Features of noun quantifiers in old Romanian

Camelia Stan

doi:10.17684/i6a83en

Abstract

This study is part of a collective research on the historical morphology of Romanian, conducted at the Institute of Linguistics of the Romanian Academy in Bucharest. This analysis approaches in detail a specific issue in the diachrony of noun quantifiers, more precisely, the tendency towards internal fusion which compound ordinal numerals showed in old Romanian (the 16th to 18th centuries). The tendency towards formal unity determined certain changes in the morphology and syntax of numerals. Thus, the aim of this analysis is to highlight and explain the morphosyntactic manifestations of this process. Therefore, the forms of the numeral are discussed in relation to the syntactic structure of the quantified nominal phrase. The framework adopted here is the theory of grammaticalization, and contemporary diachronic syntax. The analysis of the old structures containing ordinal numerals allows us to formulate observations related to: the inflectional features of the ordinal numerals and their combination with articles, the grammaticalization degree of the formative al, the origin of the enclitic formatives –l(u)/–le/–lea, –a, and the ordering of these formatives.

Highlights

The structure of the quantified nominal phrases showed a high degree of formal variation in the old stage of Romanian, in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, up until around 1780, according to the largely accepted periodization in the Romanian literature
Researchers have always paid attention to the morphological and/or syntactic features of the numerals and pronominal quantifiers in old Romanian, these features being discussed in the treaties devoted to the history of Romanian and in special studies, with different theoretical frameworks
We will not review the observations made in the literature cited above and we will not discuss in its entirety the behaviour of quantifiers in old Romanian

Summary

Introduction

The structure of the quantified nominal phrases showed a high degree of formal variation in the old stage of Romanian, in the 16th , 17th and 18th centuries, up until around 1780, according to the largely accepted periodization in the Romanian literature 121, 140, 272, 236, 282, 328; Gheție & Mareș, 1974, p. These issues are tackled in linguistic studies which accompany philological editions of certain old texts 104; Gheție & Teodorescu, 2005, p. We will not review the observations made in the literature cited above and we will not discuss in its entirety the behaviour of quantifiers in old Romanian. These data and linguistic phenomena are well known.

The forms and usage of compound ordinal numerals

The ordering of the formatives

The construction with cel and de

Conclusions