ON THE USE OF COMPLEMENTISERS IN ISTRO-ROMANIAN

Authors

  • Ramona Cătălina CORBEANU Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest, catalina.corbeanu@unibuc.ro
  • Ionuț GEANĂ University of Bucharest, ionut.geana@litere.unibuc.ro

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24193/subbphilo.2022.1.05

Keywords:

Istro-Romanian syntax, (Eastern) Romance dialectology, IR complementisers, word order

Abstract

On the Use of Complementisers in Istro-Romanian. This article deals with the description of certain aspects of the complementiser system in Istro-Romanian (hereinafter IR), a severely endangered Romance variety. The prototypical IR complementisers are ke (‘that’), neca (subjunctive marker), and in rarer occurrences se (‘that/if’). Their main features are their high degree of heterogeneity, as well as their occurrence in various syntactic configurations that either makes IR pattern with Daco-Romanian (its closest sister), or sets IR apart across Romance. Our analysis is carried out on a corpus made of: Traian Cantemir’s Texte istroromâne (data collected during 1932-1933), Sextil Pușcariu’s Studii istroromâne. Texte I (1906-1926), Sârbu, R., V. Frățilă’s Dialectul istroromân (1982-1996). Among the situations at which we will take a closer look, we should mention the occurrence of the complementiser ke ‘that’ in places where Daco-Romanian and other Romance varieties would not use it or would use it differently.

Article history: Received 27 September 2021; Revised 29 September 2021; Accepted 11 October 2021; Available online 31 March 2022; Available print 31 March 2022.

REZUMAT. Observații privind complementizatorii din istroromână. Articolul de față își propune să descrie anumite aspecte privitoare la sistemul complementizatorilor din istroromână (numită în continuare IR), o varietate romanică orientală pe cale de dispariție. Complementizatorii prototipici din istroromână sunt ke ‘că’, neca ‘să’, și – mai rar – se ‘să’. Principalele caracteristici ale acestora privesc gradul ridicat de eterogenitate, precum și prezența în configurații sintactice dintre cele mai variate, care fie le apropie de uzul din dacoromână („sora” cea mai apropiată), fie le izolează în contextul romanic mai larg. Analiza noastră se bazează pe un corpus alcătuit din: Texte istroromâne de Traian Cantemir (date culese între 1932-1933), Studii istroromâne. Texte I de Sextil Pușcariu (1906-1926), Dialectul istroromân de R. Sârbu și V. Frățilă (date culese între 1982-1996). Printre situațiile asupra cărora ne vom apleca în mod deosebit, menționăm apariția complementizatorului ke ‘că’, în contexte în care dacoromâna sau alte limbi romanice nu l-ar folosi sau l-ar întrebuinţa diferit.

Cuvinte-cheie: sintaxa istroromânei, dialectologie romanică (orientală), complementizatori în IR, topică

Author Biographies

Ramona Cătălina CORBEANU, Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest, catalina.corbeanu@unibuc.ro

Ramona Cătălina CORBEANU is Researcher at the Romanian Academy’s “Iorgu Iordan – Alexandru Rosetti” Institute of Linguistics and a Junior Lecturer at the Centre for Romanian Studies, Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest. Her current main research interests are the syntax and the morphology of old Romanian and of modern Romanian, Romanian as a second language, lexicology, lexicography and Romanian derivational morphology, and the syntax of Istro-Romanian. Email: catalina.corbeanu@unibuc.ro

Ionuț GEANĂ, University of Bucharest, ionut.geana@litere.unibuc.ro

Ionuţ GEANĂ is Researcher at the Romanian Academy’s “Iorgu Iordan – Alexandru Rosetti” Institute of Linguistics and Associate Professor at the Centre for Romanian Studies of the University of Bucharest. His research interests focus on language variation in such fields as Romance and Romanian morphosyntax, phonetics and phonology, dialectology, and Romanian as a foreign language. Email: ionut.geana@litere.unibuc.ro.

References

Primary sources

SF = Richard Sârbu, Vasile Frățilă, 1998, Dialectul istroromân. Texte și glosar, Timișoara, Editura Amarcord.

TC = Traian Cantemir, 1959, Texte istroromâne, București, Editura Academiei Române.

SI = Sextil Pușcariu, 1906, Studii istroromâne. Texte I, București, Institutul de Arte Grafice “Carol Göbl”.

TB = Teodor Burada, 1896, O călătorie în satele românești din Istria, Iași, Tipografia Națională.

Secondary sources

Ammann, Andreas, Van der Auwera, Johan. 2004. “Complementiser-Headed Main Clauses for Volitional Moods in the Languages of South-Eastern Europe: A Balkanism?” Balkan Syntax and Semantics, edited by Olga Mišeska Tomić, 293-314. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Boye, Kasper, Van Lier, Eva, Brink T., Eva. 2015. “Epistemic Complementisers: A Crosslinguistic Survey.” Language Sciences, 51(5), 1-17.

Cantemir, Traian. 1959. Texte istroromâne. București: Editura Academiei Române.

Colasanti, Valentina. 2018. Romance morphosyntactic microvariation in complementizer and auxiliary systems. PhD thesis, University of Cambridge.

Corbeanu, Ramona-Cătălina. 2020. „Conjunctivul în istroromână. Statutul lui neca.” at the workshop Tradition and Innovation in the Study and Preservation of Istro-Romanian (within The 20th International Conference of the Department of Linguistics: Romanian Language – Modernity and Continuity in Linguistics Research), 21 November.

De Boel, Gunnar. 1980. “Towards a theory of the meaning of complementisers in classical Attic.” Lingua, 52(3-4), 285-304.

Dianich, Antonio. 2010. Vocabolario istroromeno-italiano. La varietà istroromena di Briani (‘Bəršćina). Pisa: Edizioni ETS.

Dixon, Robert M. W. 2006. “Complement clauses and complementation strategies in typological perspective.” Complementation: A cross-linguistic typology, edited by Robert M. W. Dixon & Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, 1-48. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Givón, Talmy. 2001. Syntax: An introduction, vol. II. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Fagard, Benjamin, Pietrandrea, Paola, Glikman, Julie. 2016. “Syntactic and semantic aspects of Romance complementisers.”‏ Complementizer Semantics in European Languages, edited by Kasper Boye, Petar Kehayov, 75-130. Berlin-Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.

Frajzyngier, Zygmunt. 1995. “A Functional Theory of Complementisers.” Modality in Grammar and Discourse, edited by Joan L. Bybee, Suzanne Fleischman, 473-502. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Hill, Virginia. 2002. “Complementiser phrases (CP) in Romanian.” Italian Journal of Linguistics, 14(2), 223-48.

Kovačec, August. 1984. “Istroromâna.” Tratat de dialectologie românească, edited by Valeriu Rusu, 550-91. Craiova: Editura Scrisul Românesc.

Maiden, Martin. 2016. “Romanian, Istro-Romanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Aromanian.” The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages, edited by Adam Ledgeway, Martin Maiden, 91-125. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Noonan, M. 2007. “Complementation.” Language Typology and Syntactic Description, 2nd Edition, vol. 2 (Complex constructions), edited by T. Shopen, 52-150. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pană Dindelegan, Gabriela (ed.). 2013. The Grammar of Romanian. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Plesničar, Vesna. 2017. “Complementiser doubling in Slovenian subordinate clauses.” Advances in formal Slavic linguistics, edited by Franc Marušič, Petra Mišmaš, Rok Žaucer, 233-55. Berlin: Language Science Press.

Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. “The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery.” Elements of Grammar, edited by Liliane Haegeman, 281-337. Dordrecht: Springer Verlag.

Sârbu, Richard, Frățilă, Vasile. 1998. Dialectul istroromân. Texte și glosar. Timișoara: Editura Amarcord.

Stan, Camelia. 2007. “Notă gramaticală: conjuncția ca (...) să.” Studii şi cercetări lingvistice, 58(2), 451-58.

Vrzić, Zvjezdana, Doričić, Robert. 2014. “Language contact and stability of basic vocabulary: Croatian loanwords for body parts in Vlashki/Zheyanski (Istro-Romanian).” Fluminensia, 26(2), 105-22.

Zegrean, Iulia-Georgiana. 2012. Balkan Romance: Aspects of the Syntax of Istro-Romanian. PhD Thesis, Università Ca’Foscari Venezia.

STUDIA UBB PHILOLOGIA, Volume 67 (LXVII), No. 1, March 2022

Downloads

Published

2022-03-31

How to Cite

Ramona Cătălina CORBEANU, & Ionuț GEANĂ. (2022). ON THE USE OF COMPLEMENTISERS IN ISTRO-ROMANIAN. Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai Philologia, 67(1), 71–86. https://doi.org/10.24193/subbphilo.2022.1.05

Issue

Volume 67, No. 1, 2022

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2022 Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai Philologia

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.