I think you miss the issue. It's not about the development, but about the reality of the spoken language, of the actual grammar of Romanian, which I think no one can counterargue, it's best known in Romania, by Romanians. The fact is that in today Romania both the grammar and the spoken language offer two types of the subordinate clause you were talking about. By subjunctive and infinitive. I'm almost certain that the author(s) you quote, in their Balkanic comparative studies, took the subjunctive as an argument from "balkanism", which they are correct in. But as it's not the subject of their book, they didn't issued, and probably not researched, the clause introduced by infinitive, which represents the Latin heritage. Maybe in a far future, the infinitive introduced clauses will disappear (it's actually a bit harder to pronounce it, because of the specific infinitive particle "a" which disturbs the coherence of speech, they are seldom used even nowadays), but as we speak it still exists and it's a living proof of the closeness between Latin and Romanian. Please note that not the author himself is discounted, but the author represented by you and your interpretation and the fallacious calls to authority. You were wrong in several accounts about Romanian language, though you claimed linguistic background and you brought referrences. If your linguistic background or your referrences are responsible in anyway for your arguments, then they are wrong, no matter how respected are they in other places. But as I already said, I hope it's not about them.
"As I have written before, most reputable grammars treat Romanian has having morphologically only two cases that serve four functions. Granted, there is the vocative, but the grammars I have treat that separately as a limited exception." Vocative is a specifical declension case, and I wonder by what criterion is it removed from our Latin-Romanian topic, or treated as an exception. And I also wonder if the same grammars exclude vocative from Latin language narrowing it to 6 (or 5 cases - depends how they regard locative). Because the point is if the Romanian cases prove an increased likeliness to Latin not if someone can tendenciously minimize them to mock the language.
"The simple perfect is but very rarely used in the spoken language outside of Oltenia." You are wrong on this issue and give me a stereotype from some prejudicial literature. The perfect simple is symbolically from Oltenia as there is used for almost any past tense, but it's used significantly also in southern Transylvania (like transylvanian expressions are used in Oltenia), also in the western side of Muntenia. Even more, the perfect simple is used in the literature, but also in the common language throughout the country to give a certain "load" to a phrase (e.g. expression "fuse, fuse si se duse" - pantha rhei or "it was, it was and it went away"). I notice that you ignored "more than perfect" tense. However, if you sum them up you will end up with 4 (four) distinct simple verb tenses, which makes Romanian closer to Latin than you claimed.
"Obviously the "o" has an origin like all things, but it is now idiomatic." It's same idiomatic like a modal verb in a shorter version. English, for instance, uses a lot of short forms. But under no condition is meaningless.
"No, it's a matter of Romanian joining with Albanian, Greek, and Bulgarian into the Balkan sprachbund. See Daniel's The Synchrony and Diachrony of the Balkan Infinitive, Cambridge University Press, 1983." I expect from someone which counterargues against me (as a romanian speaker and aware of the grammar) to quote a referrence to romanian grammar. Infinitive can be freely replace with subjunctive in those particular expressions and I surely don't think the author you mentioned knows better the Romanian language than Romanian academy and 23 million speakers! A language is given by the speakers and eventually the institution they chose to represent them not by a book at someone's choice who wants to get an upper hand in a virtual debate. That free replacement in a dictionary is usually called a synonimy, hence my previous conclusion. My advice: read Romanian grammar, read Romanian dictionaries, read academy's rules regarding Romanian language and then we'll have a common ground to talk on.
"For I have not said that Greek-Romanian is stronger than Latin-Romanian is all things, but in two very basic matters Romanian has adapted a Balkan nature in common with Greek." Well, scripta manent... "Furthermore, being a member of the Balkan sprachbund, Romanian has developed features making it closer in respects to [...] Greek, [...] than to its parent Latin." I don't see any corelation with any two particular matters, just a general statement: "closer to... than...".
"Do you have any training in comparative linguistics? " The relevance of this being? I don't have anything to brag about. A linguistic training is not much of an argument when someone jumps in a debate about a language he doesn't know (words, etymologies, grammar). Also, is useless when someone knows what he is talking about. So, if we sum up, linguistic training is almost never to be brought up as argument.
"Most of what I have written in these posts matches what is in the standard handbooks." That is of absolutely no relevance as long as it's wrong. I can't tell if it's your interpretation or if it's the books, but certainly I'll be sorry if it's about the books;)
Like I shown in a reply branched above in the thread ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=143147&cid=119 97860 ), in romanian are 5 cases which only by their look collapse in 3 (in some cases 2). In your enumeration, your forget the vocative, which has a different termination ("copile", "baiatule", "fato", "omule", "vanzatoareo").
What you called decent portion is however puzzling me. The amount of Dacian words is somewhere less than 300 (there are plenty of works in this subject, unfortunately they are mostly hypothethic and they also confront with a lot of words of unknown etymology), while the slavonic words cover significant but surely not the majority of the vocabulary. Relating word's origin you may review the same message I mentioned at the beggining of this message where I showed that a striking majority of agricultural terms have latin origin. With a bit of history, you'd see the relevance of this fact, as in the north-danubian area, the civilization after Roman's collapse was mostly agricultural. Some other terms regarding love and affection are Latin (a dori - to wish, dor - missing dolus, a pupa - to kiss pupare, amic - friend amicus, imbratisare - hug im+brat+is+are brachium) so your love-and-affection list is obviously tendencious, but probably is given by your insufficient knowledge of the language.
The spoken romanian uses more than two tenses. For instance in past tenses, beyond imperfect, it has two types of perfect. The simple perfect (fusei/fusesi/fu etc) and the compond perfect (which you mentioned). So by first strike we have 3 tenses. The other past tense is "more than the perfect" which is (fusesem/fusesei/fusese etc) - again a simple tense, that makes for 4. The "meaningless o" is in fact a collapsing of a modal verb (to wish - "a voi"). It's hazardous to call meaningless things you don't know or understand.
The definite article exists in the medieval latin (see my same post from above). The replacement with subjunctive clauses in romanian it's a matter of synonimy. I can say as well "nu e greu sa fac" and "nu e greu a face" (first with subjunctive, the last with infinitive). If you're in the field you may also consider the famous Eminescu's verse "E usor a scrie versuri cand nimic nu ai a spune" (it's easy to write rhymes where's nothing to say).
Your affirmations about language corelations (for instance Greek-Romanian stronger than Latin-Romanian) are unsound.
I don't understand why anyone can claim that "campo" is closer to "campus" than "camp" based on the last vowel. As you know, in declension, the noun campus loses it's termination (which is nominative specific), so we have the root "camp" and for singular, for instance, the terminations: -us, -i, -o, -um, -o, -i, -e for nom, gen, dat, acc, abl, loc, voc.
Romanian has 5 cases: nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, and vocative and their identification is much more clear in the text than you think (a subset of feminine). ex: baiat (boy) - (masculine, singular) baiat - nominative (always with an article - see below) (A/al) baiatului - genitive (a noun relates to it) Baiatului - dative (a verb relates to it) baiat - accusative (not always with an article) Baiatule - vocative If you're curious I will make further declinations for you for different nouns. Another note, is that most of all other romanic languages have lost even more the distinction between cases, so from all romanic languages, Romanian is most similar to Latin. Indeed, Romanian mainly holds 3 visible different forms in all the 5 cases (nom/acc, gen/dat, voc) which sometimes collapse to two (for instance in masculin plural in most of the times genitive, dative and vocative are alike) and holds 3 declensions, and maybe one of these is what you referred to from the beginning.
Regarding article, there are two types. Undefinite ("un baiat") and definite ("baiatul"), the first referring to a boy, whoever is he, the last referring to a certain boy. Please note that the Latin "unus" in romanian is "un" - the indefinite article, but also "unu" - the number "one". Also, it's possible that the undefinied article "-ul" comes from latin demonstrative pronoun "ille". Both were used in Medieval Latin as surrogates for articles, and considering that Romanian is said to be born out of vulgar Latin, you should look for referrences a bit later and lower stylistically than Tacitus:)
The number of latin-derived words I'm afraid is not a criteria, as you know literary English words are in vast majority derived from latin, but I doubt anyone will hold for a similarity between the two languages. It's rather a matter of how "core" are those words to languages. For a proof of an obvious similarity between the two languages I give the following text (translated and hopefully well adapted) given by one of the Romanian historians:
The wheat (grau/granum) is milled (se macina/machinare) in the watermill (moara/mola) or is pounded (piseaza/pinsare) in the stamp (piua/pilla-pilula). The flower (faina/farina) is sieved (cerne/cernere) through sieve (ciur/cibrum) and is mixed with water (apa/aqua) and with the dough (aluat/allevatum), then is kneaded (framanta/fermentare), is shaped like a bread (soage/subigere), is laid on a wooden plate (carpator/copertorium) or under a wooden bell (test/testum) is baked (coace/coquere) in the oven (cuptor/coctorium) until the bread (paine/panis) is ready. From the wheat flower can be made also pie (placinta/placenta), from the millet (mei/milium) flower a pounded boiled specific food (pasat/quassatum). To plough (a ara/arare), sow (semana/seminare), to thrash (treiera/tribulare), reap (secera/sicilare), gather (culege/colligere), reverse the sowing (intoarce/intoquere). Wheat (grau/granum), rye (secara/secale), millet (mei/milium), barley (orz/hordeum), mountain-wheat (alac/alica). Ear (spic/spicum), straws (paie/palea), cornockle (neghina/nigellina), land (pamant/pavimentum), field (camp/campus), area (arie/area), approx. 1/2 hectare (falce/falx-cis), yoke (jug/jugum), pitchfork (furca/furca), scythe (secere/sicils). Note that for all the above verbs if you derive a noun from them (e.g. sowing = semanare) you get an even more closer similarity.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you miss the issue. It's not about the development, but about the reality of the spoken language, of the actual grammar of Romanian, which I think no one can counterargue, it's best known in Romania, by Romanians.
The fact is that in today Romania both the grammar and the spoken language offer two types of the subordinate clause you were talking about. By subjunctive and infinitive. I'm almost certain that the author(s) you quote, in their Balkanic comparative studies, took the subjunctive as an argument from "balkanism", which they are correct in. But as it's not the subject of their book, they didn't issued, and probably not researched, the clause introduced by infinitive, which represents the Latin heritage.
Maybe in a far future, the infinitive introduced clauses will disappear (it's actually a bit harder to pronounce it, because of the specific infinitive particle "a" which disturbs the coherence of speech, they are seldom used even nowadays), but as we speak it still exists and it's a living proof of the closeness between Latin and Romanian.
Please note that not the author himself is discounted, but the author represented by you and your interpretation and the fallacious calls to authority. You were wrong in several accounts about Romanian language, though you claimed linguistic background and you brought referrences. If your linguistic background or your referrences are responsible in anyway for your arguments, then they are wrong, no matter how respected are they in other places. But as I already said, I hope it's not about them.
"As I have written before, most reputable grammars treat Romanian has having morphologically only two cases that serve four functions. Granted, there is the vocative, but the grammars I have treat that separately as a limited exception."
... ... than ...".
;)
Vocative is a specifical declension case, and I wonder by what criterion is it removed from our Latin-Romanian topic, or treated as an exception. And I also wonder if the same grammars exclude vocative from Latin language narrowing it to 6 (or 5 cases - depends how they regard locative). Because the point is if the Romanian cases prove an increased likeliness to Latin not if someone can tendenciously minimize them to mock the language.
"The simple perfect is but very rarely used in the spoken language outside of Oltenia."
You are wrong on this issue and give me a stereotype from some prejudicial literature. The perfect simple is symbolically from Oltenia as there is used for almost any past tense, but it's used significantly also in southern Transylvania (like transylvanian expressions are used in Oltenia), also in the western side of Muntenia. Even more, the perfect simple is used in the literature, but also in the common language throughout the country to give a certain "load" to a phrase (e.g. expression "fuse, fuse si se duse" - pantha rhei or "it was, it was and it went away").
I notice that you ignored "more than perfect" tense. However, if you sum them up you will end up with 4 (four) distinct simple verb tenses, which makes Romanian closer to Latin than you claimed.
"Obviously the "o" has an origin like all things, but it is now idiomatic." It's same idiomatic like a modal verb in a shorter version. English, for instance, uses a lot of short forms. But under no condition is meaningless.
"No, it's a matter of Romanian joining with Albanian, Greek, and Bulgarian into the Balkan sprachbund. See Daniel's The Synchrony and Diachrony of the Balkan Infinitive, Cambridge University Press, 1983."
I expect from someone which counterargues against me (as a romanian speaker and aware of the grammar) to quote a referrence to romanian grammar. Infinitive can be freely replace with subjunctive in those particular expressions and I surely don't think the author you mentioned knows better the Romanian language than Romanian academy and 23 million speakers! A language is given by the speakers and eventually the institution they chose to represent them not by a book at someone's choice who wants to get an upper hand in a virtual debate.
That free replacement in a dictionary is usually called a synonimy, hence my previous conclusion. My advice: read Romanian grammar, read Romanian dictionaries, read academy's rules regarding Romanian language and then we'll have a common ground to talk on.
"For I have not said that Greek-Romanian is stronger than Latin-Romanian is all things, but in two very basic matters Romanian has adapted a Balkan nature in common with Greek."
Well, scripta manent
"Furthermore, being a member of the Balkan sprachbund, Romanian has developed features making it closer in respects to [...] Greek, [...] than to its parent Latin."
I don't see any corelation with any two particular matters, just a general statement: "closer to
"Do you have any training in comparative linguistics? "
The relevance of this being? I don't have anything to brag about. A linguistic training is not much of an argument when someone jumps in a debate about a language he doesn't know (words, etymologies, grammar). Also, is useless when someone knows what he is talking about. So, if we sum up, linguistic training is almost never to be brought up as argument.
"Most of what I have written in these posts matches what is in the standard handbooks."
That is of absolutely no relevance as long as it's wrong. I can't tell if it's your interpretation or if it's the books, but certainly I'll be sorry if it's about the books
Like I shown in a reply branched above in the thread ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=143147&cid=119 97860 ), in romanian are 5 cases which only by their look collapse in 3 (in some cases 2). In your enumeration, your forget the vocative, which has a different termination ("copile", "baiatule", "fato", "omule", "vanzatoareo").
What you called decent portion is however puzzling me. The amount of Dacian words is somewhere less than 300 (there are plenty of works in this subject, unfortunately they are mostly hypothethic and they also confront with a lot of words of unknown etymology), while the slavonic words cover significant but surely not the majority of the vocabulary. Relating word's origin you may review the same message I mentioned at the beggining of this message where I showed that a striking majority of agricultural terms have latin origin. With a bit of history, you'd see the relevance of this fact, as in the north-danubian area, the civilization after Roman's collapse was mostly agricultural. Some other terms regarding love and affection are Latin (a dori - to wish, dor - missing dolus, a pupa - to kiss pupare, amic - friend amicus, imbratisare - hug im+brat+is+are brachium) so your love-and-affection list is obviously tendencious, but probably is given by your insufficient knowledge of the language.
The spoken romanian uses more than two tenses. For instance in past tenses, beyond imperfect, it has two types of perfect. The simple perfect (fusei/fusesi/fu etc) and the compond perfect (which you mentioned). So by first strike we have 3 tenses. The other past tense is "more than the perfect" which is (fusesem/fusesei/fusese etc) - again a simple tense, that makes for 4.
The "meaningless o" is in fact a collapsing of a modal verb (to wish - "a voi"). It's hazardous to call meaningless things you don't know or understand.
The definite article exists in the medieval latin (see my same post from above). The replacement with subjunctive clauses in romanian it's a matter of synonimy. I can say as well "nu e greu sa fac" and "nu e greu a face" (first with subjunctive, the last with infinitive). If you're in the field you may also consider the famous Eminescu's verse "E usor a scrie versuri cand nimic nu ai a spune" (it's easy to write rhymes where's nothing to say).
Your affirmations about language corelations (for instance Greek-Romanian stronger than Latin-Romanian) are unsound.
I don't understand why anyone can claim that "campo" is closer to "campus" than "camp" based on the last vowel. As you know, in declension, the noun campus loses it's termination (which is nominative specific), so we have the root "camp" and for singular, for instance, the terminations: -us, -i, -o, -um, -o, -i, -e for nom, gen, dat, acc, abl, loc, voc.
:)
Romanian has 5 cases: nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, and vocative and their identification is much more clear in the text than you think (a subset of feminine).
ex: baiat (boy) - (masculine, singular)
baiat - nominative (always with an article - see below)
(A/al) baiatului - genitive (a noun relates to it)
Baiatului - dative (a verb relates to it)
baiat - accusative (not always with an article)
Baiatule - vocative
If you're curious I will make further declinations for you for different nouns.
Another note, is that most of all other romanic languages have lost even more the distinction between cases, so from all romanic languages, Romanian is most similar to Latin.
Indeed, Romanian mainly holds 3 visible different forms in all the 5 cases (nom/acc, gen/dat, voc) which sometimes collapse to two (for instance in masculin plural in most of the times genitive, dative and vocative are alike) and holds 3 declensions, and maybe one of these is what you referred to from the beginning.
Regarding article, there are two types. Undefinite ("un baiat") and definite ("baiatul"), the first referring to a boy, whoever is he, the last referring to a certain boy. Please note that the Latin "unus" in romanian is "un" - the indefinite article, but also "unu" - the number "one". Also, it's possible that the undefinied article "-ul" comes from latin demonstrative pronoun "ille". Both were used in Medieval Latin as surrogates for articles, and considering that Romanian is said to be born out of vulgar Latin, you should look for referrences a bit later and lower stylistically than Tacitus
The number of latin-derived words I'm afraid is not a criteria, as you know literary English words are in vast majority derived from latin, but I doubt anyone will hold for a similarity between the two languages. It's rather a matter of how "core" are those words to languages.
For a proof of an obvious similarity between the two languages I give the following text (translated and hopefully well adapted) given by one of the Romanian historians:
The wheat (grau/granum) is milled (se macina/machinare) in the watermill (moara/mola) or is pounded (piseaza/pinsare) in the stamp (piua/pilla-pilula). The flower (faina/farina) is sieved (cerne/cernere) through sieve (ciur/cibrum) and is mixed with water (apa/aqua) and with the dough (aluat/allevatum), then is kneaded (framanta/fermentare), is shaped like a bread (soage/subigere), is laid on a wooden plate (carpator/copertorium) or under a wooden bell (test/testum) is baked (coace/coquere) in the oven (cuptor/coctorium) until the bread (paine/panis) is ready. From the wheat flower can be made also pie (placinta/placenta), from the millet (mei/milium) flower a pounded boiled specific food (pasat/quassatum). To plough (a ara/arare), sow (semana/seminare), to thrash (treiera/tribulare), reap (secera/sicilare), gather (culege/colligere), reverse the sowing (intoarce/intoquere). Wheat (grau/granum), rye (secara/secale), millet (mei/milium), barley (orz/hordeum), mountain-wheat (alac/alica). Ear (spic/spicum), straws (paie/palea), cornockle (neghina/nigellina), land (pamant/pavimentum), field (camp/campus), area (arie/area), approx. 1/2 hectare (falce/falx-cis), yoke (jug/jugum), pitchfork (furca/furca), scythe (secere/sicils). Note that for all the above verbs if you derive a noun from them (e.g. sowing = semanare) you get an even more closer similarity.