Spanish allow it if there is no personal a, e.g. is the order of "Laughter cures sadness" less flexible? In Latin, of course, all 6 permutations of SOV are possible.

Re: Romanian, the closest Neo-Latin (Romance language) to Latin

Posted: 2008-10-09, 14:09
by loqu
modus.irrealis wrote:And does Spanish allow it if there is no personal a, e.g. is the order of "Laughter cures sadness" less flexible? In Latin, of course, all 6 permutations of SOV are possible.


to do that in Spanish you have to duplicate the direct object by adding a substituting pronoun.

La risa cura la tristeza. Neutral.
La tristeza la cura la risa. (literally: the sadness her cures the laughter). It may sound odd, but it's fully natural and correct.

This reduplication thing makes me think of pidgins which often duplicate words :) That duplication thing works in Catalan as well, not sure about Portuguese.

And you're right, some of the word orders we mentioned are highly marked in Romance as well.

Re: Romanian, the closest Neo-Latin (Romance language) to Latin

Posted: 2008-10-09, 14:31
by modus.irrealis
loqu wrote:to do that in Spanish you have to duplicate the direct object by adding a substituting pronoun.

La risa cura la tristeza. Neutral.
La tristeza la cura la risa. (literally: the sadness her cures the laughter). It may sound odd, but it's fully natural and correct.

I should have remembered that since that's one of the reasons Spanish is a member of the Balkan Sprachbund ;). Greek can do the same thing:

Τη λύπη τη θεραπεύει το γέλιο

But the non-pronoun version is also available:

Τη λύπη θεραπεύει το γέλιο

That's probably because noun (phrases) are still marked for case.

Re: Romanian, the closest Neo-Latin (Romance language) to Latin

Posted: 2008-10-09, 14:47
by loqu
That's impressive! :D which other languages do that? I mean, why the 'Balkan' Sprachbund? Is that a common feature of the Balcanic languages?

Re: Romanian, the closest Neo-Latin (Romance language) to Latin

Posted: 2008-10-09, 15:32
by modus.irrealis
loqu wrote:That's impressive! :D which other languages do that? I mean, why the 'Balkan' Sprachbund? Is that a common feature of the Balcanic languages?

I'm only familiar with Greek, but I know All it's listed as one of the common features of the Balkan languages -- Wikipediap says that besides Greek it also applies to Romanian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Albanian. About Spanish being a member, I'm not a big fan of the whole Balkan Sprachbund idea -- it just doesn't seem like anything special -- so I personally add in all sorts of languages, but that's another topic.

Re: Romanian, the closest Neo-Latin (Romance language) to Latin

Posted: 2008-10-09, 16:54
by duko
It's called Clitic doubling. AFAIK Bulgarian tends to regard it as informal speech. In Romanian it is standard.

Re: Romanian, the closest Neo-Latin (Romance language) to Latin

Posted: 2008-10-09, 17:29
by obler9
loqu wrote:
obler9 wrote:Italian syntax is by far the most free among the Romance languages, and probably one of the most free in the western world.

"Italian's word order is pretty strict" LOL. What's the next?
1) Ho dato la palla a Marco
2)A Marco ho dato la palla
3)La palla ho dato a Marco
4) A Marco la palla ho dato.....

This just with a sentence composed by 3 elementes. Try to do the same with English.


Just tell me, how is that freer than Portuguese, Spanish and Catalan?

1) Dei a bola ao Marcos
2) Ao Marcos dei a bola
3) A bola dei ao Marcos
4) Ao Marcos a bola dei
5) Dei ao Marcos a bola (this one is possible also in Italian, though you forgot)
6) A bola ao Marcos dei (ditto)

1) Di la pelota a Marcos
2) A Marcos di la pelota
3) La pelota di a Marcos
4) A Marcos la pelota di
5) Di a Marcos la pelota
6) La pelota a Marcos di

1) Vaig donar la pilota a en Marc
2) A en Marc vaig donar la pilota
3) La pilota vaig donar a en Marc
4) A en Marc la pilota vaig donar
5) Vaig donar a en Marc la pilota
6) La pilota a en Marc vaig donar

Tell me, which possibility is there in Italian that these three don't have?


Ahahahah

I posted 4 possible constructions, not all the possible constructions. Just that was a fast example.
Of course in Italian all the constructions you show are absolutely possible too.

1) Ho dato la palla a Marco

2) A Marco ho dato la palla

3) La palla ho dato a Marco

4) A Marco la palla ho dato

5) La palla a Marco ho dato

6) Ho dato a Marco la palla



How do you say this in Spanish?

Vedendolo (present gerund + lo -him), me ne allontanai. "Seeing him, I went away from him"


Avendolo visto, me ne allontanai (perfect gerund +lo). "Having seen him, I went away from him"


Vedutolo (past participle + lo - him obj.), me ne allontanai . "Seen him, I went away from him"