Romance Languages Research Articles

Basic Intonation Patterns of Galician Spanish

This paper presents an inventory of pitch accents and boundary tones in Galician Spanish (GS), a variety spoken in Northwestern Spain. Research so far has focused on explaining GS intonation features as transfer phenomena from Galician, the vernacular Romance language in the region. Because of this, previous studies have often included Galician L1 speakers, for whom transfer is expected when speaking Spanish L2. However, GS is the single L1 of half the children in Galicia, and it is spoken almost exclusively by about a quarter of Galicians. Our study focuses on this population and investigates the relative frequency and distribution of tonal units in GS when direct transfer from Galician is unlikely. A corpus of 1706 sentences (statements, questions, imperatives, and vocatives in neutral and biased contexts) was obtained from 28 participants through a discourse completion task. Results showed that patterns previously attributed to direct transfer from Galician L1 (for example, upstepped final accents in neutral declaratives or falling contours in unmarked interrogatives) are widespread in GS as L1. Findings also show commonalities with other L1 Spanish varieties, both in Europe (for example, L* L% as the unmarked declarative ending) and America (for example, the L* + H prenuclear accent of Caribbean varieties).

A contrastive analysis of English deverbal -er synthetic compounds and their Italian equivalents

Abstract This study deals with English synthetic compounds ending in -er, such as heartbreaker, time-killer, and bodybuilder, and their Italian equivalents. Synthetic compounds are very productive in Germanic languages (e.g. E. heartbreaker, G. Herzensbrecher, D. hartenbreker), but virtually absent in Romance languages, where various morphological forms and word-formation strategies are used to render the same concepts (cf. It. rubacuori, Sp. rompecorazones, Fr. tombeur). The analysis of English synthetic compounds still remains a controversial topic in morphological accounts, with a lively theoretical debate between two mutually exclusive hypotheses, i.e. whether synthetic compounds have to be analyzed as derivations (i.e. [[heart break] [-er]]) or as compounds (i.e. [[heart] [break-er]]). In word-formation, they are part of transitional morphology, i.e. they have an ambivalent status between derivation and compounding. This study explores a collection of about 100 English synthetic compounds drawn from the English Lexicon Project database and compares them with their possible Italian renditions. The contrastive analysis mainly aims at highlighting differences between the two morphological systems (cf. E. time-killer/It. passatempo). Moreover, the study examines the translation procedures used to render English synthetic compounds in OPUS2 Italian. Corpus-based results confirm that English and Italian display language-specific constructions which may result in mis- or under-translation.

Expanded Terminological List in Astronomy and Space Sciences from English to Romanian

In the field of astronomy and its broader scientific context of space sciences, the English and Romanian languages use terms and sentences on various levels of specialization and therefore, accessibility for the general public as well as for the scientists. The flow of scientific data and information is generated in both languages, which raises the subsequent need of a correct equivalence in specific translations from English to Romanian and vice-versa. In this respect, this study discusses in a multi-disciplinary context a list of terms and expressions translated from English to Romanian that are nowadays used in the fields of astronomy and space sciences. In these scientific areas, the authors of this article considered the English language as being more specific than Romanian and therefore, they aimed to deconstruct the scientific meaning behind each of these specialized English language entries, and point out through additional comments, the rationality of the translation choice they have made, according to the thinking, the ways of expressing and converging ideas in both languages.

Once again to the problem of the chronology of the emergence and decay of Slavic nasal vowels

We show that already in the very first examples of Slavic vocabulary that has come down to us in the 6th–8th centuries. (Slavic onomastics in Byzantine sources, Slavic toponymy in Greece, Slavisms in the Romanian language) there is a fairly large layer of terms with nasal vowels. This quite convincingly suggests that the phonetic phenomenon under discussion arose in Proto-Slavic times, even before the Slavs themselves appeared on the historical arena. Analyzing the decay of nasal vowels in the East Slavic language, we show that the generally accepted argument about the disappearance of these vowels in the 10th century, based on the names of the Dnieper rapids by Constantine Porphyrogenitus (Νεασήτ and Βερούτζη), is very weak. Data from Byzantine sources, for example, the mention of the name Svyatoslav in the form Σφενδοσθλάβος/Σφενδοσθλάβον in the treatise of Leo the Deacon, describing the events of 971/972, convincingly indicate that nasality in princely anthroponymy in the 10th century. was still preserved. We show that the thesis about the disappearance of nasal vowels in Rus' in the 10th century, which has acquired the character of an imperative ideologeme in the modern linguistic environment, is incorrect both in form and in essence. The chronology of nasal vowel decay was determined by the specific vowel. Anthroponyms with small yus retained their nasality until the second — third decades of the 11th century. Using the example of the lexeme сѫбота, we demonstrate that its nasal phonetics were borrowed into the Kipchak dialects during the first contacts of the Russian princes with the Cumans in the middle of the 11th century. The term shambe / şənbə / šenbe will become the basis for designating the days of the week in Iranian and a number of Turkic languages. Nasality in the pronunciation of words with a major yus in the Old Russian language was lost only in the last decades of the 11th century.

Machine-Learning-Based Approaches for Multi-Level Sentiment Analysis of Romanian Reviews

Sentiment analysis has increasingly gained significance in commercial settings, driven by the rising impact of reviews on purchase decision-making in recent years. This research conducts a thorough examination of the suitability of machine learning and deep learning approaches for sentiment analysis, using Romanian reviews as a case study, with the aim of gaining insights into their practical utility. A comprehensive, multi-level analysis is performed, covering the document, sentence, and aspect levels. The main contributions of the paper refer to the in-depth exploration of multiple sentiment analysis models at three different textual levels and the subsequent improvements brought with respect to these standard models. Additionally, a balanced dataset of Romanian reviews from twelve product categories is introduced. The results indicate that, at the document level, supervised deep learning techniques yield the best outcomes (specifically, a convolutional neural network model that obtains an AUC value of 0.93 for binary classification and a weighted average F1-score of 0.77 in a multi-class setting with 5 target classes), albeit with increased resource consumption. Favorable results are achieved at the sentence level, as well, despite the heightened complexity of sentiment identification. In this case, the best-performing model is logistic regression, for which a weighted average F1-score of 0.77 is obtained in a multi-class polarity classification task with three classes. Finally, at the aspect level, promising outcomes are observed in both aspect term extraction and aspect category detection tasks, in the form of coherent and easily interpretable word clusters, encouraging further exploration in the context of aspect-based sentiment analysis for the Romanian language.

Exploring Optionality

The following paper considers the potential for optionality of anaphoric null objects in two early Romance languages: Old French and Old Tuscan. In both languages, anaphoric objects can be omitted in different syntactic contexts (e.g., in coordination with prepositional infinitives or in adjunct non-finite clauses). However, overt objects can be found in almost all contexts which also allow null objects. The current paper argues that null objects in both Old French and Old Tuscan were optional, in the sense that they were never the only option for objects, and that having a null or an overt object did not have bearing in the interpretation of the sentence.

V1 clauses and EPP in Old Italian

This work discusses some aspects of the so-called “relaxed verb-second hypothesis” for Old Romance languages focusing on Old Italian data. Although the idea that Medieval Romance varieties displayed some kind of verb-second grammar is often accepted in the literature, careful consideration of the data and the predictions casts some doubts on this hypothesis and suggests pursuing a different road to account for word order phenomena in these varieties. The focus here is on verb-first main clauses, which result from merging a null element in the left periphery according to Wolfe’s (2015) influential work. If this approach is adopted, problems arise for the definition of the null categories that can occupy the left periphery of the clause: there is no motivation to postulate such elements unless a rule of obligatory pre-field occupation is independently justified, and the data speaks against such a rule. The question then arises whether a further weakened version of the relaxed V2 hypothesis is still preferable to a non-V2 analysis of Old Italian Grammar.

Constructing Meaning: Historical Changes in mihi est and habeo Constructions in Romanian

In this article, I address the evolution of the competition between two Latin patterns, habeo and mihi est, in Romanian. As opposed to the other Romance languages, which replace the mihi est pattern with habeo in possessor and experiencer contexts, Romanian maintains both Latin patterns. The general evolution of these patterns in the Romance languages is well known, however, a detailed usage-based account is currently lacking. Building on the theoretical findings on the role of functional competition in linguistic change, the rivalry between the two patterns in Romanian has already been argued to have settled in terms of differentiation, with each of the two forms specializing in different functional domains by Vangaever and Ilioaia in 2021 in their study “Specialisation through competition: habeo vs. mihi est from Latin to Romanian“. With this idea as a starting point, I investigate, by means of a diachronic corpus study, whether the dynamics in the inventory of state nouns occurring in these constructions can affect their evolution and productivity. The preliminary results show that this is indeed the case. Concomitantly, I explore whether the historical changes that the two patterns have undergone over the centuries can be described in terms of grammaticalization, constructionalization, or in terms of constructional change.

Microvariation at the Interfaces: The Subject of Predication of Broad Focus VS Constructions in Turinese and Milanese

Presentational constructions, i.e., structures which introduce an event into the universe of discourse, raise the question of what it means for a predication to be entirely new in information structural terms. While there is growing consensus that these constructions are not topicless, there is no agreement on how to analyse their topic. The Romance languages of Northern Italy have figured prominently in this debate because the presentational constructions of many such languages exhibit VS order and an etymologically locative clitic in subject clitic position. This clitic has been claimed to be a subject of predication in a syntactic subject position. Adducing primary comparative evidence from Milanese and Turinese, we discuss patterns of microvariation which suggest that the etymologically locative clitic need not be a syntactic subject and can mark an aboutness topic provided by the discourse situation alone. We propose a parallel-architecture, Role and Reference Grammar account whereby the microvariation under scrutiny is captured in terms of the interfaces that are involved in the parsing of utterances. This account considers discourse to be an independent module of grammar, which, alongside the semantic and syntactic modules, is directly involved in linguistic variation and change.

Revisiting the Latin vocabulary of Terminologia Histologica: I. Nouns.

Almost 20% of the Latin nouns (193/993) in Terminologia Histologica (TH), the international standard nomenclature for human histology and cytology, display linguistic problems, particularly in the areas of orthography, gender, and declension. Some anatomists have opposed efforts to restore the quality of the Latin nomenclature as pedantry, preferring to create or modify Latin words so that they resemble words in English and other modern languages. A Latin microanatomical nomenclature is vulnerable to the criticism of anachronism, so the requirement for the use of authentic Latin, including derivation of new words from Greek and Latin words rather than from modern languages, if possible, may be even greater than it is for the anatomical nomenclature. The most common problem identified here appears to have been caused by derivation of Latin nouns by addition of -us and -um second declension endings to English words. Many Latin nouns (128) in TH contain one of six morphemes that have been treated this way even though the original Greek words are either first declension masculine or third declension neuter nouns. Ironically, deriving Latin nouns directly from Greek morphemes often results in words that look more familiar to speakers of Romance and Germanic languages than those derived indirectly through modern languages (e.g., astrocyte, collagene, dendrita, lipochroma, osteoclasta and telomere instead of astrocytus, collagenum, dendritum, lipochromum, osteoclastus, and telomerus).

Some Reflections on the Translatability of Christmas Carols and Christmas Poems

The aim of the following paper is to identify and analyze some of the challenges we face when translating Christmas carols and poems from Romanian into Spanish and vice versa. Translating poetry and especially Christmas carols is not an easy task because, in addition to a good knowledge of the source and target languages, it requires a vast knowledge of both Spanish and Romanian cultures. Even though they are Romance languages and Christianity (with its two variants, Orthodox and Catholic) is the official religion of Romania and Spain, lexical and cultural particularities can be identified in the texts, since it uses a specific language. This is not to say that there are no cultural similarities regarding the interpretation of the birth of Christ. There are several similarities in terms of action and biblical characters, which are reflected in both Romanian and Spanish versions. Our aim is to see how far we can go with the translation of Christmas carols and poems, whether the translated text maintains the original message or not and to try to see if it is possible to preserve, in some cases the rhyme, or at least partially. The corpus we will use in our research comprises 24 Romanian Christmas carols and 13 Romanian poems translated into Spanish and 21 Spanish Christmas carols, as well as 13 Spanish poems translated into Romanian. These texts were translated by the students of Applied Modern Languages during a practical translation course, the final variant including our suggestions and revisions.

Expressive Speech Acts Used to Open and Close Dialogues in Present-Day Romanian

The following paper starts from the acknowledgment that, in the present-day Romanian language, interlocutors display an increased preference for the use of unconventional devices as opening and closing sequences of speech acts. Their employment depends on the type of context in which a verbal interaction takes place (formal vs informal context) and on the parameters of social distance and communicative force, which determine the relationship between the participants in a certain speech act. Conventional greetings are also taken into consideration in research, but the purpose of the paper is to prove that in addition to standard greetings, certain expressive speech acts, which “borrow” their functions, may be found. Some of the expressive speech acts that have been analyzed have positive connotations (e.g., compliments, praises, appreciations, condolences), as their formation is based on maintaining a harmonious relationship between interlocutors. Other expressive speech acts have negative connotations (e.g., insults, imprecations, reproaches, criticisms), since they are based on the destructive nature of the interpersonal relationships in which they originate. The paper analyzes such verbal sequences, which enclose dialogues, and highlights the functions that they develop in communication. To this end, concepts and precepts from the theory of speech acts are used, and the overall methodological framework pertains to pragmatics.

The Validation of the Speech, Spatial and Qualities of Hearing Scale SSQ12 for Native Romanian Speakers with and without Hearing Impairment.

The perceived impact of hearing loss varies considerably among those affected due to the heterogeneous types of hearing loss, their diverse etiologies, and the different rehabilitation possibilities. Therefore, assessing listening skills in a daily context using questionnaires is essential. This study aimed to investigate the validity and reliability of the adapted version of the Speech, Spatial and Qualities of Hearing Scale 12 (SSQ12) in the Romanian language. The SSQ12 is a 12-item self-reporting questionnaire that assesses a range of everyday listening situations. The internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and validity of the r-SSQ12 questionnaire resulting from the adaptation of the original scale were investigated. The responses of 183 subjects aged between 11 and 79 years were evaluated. In total, 121 subjects had hearing loss (19 adolescents), and 62 subjects had normal hearing (11 adolescents). Significant differences were observed in the means of the overall score and for individual items between normal-hearing subjects and subjects with hearing loss. The SSQ12 had high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.97), and the test-retest scores were highly correlated. The SSQ12 scale can be used to investigate the self-reporting of hearing quality in both general populations to identify hearing disorders and populations with hearing loss.

Genological stratification of diplomatic discourse on social network X (based on the material of the countries of the Romance and Germanic language areas)

Relevance. The rapid advancement in technology has profoundly impacted various aspects of human life, including communication. The advent of the internet and microblogs like X has revolutionized not only personal and professional interactions but also diplomatic discourse. This evolution presents new avenues for philological research, particularly in the domain of communicative linguistics.Purpose. The purpose of this article is to determine, describe and make an attempt to predict the levels and structure of genres of diplomatic discourse in the coming decades using examples of its manifestations on X in the best traditions of classical linguistics schools and considering the achievements of new research areas in linguistics.Methodology. The analysis utilises a comprehensive review of existing literature on discourse theory and internet communication genres. It incorporates a detailed examination of X�s role in modern diplomatic interactions to propose a new stratification matrix for genres termed twiplomatics.Results. The article highlights the genres of tweeting as the implementation of diplomatic discourse within the framework of virtual (internet) communication on the example of the social network (microblog) X. A contribution is made to the development of the theory of genological theory, in particular, the genre of virtual communication. A hierarchical stratification of speech genres for twiplomatics is offered.Conclusions. The findings contribute significantly to the field of discourse genology by providing a structured genre classification system for diplomatic discourse on X. This research not only enriches our understanding of digital communication dynamics but also sets a foundation for future studies in virtual communication genres, potentially guiding the development of more effective digital diplomatic strategies.

Thinking night studies through a southern European perspective

AbstractTo emphasise the contribution of situated perspectives to the advancement of the field, this review provides a genealogy of night studies across southwestern Europe. This interdisciplinary field of research has significantly developed in English‐speaking scholarly communities, and it has only more recently been growing in importance on southwestern European scholars' research agendas. Usually, they produce research outputs in both English and a Romance language. As a result, intertwined lines of scholarly literature emerge and contribute to the advancement of night studies to different degrees, depending on international readers' proficiency in the employed (Romance) language and (inter)disciplinary interests. To help handle this accessibility issue, this review focuses on what brings night studies together, despite their heterogeneity. That is, the geographical understanding of local night space–times as situated phenomena frequently referred to as nightscape. Accordingly, the review suggests reframing the geographical nightscape as a connective concept to bridge the gaps between multilingual and multidisciplinary research, fostering the interpretation and assemblage of hybrid theoretical frameworks for situated investigations that delve into the diverse and interdependent relations co‐producing local night space–times.

Encoding Near-Synonym Relations in Monolingual English Learner's Dictionaries: The Case of Germanic and Latinate "Equivalents"

ABSTRACT: This article examines the semantic relations between pairs of Germanic and Latinate near-synonyms in contemporary English, such as hug/embrace, isle/island , and brave/courageous , which dictionaries traditionally treat as equivalent in meaning, regardless of context-independent differences between them. These word pairs are challenging for learners of English as a Foreign Language, especially when their L1 is a Romance language. Monolingual English learner's dictionaries (MELDs) do not, in general, clearly or systematically disambiguate near-synonyms of different origin. An improvement in dictionary treatment of near-synonyms is thus called for. After outlining the main types and subtypes of meaning relations identified through the analysis of a sample of Germanic and Latinate word pairs, synonymy in the "Big Five" MELDs is examined. Proposals are then made to better encode synonym similarities and differences with cross-reference information in the form of tags, labels, and usage notes.

Роль вспомогательного глагола в составе русской глагольной перифразы (на материале современных электронных СМИ)

The paper explores the definition and typology of periphrastic expressions in both Russian and Romance languages, taking into consideration a range of linguistic criteria. Given its multidimensional nature, periphrasis cannot be specified in terms of subject, resulting in ambiguity in its designation. Most Russian linguists consider periphrasis as a descriptive expression that may be ambiguous but serves to convey the meaning of another expression or word. The verbal periphrasis holds a significant position in language, serving an indispensable function in conveying the meaning of actions. In the Russian language, verbal periphrasis is a binomial compound construction, with its basic model typically involving an auxiliary verb and a verbal or nominal form denoting an action. Within this model, four structures can be identified, including (1) verb + verbal noun, (2) verb + substantive phrase, (3) verb + primitive noun, and (4) verb + infinitive. The auxiliary verb within the verbal periphrasis assumes a functional role while retaining its lexical meaning to some extent. Semantically, ten main types of auxiliary verbs can be identified in verb periphrasis in Russian. These express (1) implementation, (2) phasing and other aspectual values, (3) causativity, (4) conversivity, (5) explication, (6) manifestation, (7) operation, (8) participation, (9) modality, and (10) intensity. The auxiliary verb used in the verbal periphrasis undergoes a process of desemanticization while occasionally preserving a partial semantic significance or acquiring a novel meaning.

Subject Alternation and Antecedent Preference in Romanian

In this paper, we will study the use of null pronouns on the one hand and the interpretation of null and pronominal subjects on the other hand in Romanian. While both questions have been studied across a wide range of Romance languages, empirical data on Romanian are still missing in the literature. Our first three experiments, using a binary choice of possible answers to questions, show that null subjects are generally preferred in Romanian. This preference is, however, modified by the contrast effect with more pronominal subjects when there is an alternative explicit or presupposed referent in the context. In our fourth experiment, we find that, as in other Romance languages, null subjects prefer a subject antecedent while pronominal subjects prefer a non-subject antecedent, showing the typical division of labour effect. The preference for null subjects in our experiment is slightly smaller than in Italian or European Portuguese, two languages that show a stronger division of labour effect with near categorical choices of subject and object antecedents for null and pronominal subjects, respectively. Preferences found for Romanian resemble those found for Spanish. We argue that the frequency of null subjects in a language may play a role in the strength of the division of labour effect.

РАЗНАЯ СУДЬБА ЛАТИНСКИХ ГЛАГОЛЬНЫХ КОНСТРУКЦИЙ ТИПА «ИНФИНИТИВ + HABEO» И «HABEO + ПРИЧАСТИЕ ПРОШЕДШЕЕ» ВО ФРАНЦУЗСКОМ И ДРУГИХ РОМАНСКИХ ЯЗЫКАХ

This article examines the different fate of Latin verb constructions type cantare habeo > je chanterai and habeo cantatam > j'ai chanté. As a result of the analysis, the reasons for the appearance of these periphrases in the Latin language were identified; the features of their further transformation into vulgar Latin during the formation of Romance languages were established; the specifics of the further development of the considered constructions in the process of evolution of the French language and their place in the verb system of modern French were determined; a new explanation of this amazing phenomenon of the evolution of French and other Romance languages was proposed.

Biocodicological mapping of the Cantilène de sainte Eulalie

The Cantilène de sainte Eulalie (BM Valenciennes, ms. 150) is a significant historical artefact from around 880, believed to have been part of the 12th-century collections of Saint-Amand-les-Eaux Abbey. It is considered the earliest known literary text in a Romance language, marking the rise of langue d’oïl and significant linguistic changes. Discovered in 1837, its origin is debated but likely from a 9th-century Lotharingian workshop. Traditionally, it has been studied paleographically and philologically, focusing on the text and its content. Library records and literature descriptions suggest an original Carolingian binding, implying all elements were from the same period. This paper challenges these assumptions through codicological analysis. Biomolecular and structural examinations reveal a Lotharingian origin but a non-original binding, indicating centuries of modifications.