“Stelele și lalelele”: saggio di micromonografia storico descrittiva di una classe flessiva della lingua romena (I)

Abstract

“Stelele şi lalelele”: Essay of Micromonography of a Romanian Inflectional Class (I). This article is the first of a three-part study aimed at reconstructing the origin and the history of a sub-class of nouns that, from a Romance perspective, has been considered a distinctive feature of Romanian, as well as at bringing into discussion its current status. The object of the study is the sub-class of f nouns ending in the sg NA in stressed vowel, and with pl in -le. In this first part, the author lays out the matter, illustrating the distinctiveness of the morpheme f pl le with respect to Romance pl endings and describing the morphological traits of this class in contemporary Romanian as “radical theme” nouns, i.e. f nouns lacking a specific morpheme for sg NA (f√ ø). In preparation to the following two parts of the study, the author discusses here the Latin origin of f√ ø in Common Romanian, identifying the members of the sub-class directly inherited from Latin.