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.
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?
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.