The Marker And The Morpheme In The Romanian Grammars

Abstract

The modern academic grammar – ”Gramatica de bază a limbii române” (GBLR, 2010) – is meant to represent a ‘sophisticated’ theoretical description of the contemporary Romanian language. Its deliberate modernity – in both conception and themes – implies nevertheless the terminology. Within this perspective, we will focus upon the term and the concept of ‘marker’. The marker is defined as ”any element on the level of expression (of the word’s form) constantly associated with a certain grammatical meaning and which serves to the recognition of that meaning.” (GBLR, 2010, p. 8). Still, the term ‚marker’ is adopted not only with its meaning of ’morpheme’, but it also stands for ’class of words’. Our observations regard its status and its use, in strict relation to its accuracy and coherency throughout the academic work. Meanwhile, we will try to answer some essential questions regarding the types of grammatical mark(er)s, the conceptual and terminological relation between the ‘marker’ and the ‘morpheme’, in order to decide if the term is accurate, relevant and sufficient in order to describe the corresponding linguistic facts in the Romanian language. As a preliminary conclusion, we argue that more coherent arguments and a more consistent use are both needed in order to consecrate the contextual, unambiguous meaning of the ‘mark(er)’, along with an rigorous definition and standardization.