Old Romanian pluralized mass and abstract nouns

Gabriela Pană Dindelegan

doi:10.17684/i6a82en

Abstract

The analysis of a rich old Romanian corpus shows that the ‘pluralization’ of mass and abstract nouns is extremely frequent in old Romanian. The semantic effects of pluralization are similar for mass and abstract nouns, consisting in the creation of denotative and/or connotative semantic variants. Of the plural endings, –uri is specialized for the pluralization of mass nouns in Daco-Romanian. The evolution of the ending –uri illustrates the specific process by which a grammatical (plural) morpheme is converted into a lexical morpheme (the so-called ‘lexical plurals’). ‘Lexical plurals’ have isolated occurrences in other Romance languages, but they have not reached the spread and regularity they display in Romanian.

Highlights

Mass and abstract nouns have common semantic and morphosyntactic characteristics, which accounts for the fact that they are engaged in common phenomena, as well as that they are analysed together
The objective of this article is to examine the phenomenon of pluralization of mass and abstract nouns, and its semantic and grammatical effects, on the basis of a rich corpus of old Romanian (1560–1780)
The inherent [+mass] feature influences the grammatical behaviour of nouns, in the sense that mass nouns are distinguished from prototypical ones as far as their inflection (Nedelcu, 2013, p. 260–261) and morphosyntax are concerned (Pană Dindelegan, 2016b, p. 324–332)

Summary

Introduction

Mass and abstract nouns have common semantic and morphosyntactic characteristics, which accounts for the fact that they are engaged in common phenomena (see ‘pluralization’ and its effects), as well as that they are analysed together (as in this article). The objective of this article is to examine the phenomenon of pluralization of mass and abstract nouns, and its semantic and grammatical effects, on the basis of a rich corpus of old Romanian (1560–1780)

Characteristic features

Pluralization of mass nouns

The pluralization of the collective noun zestre ‘dowry’

Conclusions